I hope that someone else out there is following the Georgia murder trial of Hemy Neuman with as much salacious fervor as I am so that I don’t feel too guilty about my obsession with it. Neuman is the man who is accused of shooting the husband of a female friend and co-worker, and possible lover, outside a day-care center near Atlanta. He has pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
Now, I know this involves the murder of a father of two children and a man who is possibly suffering from a terrible mental illness, so I’m not going to make too much light of it … BUT the dude has blamed his killing the man on Barry White! He has told authorities that, in addition to being visited by an angel in the form of Olivia Newton-John, he was also visited by a demon in the form of White. The Walrus of Love. The Prince of Pillow Talk. Why does it have to be the Barry? Why couldn’t it have been, oh, I don’t know, Justin Bieber? Or the Jonas Brothers? Oh, yeah. I forgot. White = good and angelic, black = bad and demonic. Okay, okay. No, I’m not going to turn this guy’s claims of delusions into a racial thing. But you have to admit that is the way the two are usually referenced. One of the most disturbing to me is the “blacklist” and “whitelist,” the latter being in reference to what you have to do to allow someone’s email to break through your spam wall. I had one black friend whose email was getting caught in my spam filter and she asked me to “whitelist” her and it made me cringe, like I was putting her on a list of whites. I think I even called her and told her I would do no such thing and asked her to send me an alternate email address. But then, I am kind of crazy. Not so much, though, as to blame my misdoings on Barry White! I guess stranger things have happened.
Not the least of which is this 2012 contraception presidential election. Who in the world would ever have thought that the decision regarding who is to lead the United States of America would boil down to whether or not to get knocked up. Oh, I know, it’s just one of the many pressing issues, like whether it’s snobby to want all kids to go to college so they won’t have to grow up eating dog food, but just the fact that it’s in the mix at all seems pretty bizarre. The strangest thing about it to me is that no one that I’ve heard has ever mentioned that women might want to ask their sexual partners simply to wear a condom. It’s not rocket science, people. And it’s a lot cheaper than birth control medication and has no side effects. You can buy them at any of the 300,000 Walgreens in Memphis that are just several blocks apart. In fact, you could do a Walgreens Condom Crawl and just go from store to store buying them up. No insurance required. So am I missing something on the lack of talk about condoms?
And what about the issue of HIV/AIDS and other STDs? Birth control medications do not prevent that, but condoms do about 99 percent of the time. I know the whole birth control meds vs. condom issue might be slightly different for married couples and longtime partners, but, ladies, are you not asking casual sexual partners to wear a condom and are you just taking the birth control pills so you don’t get pregnant, ignoring the fact that you could contract an STD? Tell the dudes to use a rubber!
See, this is what the candidates should be discussing in their debates: the clap. Then maybe Rush Limbaugh would have something more to say about it than calling women who want their insurance to cover birth control prostitutes and asking to see videotapes of them having sex. That was rich. But I hate that some of the Democrats got all riled up about it and demanded that he apologize for it. WHO CARES WHAT HE SAYS? He’s nothing more than a ridiculous caricature of a human being, or something slightly resembling a human being, albeit more wooly-mammoth-like. Don’t give him the time of day or the attention to demand an apology. Laugh at him. Brush it off as the ramblings of a bitter radio jock who could never make it in politics. Thank him for adding to the dialogue. Embrace and compliment him. Maybe it would confuse him enough that he would shut up. Think of the means to the end!
So, yes. Let’s make this the condom campaign. Increased sales of condoms means less money insurance companies have to shell out and more tax revenue. And it will give Mitt Romney the chance to say that he doesn’t know much about condoms or birth control medication but that he has many good friends who own the pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers that make them. Stranger than the man blaming the murder on Barry White? I don’t know, but it’s a pretty fine line.
