Let’s talk about Harry Reid’s controversial comment about President Obama. In discussing Obama’s chances to be elected president, Reid was quoted as saying that Obama is “light-skinned with no Negro dialect, unless he wants one.” In the context spoken, what makes this offensive? Reid’s statement is a reflection of prejudice that still exists in the United States. He is saying, in his opinion, that the US voters are less likely to vote for a darker-skinned black person than a lighter-skinned black person. And he is saying that US voters are less likely to vote for somebody who speaks with what he calls a Negro dialect than somebody who speaks without one.

Harry Reid didn’t say that he thought it was right for US voters to have this bias. He was portraying the political landscape as he saw it. Before you criticize Harry Reid, ask yourself if you believe these things to be true. Have you noticed that many newscasters and other professional African Americans speak without a “Negro dialect?” Could it be that they do so because of a prejudice that some have toward those who speak with that dialect? Isn’t that what Harry Reid is saying? Even if you don’t think such a prejudice exists, is it wrong for Harry Reid to say that he thinks it does exist?

Didn’t people question John F. Kennedy’s chances to win the presidential election because he was Catholic? Didn’t people question Al Gore’s choice of Joe Lieberman as a running mate because Lieberman is Jewish? Didn’t people question George W. Bush’s chances for election because of the way he speaks? These discussions are political analysis, not prejudice.

We would all be much better off if we discussed real issues rather than those fabricated by the extremist pundits and partisan strategists. If you want to criticize Harry Reid for his stance on an issue or for the way he performs his job, have a blast. On this issue, don’t waste your breath.

My home state of New Jersey has signed into law a bill that allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes. My question is this – why has it taken so long? The answer is that there are too many people who are unable to open their minds and realize that things may not be as black and white as they were led to believe. Let’s put things in perspective.

How many times have you seen a prescription drug advertisement on TV or read one in the newspaper or magazine. These ads are filled with disclaimers and warnings about possible side effects. After reading such an ad, one might start to wonder why the drug is on the market in the first place. It is on the market because the benefits outweigh the risks when the drug is properly prescribed (or because a drug company influenced the FDA, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Yet some people stigmatize medical marijuana while being comfortable with morphine, oxycontin, alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter cold medications that can make you unfit to drive a motor vehicle. What causes more damage to individuals and society – cigarettes and alcohol that are addictive, proven killers, and can be bought without a prescription or tightly controlled medical marijuana?

A Facebook friend of mine opened up an interesting discussion yesterday. It had to do with the way some people post trivial things on Facebook, and do so, in her opinion, to excess.

Facebook and other new social media seem to fall outside any conventional rules of etiquette that apply to more traditional means of communication. We sometimes talk about our personal speech filters. The speech filter is the deliberate or intuitive mechanism that helps us decide which of our thoughts to share when speaking and which of our thoughts to leave unspoken. Our speech filter is what prevents us from making negative (or even positive) comments on a person’s appearance in spite of what we might be thinking. It prevents us from making politically incorrect statements. It prevents us from asking the teacher if there will be any homework.

We tune our speech filter differently based upon the setting and the audience. We tune differently when speaking with business colleagues, coworkers, friends, and family. We tune differently when speaking in front of an audience. We tune differently if we are in a public setting such as a restaurant where surrounding people may hear. We tune differently when speaking with children.

But what about the written word? In the case of the written word, we have the luxury of time to think about what we write. Our filters can be more deliberate. We can edit and reedit our written word before anybody else reads it. For example, I had thought about writing two paragraphs up that that our speech filter prevents us from calling somebody ugly. But I chose not to include that example in that paragraph because it might be politically incorrect.

My Facebook friend’s point was that Facebook users have a wide range of filter settings. The question that intrigues me is this. Given that people have time to think before posting on Facebook, what are people’s thought processes? In other words, how do people set their Facebook Post Filters? What makes a thought or event worthy of posting? What are the criteria?

I have three criteria:
1. Should I share this information with my Facebook friends?
2. Will others find this information interesting?
3. Will I offend anybody by posting this information?

The second question is at the heart of my Facebook friend’s point. Most of us have dozens or hundreds of Facebook friends. If we were to restrict our posts to those that we believe would be interesting to all our friends, we wouldn’t be posting much at all. And our perception of what may be interesting may be completely out of sync with that of our Facebook friends. Is this the reason that some people post uninteresting minutia on an hourly basis? Or is it that their filters don’t include question #2?