“There was only one perfect person in the history of the world, and look what they did to him” – Eleanor “Marie” Mannion (AKA, my Mom)
Surveys on our fears reveal that the number one fear is not death, but public speaking. Perhaps this is because people tend to be kinder to our dearly departed memory than they are to us when we misspeak, say something someone does not like or agree with, or are not politically correct.
You would think sharing the number one fear would mean not many people criticize verbal foibles, but the opposite seems to be true. I guess it is difficult to criticize someone for dying, right? (Although, I’ve seen that as well. It is true there are some you just cannot please!)
Every few years, a contestant in one of the scholarship/beauty pageants gets vilified for making a whopper of a statement. When asked if evolution should be taught in schools, a Miss Nevada replied, “Evolution definitely should be taught in schools … everything evolves, we evolve as communities … evolution can be taught in many different ways, it doesn’t necessarily have to be about people.” A contender for Miss South Carolina, when asked the most important event in U.S. history, responded, “Pearl Harbor, because it ended the great depression.”
Former vice president Dan Quayle famously could not spell “potato” and former president George W. Bush once told someone, “You’re working hard to put food on your family.” President Barack Obama once said he had visited all 57 states. Continue reading
Religious Refuse 