Larry King, the television talk show host who recently retired from CNN after 25 years of hosting his own show, once commented: “If you want to get on my show, all you need to do is take out a gun and blow your parents away.” He wasn’t encouraging that type of behavior; he was simply stating a fact. What he did not say was: “If you want to get on my show, all you need to do is take care of your elderly parents day after day, month after month, and year after year, until they pass away. After that, I’ll invite you on my show to talk about the heroic sacrifice that you made.”
Last week I told you I had three observations about the Arizona killings that I wanted to share with you. My first observation (“All Behavior Originates And Proceeds From Beliefs”) was covered in last week’s article. If you didn’t get a chance to read the article, you can find it here.
If you pay any attention to the news, you know about the attempted murder last Saturday of Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman from Arizona. Just in case you’re not up to speed on the details of the incident, I’ll give you a brief summary of what happened, and then a few of my own thoughts and observations that I haven’t seen expressed by anyone else.
When I was in grade school, a sign of status and importance among the students was whether you owned a watch. During that time (the 1960’s), watches were expensive and most parents didn’t see the need for a young student to have a watch. The rule in the home I grew up in was that unless we received a watch as a gift from a relative or bought our own, we had to wait until we were in 8th grade before our parents would buy us a watch.