The photo in this entry by Karl, and another taken from a different angle, have been popping up all over the internet since Tuesday’s election. It’s taken during Senator Rick Santorum’s concession speech, after losing to Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey. It’s a picture of Senator Santorum’s family.
Now Rick Santorum has said and done some vile things, particularly regarding gay folks, including some blather about us doing the nasty with animals or some such other idiotic thing. So at the very least the guy is an idiot that made it way too far up the food chain, but I personally believe he’s just evil.
Be that as it may, I just can’t bring myself to post this picture on my own blog. And it’s because of the youngest child shown in the photo. She’s just way too sad. I can’t take the sight of sad people, especially children. I can’t even take seeing a cartoony sad face. That purple pill commercial where the little bubble with a face is all sad and depressed and is bouncing around looking all forlorn ruins my day, despite the fact that’s he’s happy at the end.
Earl and I have a tradition of rewarding serving staff with a happy face on our credit card receipts at restaurants. This is in addition to, not in place of the gratuity. A number of years ago we stopped at the Viewmont Mall outside of Scranton, Pa. on one of our trips. I believe the restaurant was TGIFriday’s or something like it. The waitress was a mess. None of our food was right (I believe I had ordered baked chicken and got linguini with clam sauce), we didn’t get any drinks, despite repeated requests throughout the meal and the appetizer came out last, with our drinks. That was after waiting for 15 minutes for the server to even get to our table. Still, we tipped her. Very little. I told Earl that perhaps he should hold off on the happy face. She didn’t deserve it. Instead of leaving the space blank, he drew a sad face.
OH. MY. GOD.
I just found that to be so wrong. After a rapid fire stream of hysterical words, I didn’t speak to Earl for the rest of the trip. I couldn’t. I felt bad for the server that had served me clam sauce instead of chicken and withheld my iced tea. She had earned a sad face.
I finally calmed down and I must say that from that experience on I’ve handled the doling out of happy faces when we are dining out.
Back to the Santorums. Now I understand that the little girl in that picture who’s bawling her eyes out is probably going to grow up to be some Republinazi who will gleefully throw fuel on the fire they are using to burn the likes of me. But I don’t want her to be sad. I want her to be happy. There’s always a bright spot to everything, like perhaps she can go to public school now instead of being cyber schooled with her ugly siblings.
Update at 4:42 p.m. Eastern: O.k., maybe I snickered once.
Update at 4:56 p.m. Eastern: I need to just let this go. I really do. Maybe I snickered again and added a snark:
