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| Without taking into consideration what position either presidential candidate takes on hot social issues,
ignoring your opinion on their promised approaches to foreign policy or the economy,
... that is to say "putting all politics aside" ...
in your opinion, which presidential candidate is just more likable?
I'll go first.
In the four years President Obama has been in the national spotlight I can't think of a single thing he has done or sad that I consider offensive. In fact when I hear him speak I'm left feeling like he's a nice, extremely smart, even-tempered, fun guy. I would love to have him and his wife in my circle of friends. Additionally, no one from Obama's pre-president days has stepped up to discredit his good character. I would bet my house that if there were skeletons in Obama's closet, Republicans eager to sniff it out, would have done so by now.
On the other hand, there's Romney who has a trail of people speaking out against his historic unscrupulous business practices. That lowers his likability in my opinion. The fact that he keeps his money in another country makes him less likable to me. Aaaaand there's that incident with his dog. I'm sorry, when we're talking about likability we have to talk about the fact that Romney strapped his family dog to the roof of his car and drove hundreds of miles. I have yet to run into a single person that says that they have EVER strapped their family pet to the roof of a moving vehicle. It's not normal. It's not nice. In fact most people think it's cruel. As one Xangan astutely pointed out "there are many studies that conclude a lack of concern for pets goes hand in hand with a lack of empathy and concern for people." (TheSutraDude).
Which candidate do I find more likable? Obama has my vote.
Who do you think is the more likable presidential candidate and why?
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|  I just watched a video of a reporter asking a psychiatrist why people were so bothered by
- the Time magazine cover photo above, and
- the idea of a woman breast feeding her 3 year old child.
I strongly disagree with the first 2 suggested reasons that the psychiatrist came up with.
The psychiatrist first suggested that since the mother is beautiful people are seeing this breastfeeding picture in a sexual light and are bothered by a young boy sucking a sexy woman's boob. I say she's gross, and off base!
Then she suggested that this picture makes mothers who did not breast feed their children or did not breast feed their children for this long feel bad about their own parenting. It makes them feel inadequate.
Where did they find this psychiatrist!
I personally never once thought anything sexual about that picture, and in no way did it make me question whether I gave my children enough breast feeding time.
The picture bothers me because this poor child will grow up and be haunted by it. It's a gross invasion of his privacy. He won't be a child forever, but that picture will forever be around. Not fair for the kid!
The breastfeeding of a child that old bothers me because I believe the mother has issues and is using the child to deal with them. She needs to let her child grow up at a natural pace. If she sat him at the table with a spoon and fork in front of heathly, delicious food, and didn't encourage his continued breastfeeding, he would have stopped by now on his own. I'm bothered that this kid is being used like a drug to meet his mother's odd emotional needs.
How about you all? Were any of you bothered by this picture for the two reasons the psychiatrist suggested ...
1. because it's sexually inappropriate, or
2. it makes you feel your parenting is inadequate?
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| My son, ELEVEN, rarely gets mad. He gripes about chores and school work allll the time, but he rarely gets mad at social situations. Today he got mad.
We just got back from a picnic at the park for the cast of a play he was just in. ELEVEN is in the 5th grade, and many of the girls in the cast are in the 5th and 6th grade. ELEVEN is a good looking kid, charismatic and athletic too, so it's no wonder that most of the older girls have crushes on him. It's quite obvious from the way they gather around him like geese, following him wherever he goes wearing goofy smiles which they try to keep in check for fear they'll give their crushes away. But a mom notices.
ELEVEN stayed with the group for the food, the chatting, and then the gift exchange, which all took about 1.5 hours, but then he took his basketball and headed to the hoops. He and his daddy play pick-up games at this park often, so I was comfortable with him going off to do that.
The basketball hoops were not visible from the picnic area, so I could not see him playing from where I stayed talking to adult friends. The girls in the play all ran around the picnic area throwing water they dipped out of the cooler on each other ... until they noticed that ELEVEN was missing. Then all of a sudden the girls went missing too.
About 10 minutes later ELEVEN came back to where I was and was obviously (at least to his mama it was obvious) pissed.
"Can we go?"
I was ready to go anyhow. "Yeah we can go. Give me a few minutes."
"Can we go NOW."
Okay, I get that it's serious kid. "Yep. We can go."
We gathered our stuff and headed to the van.
As soon as we got in he spilled his guts, as kids have a way of doing when they finally have their moms alone.
"I can't stand those girls!"
"Why? What happened?"
"I was playing 21 with some guys and they all came up to the side of the court shouting my name and bugging me. I told them I didn't want to play. I was busy. But they all ran onto the court and started throwing water on me and hitting and kicking me."
"That was their very inappropriate way of flirting with you."
"It is NOT cool."
"What did you do?"
"They kept hitting me, all of them. They were all laughing and hitting and I can't hit them back so I ran. Then they thought it was some big game of chase. IT'S SUCH A STUPID RULE!"
"What?"
"That boys can't hit girls. How come girls can hit boys, but boys can't hit girls! It makes no sense."
"Hmmm. Well girls can't hit boys either."
"But if they do, I can't hit back."
"Babe, soon you'll be old enough to start hitting them back with your words."
"What do you mean?"
"Like you could have turned to the queen bee, the girl leading the pack ... was there one? A leader?"
"Yes. Cosette! I hate her!
"You could have turned to her and said 'Honestly, if you think hitting me is going to get me to like you, you're dead wrong. It makes me think you're a stupid fool.' "
"But they were all hitting me, Mom. I just wanted to haul off and punch one of them back. And believe me if I punched one of them, it would NOT be okay with anyone. I would get in big trouble. It's not fair!"
I could tell he was serious as a heart attack so I thought it through. And gave the following advice.
"Let me tell you something. If you're ever in a situation where a bunch of girls are attacking you and it hurts, even if they're just playing, you tell them to stop loudly, and if they don't ... you push one of the biggest girls, the leader if you can get to her, to her butt. Push her just hard enough so she goes all the way down to her butt. Not with a thud like in tackle football, but make sure she hits the ground. It will embarrass her to no end, and I guarantee you they will all stop."
"But then I'll get in trouble!" ELEVEN is a big boy, he actually might get in trouble, but I don't care. Just because he's a big boy doesn't mean he thinks it's fun or funny that a group of girls kicks and punches him.
"If it's a situation like you just described, ELEVEN, where a bunch of girls are hitting you, and you push one of them down and get in trouble for it, I will come to bat for you. I will tell whatever adult is mad at you that I told you to do it!"
Really ELEVEN should run to an adult and tell the adult to tell the girls to stop, and I told him so, but there's no way ELEVEN would ever do that. And as a woman who was a young girl once, I'm just saying, if you're the kind of girl that thinks punching and hitting is funny, you deserve to be pushed down.
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