Maybe it's the blogs, maybe it's the fact that so many of us have Facebook or MySpace pages, maybe it's the Twittersphere. Whatever it is, I've noticed that more of us, me included, are failing to screen what we say. We just blurt it out in 140 characters (Twitter), way fewer (Facebook, MySpace) or way more (our personal blogs).
In person or electronically, we're saying what we really think. Shudder.
In just a year or so, almost all of us have gotten a little too accustomed to "streaming" our lives and thoughts all day long.
When you're constantly telling everyone exactly what you're doing ("pot roast tonight!") and how you're feeling, ("my boss is an arrogant twit") it's hard to stop.
Which is why I think it was so easy for Twitter-savvy Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to suggest in a nationally broadcast interview recently that AIG executives should either resign or take a deep bow and "follow the Japanese example" of killing themselves.
Grassley did this as easily and lightly as if he had suggested that he'd be happy to bring the lime Jell-O mold to the Senate picnic.
In a separate, but related, story, Judge Judy said recently that she was surprised that the loathsome and disgraced Bernie Madoff didn't kill himself rather than go to prison.
Is that any way for an officer of the make-believe television court to talk?
As one who receives quarterly "benefits" statements from AIG (which stands for "all I got" in my case), I should be as angry as anybody about dozens of soulless suits receiving millions of dollars in bonuses for doing The Worst Job in the History of the Working World, but I believe that the rules of a polite society dictate that we should never, ever invite anyone to off himself, even in jest.
No, no.
It would be far more gratifying to see AIG head Edward Libby dropped off in Deliveranceland dressed only in silver lame chaps and an "I (heart) gun control laws" T-shirt.
Am I the only one who just got goose bumps?
Lately, in my real life, I've had an unusually hard time holding my tongue and I believe it's because I'm so used to cyber-sharing every micro-moment of my day ("No bran, too many errands today") that I've forgotten how to turn it off.
And while I haven't invited the lunkhead who double-billed me for a repair and refused to refund the money to do the honorable thing and plunge a Samurai sword through his chest, I've toyed with the notion.
As a Southerner, this conduct is, well, unbecoming. We are famous for avoiding telling people they have displeased us.
We will dance all around unpleasantness.
Except we don't anymore. And I'm a little freaked out about that.
