What I Learned from Judging Bill O’Reilly

Happy Friday! I promised you a video today AND I’m a fan of under promising and over delivering. Today’s L.O.V.E. chat is totally based on not 1 but 2 videos, although neither of them star me. But at least one of them should. I promise it’s not the one that you think. Unless it’s the one that I’m talking about. K. 

Gaaaah!

Video 2 (about Video 1):

Gaaaaaaah!

So. I’m not so easily botherable (as much) as I maybe used to be and so it took a few passes through my hippocampus for it to fully register that I was, in fact, actually pissed off at this person I do not know. This person’s name is Bill O’Reilly and I’m pissed at him for a few reasons.

1. He doesn’t like Beyonce’s song “Partition”–he thinks it glorifies sex AND sex in back seats of cars.

2. He feels that Beyonce’s song “Partition” is an inexplicable violation of Beyonce’s “role model” duty to children who don’t have parents.

3. He doesn’t understand how a song that glorifies sex and sex in back seats of cars + mentions Monica Lewinsky can be deemed “art”.

4. He “needed” Russell Simmons (being a mogul and an OK father and all) to answer questions pertaining to all of the above AND without once asking Beyonce or a rep for Beyonce or even a woman mogul to answer his questions about sex positive married women named Beyonce.

And so, instead of reaching out to Bill O’Reilly via e-mail, snail mail or tweeting him directly, writing an open letter to him on my blog, or making a “snappy neck” video with my finger pointing on my Youtube page, reading Bill the riot act (or writing my congress person or whatever), I posted a cute and snippy FB post about how geriatric puritan minded male people should prepare for extinction. I did this, I did.

Oh.

And while I got to get my clever little rocks off, I’m positive I accomplished exactly nada in propagating even the slightest bit of change in the direction of whatever it is we call what Bill O’Reilly is up to.  In essence, I did exactly what Bill O’Reilly did by not addressing/engaging the source, except my platform is hella smaller. I also added nothing of value to the discussion and set up the kind of complainy conversation I oft rally against. Which, of course, is the opposite direction of where we’d ideally like our conversations to go–Open, Honest and Woke dialogue. Yes?

While I do understand the value in having conversations on all media platforms and in any way we can have them, I also overstand how easy it is to fall into passive aggressive complaining via social media, rather than stepping up to have different kinds of conversations in far more powerful ways. Everything taint worth a big chat over, and everything that’s important to me is not going to be important to you (and vice versa). But if something is important, It is far more beneficial to be brave enough to raise our voices in direct action, meaningful ways–and get creative about it when we do.  Yes? Cool.

So. I’m in the process of writing a cute open letter for my blog to answer Bill O’Reilly’s judgement-based patriarchy posture + remind him that his weird finger pointing says more about him than it does about Beyonce (and all of us who too shalt like to enjoy a partition up every now and again with our Boo). See. I set lofty goals. I also plan to send a copy of said letter to my Congress person. Although I have zero idea what that will do, except be funny to me. We’ll suppose my point in mentioning any of this is that our voices are far too valid and important to get stuck in passive aggressive social media pissed. In the words of Sarah Bareilles,

“You can be amazing

You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody’s lack of love
Or you can start speaking up

Nothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave”

I promise, the changes we want to see in the world ain’t gonna happen whilst we sit on the sidelines complaining AND if we’re too afraid to have honest direct conversations that aren’t steeped in our fragile egos. Everything we want, starts with us. Always. So. That’s what I learned
this week. I do hope it helped something. 
I’ll keep you posted on when I’m finished Bill’s letter so you can check it out!

Thank you for reading this (!!!) Remember always to #RuleYoSelf with L.O.V.E. Have a Happy Awesome Weekend! Love you madly!

Osho Lovianhal friends,

-e-