This is Viewpoints for Monday, June 13, 2016

No joke

The joke about a woman’s breast is not funny, especially if the joke was made by Ellen Degeneres. For Tiki Pierce, the joke is insulting and a defamation because a woman’s breast is not something to laugh about. A couple of years back David Letterman made a joke about Bristol Palin getting a hit from Alex Rodriguez. Letterman on the advice of his mother apologized to Sarah Palin for that remark.

But it’s Ellen’s joke that has lit up social media for what she said that was rebroadcasted. Even Warner Bros., the company that owns “Ellen,” should never have allowed this to be aired on network-owned stations nationwide. Degeneres should apologize to viewers for doing what she did and making fun of it.

Entrance improvements

I am so pleased to see all of the exciting upgrades that are planned for Macon. We will be so proud of these improvements. However, there is one eyesore that I never see mentioned. Coming down Coliseum Drive to Riverside Drive there is an entrance to our city that is rusty and worn. Is there anyone out there who can come through with a plan to add art panels (maybe depicting our city) to the train overpass? I’m sure they could be added without disturbing the train traffic.

Two points

I got this wild hair and signed up for graduate school. I figured, I’ve got a little more than 10 years before I retire. I can do this. Looking for the tweezers now. Oh the glory days, standing in line outside the registrar’s office with all the other students, a blank check in my hand from my dad. I felt so grown up. I was even allowed to sign it.

Today I had to pay a personal visit to my bank. Apparently paying tuition online is a little too easy. The college was real grateful for a couple days. I have to laugh because in the few short days from registration to first assignment, I have already been educated. No longer is it necessary to be physically present for anything. Why, I’ve only had to move from one side of the couch to the other to turn in my first assignment, read two chapters and completely empty my bank account.

I can remember when college rule was invented. That’s notebook paper by the way. Do you know what my first assignment was? Share uses of certain designs and titles of electronic paper in Discussion Section of Livetext (two points). No, seriously do you know what that is? I can’t make heads or tails of it. Yes, I googled it. If I have to consult my kids, I better get more than two points

Forgot something?

In his June 3 column, Bill Ferguson commits the same error he accuses Walter Williams of making, i.e., oversimplifying a complex subject and ignoring a critical difference between two things being compared. The critical difference Ferguson ignores when discussing gender dysmorphia is genetics — DNA and chromosomes — to which he conveniently omits any reference. Ferguson states: “medical science makes it possible, through surgery and hormone treatments, for a person to switch genders.” As far as I know, there is no surgery nor other medical procedure to change a human’s DNA and chromosomes determined at birth. Scientifically and medically, his statement is patently false. A person’s biological gender is determined by the aforementioned chemistry.

Even if you accept his statement as applying only to physical characteristics, it is still not completely true. There has been widespread publicity of surgically and hormonally treated humans, and I have never seen a truly successful effort yet. One can always detect the remnants of their biologically determined physical characteristics to some extent. I will admit I have seen some fairly attractive specimens. However, it is a continual struggle, via surgery and constant medication, to suppress their biological chemistry. To me, medical science is attacking the wrong part of the problem rather than the cause: the brain.

If a person’s brain thinks they are in the wrong physical body, it’s not the body’s fault — its DNA and chromosomes do not lie. If medical science really understood the brain, it could fix the problem there, but it doesn’t — despite Ferguson’s six paragraphs of comments about the brain. The fact that medicine is working so hard on the body is proof it is only doing what it can, not what it should.

Anybody (like Ferguson) who seriously took Williams’ analogy of thinking he was an antelope to avoid paying taxes as anything other than very effective satire simply is overreacting, writing a lengthy rebuttal which committed the same error.

My guess is that Ferguson writes a financially compensated local column, and political correctness probably dictates that kind of approach to please the powers that be and try to make the unfortunate gender-conflicted audience feel better. I understand that. I cannot imagine how tragic it must be to think they are in the wrong body. That doesn’t make Ferguson’s logic correct. He’s an engineer and should know better.

Next in line

Our country and the world lost one of the greatest fighters in history in Muhammad Ali. He devoted much of his life to charitable causes and received a Gold Medal from President Bush in 2005. The following comments are to point out facts that many Americans don’t know since we no longer have a draft. I am a Vietnam veteran and served in Vietnam from 1966-1969. I served because my father, a World War I veteran who was drafted and served in France said to me, “when your country calls, you go.”

Physically fit men who had a draft deferment or refused to serve (Ali) passed their obligation on to the next one in line. Such prominent men as former President Bill Clinton, and Vice President Dick Cheney and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and I think Donald Trump, among others, had deferments. The next physically and mentally fit man had to take their place. We will never know if the “next number up” served in combat and if he returned safely, suffered wounds or paid the ultimate sacrifice and has his name memorialized on the Vietnam Wall.

To illustrate how unfair the deferment system was, African American soldiers suffered 37 percent of the casualties in Vietnam, but I believe African Americans were only about 14 percent of our population at the time. My comments are to point out facts that should be considered when we think about the totality of a person we consider “great.”

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Monday, June 13, 2016."