A Cautionary Tale about Social Media (Twitter, to Be Exact)

You guys...the online world can be a scary and exceedingly unkind place.  I knew this, and yet something that happened recently really drove that truth home in a big way.

I had fashioned a piece of candy corn into a miniature Donald Trump for the amusement of my husband's family (it's the perfect candy to do this with, as you can see: big yellow hair, orange face!).  And on a whim, I decided to post it on Twitter on Saturday.  (Along with the picture I wrote, "Make Candy Corn Great Again!!  #Trump2020.)

Well, I woke up Sunday morning to find that someone had replied to that tweet by posting a photo of my husband and me that had been distorted into something hideous.  Then as if that wasn't bad enough, another person (with a Twitter handle I can't even repeat here, because it's nothing but a string of obscenities, including the F-bomb) retweeted the ugly photo!

There are a few things about all of this that make it particularly disturbing.  For one, I am a nobody on Twitter.  I'm a nobody in the blogging world and in the Instagramming world, too; but truly, I'm just a complete nobody in the Twitterverse, where the blue check marks rule the roost.  I have a whopping 216 followers there.  I am not even close to being an Internet “influencer” and no one cares what I have to say. (In fact, I say very little on that platform; I mostly use it as a means to find news stories that don't always show up elsewhere or to read the clever observations of the people I follow.) But what is even more concerning to me is that this person actually went to the trouble of finding a nice photo of my husband and me to use as a way of trashing me for tweeting something positive about a presidential candidate they despise. I'm not even sure where they found the photo.  Here on my blog?  On my Facebook page?  I had to do a bit of digging myself to find it online--and it's my photo!  (I did find it on Facebook, in an album of profile pictures I've used in the past.  Do you think this person who is a complete stranger to me went trolling through my FB photos?!)

People can be mean.  And 2020 has really brought out the vitriol.  We are no longer allowed to have differing opinions without cruelty and violence erupting--or at the very least, unkind remarks (and distorted photos!). Even a simple “#Trump2020” is enough to make someone angry enough to scour the Internet looking for a photo to weaponize against you. God help the truly influential people who dare to express an unpopular opinion; they have to endure much crueler retaliations than I, such as doxxing and receiving death threats aimed at them and their families.

As our pastor said in his sermon on Sunday, we are at a crucial point in our country’s history, and much of what is happening on our streets and in our media is reminiscent of Germany in 1939.  Prayer and fasting are more important than ever in these dark days.  God help us all!!  And God bless America. 

(P.S. My husband and I are feeling a little self-conscious about our teeth right now...but we also think the altered photo is pretty hilarious.   So thanks for the laughs, @WhoeverYouAre.)

A Woman I Admire

I promised not to get political on "String of Pearls," to keep it a happy place where you can go to get away from all of that serious stuff.  With the election fast approaching, politics is very much on most of our minds--but this blog was never intended to be a platform for me to express my personal views.

Despite that promise, however, I think it would be okay if I told you that I really like and admire one of the presidential candidate's wives; I like her very, very much and think she's a positive role model for women--and I would feel this way even if I wasn't planning to vote for her husband.  Which I am.  (Uh oh, I may have inadvertently expressed a personal political view there.  It won't happen again.)

The woman I'm talking about is Ann Romney.

Poor Ann gets trounced on and trash-talked about daily, for no better reason than that she happens to be married to an extremely wealthy man.  The have-nots these days often despise the haves, jumping to conclusions about them and assuming that anyone who's never had to live paycheck to paycheck can't possibly understand the concepts of anxiety or suffering, or care about the problems of those who are less fortunate than they.

There was an interview with Ann Romney in my most recent issue of Good Housekeeping, and after reading it, I liked Ann ever more than I did before.  I was impressed by the fact that she is a woman with deep faith.  She was asked, "What is the prayer you say when you're faced with...a big possibility, whether it's running for President or something that involves your children?"  Her response was, "What I've learned is that you can never ask God to tell you what the end is.  You can ask, 'Is this a good thing to do?'  But not, 'How is this going to turn out?'"  Although Ann is a Mormon, her answer is one that I can relate to as a Catholic.  We are taught to pray, but to remember that our prayers aren't always answered the way we think they ought to be, because God knows better than we do what's good for us.  We know that we must accept His will for us, no matter how difficult.

On the matter of wealth, Ann was asked, "In preparing for this interview, we collected questions from readers.  One question that came up again and again was around your financial success.  There's been a lot of talk about your husband's interest income and his earning $68,000 a day for speeches--which is more than most Americans make in a year.  How, with your family's wealth, can you understand the struggles of regular folks?"  I found her answer poignant and perfectly expressed.  Ann replied, "I acknowledge that we are very lucky and our struggles are not financial, but that does not mean we have not struggled.  You don't have to struggle in the exact way of every person on this earth to understand and have sympathy for those going through difficult times.  And, for me, I've gone through very serious health issues.  Once your health is taken away, you have nothing.  And so I would love people to know that we do care and that we do understand what it means to struggle financially.  And for Mitt, to have had success and to say, 'I understand how jobs are created'--I really believe that the country will be so much better off if he's President."

You don't have to struggle in the exact way of every person on this earth to understand and have sympathy for those going through difficult times.  Wow.  To me, that statement is nothing less than profound.

Ann Romney is a breast cancer survivor and she has MS.  She knows what it means to suffer, but I guess there are people out there who think that if you're rich, you have no problems--and apparently no heart.  I think this woman has a huge heart.

I've always felt an affinity for Ann Romney.  Like me, she fell in love with her husband when she was a teenager and she raised five fine sons with him.  Like me, she was a stay-at-home mom.  Of course, people probably think, "Sure she didn't work.  With all that money, she could afford to stay home all day eating bon-bons and watching soaps."  But I don't care if you're rich or poor or somewhere in between, staying home to raise five boys is an exhausting full-time job, rewarding but often difficult--and I can tell you from experience it's highly unlikely that Ann Romney spent her days in front of the tube eating bon-bons.

In the GH interview, Ann said that she got very depressed when she was first diagnosed with MS and went to a "scary, dark place for a long time."  (Blessed are they, the poor in spirit...)  What pulled her through was her faith, her husband--and riding horses, which apparently is an activity that is therapeutic for people who suffer from MS.  I was touched by the way she said Mitt buoyed her up when she was so low; he told her, "I don't care if you're in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.  I don't care whether you make dinner; I can eat cold cereal and toast.  As long as we're together, as long as you're here, we're going to be OK."  (Then she had to apologize to the interviewer because she started to tear up.)

I love this woman.  And her husband's reaction to her illness is exactly the one I know my husband would have if I was similarly afflicted.  There is something about these two people that makes me believe with absolute certainty that they should be the next couple to occupy the White House.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.

You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover...

Yesterday, my husband and I were on the road, doing the first leg of our car trip out to visit our youngest son at his college in the Midwest. We were listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and “El Rushbo” mentioned something interesting he’d seen on the Drudge Report. I decided to take a look at it on my husband’s iPad—which I keep on my lap now on road trips, just in case I get a sudden impulse to look something up on-line.

Well, when I got to the home page of the Drudge Report, I saw a headline for an article listing celebrities who are Conservatives, and that intrigued me so I checked it out. There were over 30 celebrities on this particular list who, if not true Conservatives, were at least registered Republicans (allegedly anyway), and there were some big names on there that surprised both my husband and myself. Among them were some actors we really like in the movies but would have guessed were hardcore Liberals in their real lives--Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, and Robert Downey, Jr., to name a few. Woo hoo! What a nice surprise. But just when I thought I’d seen it all, who do you think popped up on a list of Conservative celebrities? 50 Cent!! That’s right, good old “Fiddy Cent” (or as my sister-in-law called him once—to the amusement of all the young hipsters within earshot—“Fifty Cents”). 50 Cent, the rapper. Can you believe it?

In 2005, 50 Cent was quoted in a GQ article as saying that he thought George Bush was “incredible…a gangsta.” High praise, indeed. Then he added, “I wanna meet George Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him.” Wow, I wonder if George W. had any idea how much he and this hip-hop rapper had in common. I doubt the former president ever considered himself much of a “gangsta.” But there you go, President Bush: there’s your old pal Fiddy pumping you up, giving his two cent about you. (Technically, that would make him 48 Cent, though; wouldn’t it?)

It was probably good for me to see this article, because I tend to lump all celebrities together as Liberals. I never in a million years would have guessed that this hip-hop music artist was a Conservative and a Bush supporter. It just goes to show that you really can’t judge a book by its cover.