Jewelz & Foolz: The Day after International Women’s Day.

Hope you were kind to women yesterday. This being the day after International Women’s Day, I am starting a hopefully annual tradition of naming Jewelz & Foolz. What is she talking about? Is that some sort of urban lingo? Nope, just Sage Spencer lingo.

So, what are  you ask?                              

Both are groups of men. The former, Jewelz , are men who I would like to share a beer or a cocktail with today, pick their brains, get to know their hearts and depending on how it goes, maybe flirt with them, just for one day, on the day after International Women’s Day.

Then there are Foolz, not the harmless kind, but instead men who’s judgment at the present time makes them not good for womankind.

And yes, for the majority of people, sociopaths excluded, Foolz can become Jewelz and vice versa.

In this inaugural Jewelz and Foolz column I offer six Jewelz and six Foolz for your consideration (presented in alphabetical order).

Jamie Foxx

– For saying publicly, and without hemming and hawing, when asked about the news that Chris Brown was alleged to have beaten up Rihanna: "No man should ever put his hands on you. No man should ever touch you. I don't care if he's 8-years-old on the preschool/play school ground...100-years-old, it doesn't matter."

Mike Holmes

– For his inspiring work in the Canadian construction industry and beyond, that comes from a place of practicing what he preaches, “That if you are gonna do it, do it right the first time”. And, for being part of the solution, both in the present, by helping individuals, and far into the future, by training more people to do the job right, the first time.

President Barack Obama

– For taking on the disaster he inherited with a sharp mind and an open heart. It would have been easier to be President of the United States at many other moments in history. May I add to your long to do list (as us women are fond of bestowing) fixing the US banking system, including better capitalization ratios and better regulation of mortgage practices.

 

Brig. General Gary S. Patton and Gen. Carter Ham

– The story has been told a million times in my family, how my great grandfather came back from war a very different man and soon became an alcoholic. Different times, yes, but hooray for these two men for publicly acknowledging the trauma that war can do to soldiers’ minds and for encouraging their soldiers to seek out mental health assistance. It takes more balls to ask for help than not to. Do people who have offered their lives for their country deserve any less, than for us to try and help them recover from any trauma they experienced doing so?

Chesley Sullenberger III

– For reminding us, that not only is doing your job with excellence the right thing to do, but that you have no idea what miracles you can create by doing the right thing so dam well.

 

And then there were:

 

Edgar Bronfman

– For alienating fans who buy music from The Warner Music Group, via it’s war against YouTube. Seems to me, that as a business, you should be nice to the people actually buying your products. By reviewing and denying the fair use claims of YouTube users to make fan videos with the music they have bought from you, including ten to twenty second long excerpts, you are in fact paying an employee to piss off your customers, increase the chances that fans won’t by your music and may in fact steal it.

Chris Brown

– For, according to police affidavits, punching his girlfriend, biting her ear and trying to choke her until she nearly lost consciousness. Unless you get help Chris and stay away from Rihanna until after you have, you will hit her again and the next time you may be charged with murder.

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott

- For not showing Canadians, in desperate need to believe that something is being done to fix the RCMP, that you get how the Dziekanski affair has traveled from shocking to embarrassing to ridiculous. Supporting wrongdoing when you are there to make things better doesn’t make you loyal, it makes you complicit. I am not saying you shouldn’t be supporting the rank and file, but when will the integrity of every RMCP officer not afraid of staplers matter to you?

Ronald Fenty, Rihanna’s father

- For trying to be the worst father in America recently by giving his daughter Rihanna his blessing to go back to a man who beat her a few weeks earlier. “I love my daughter with whatever road she takes. I'm behind her win or lose. I will be supportive.” Celebrating your daughter returning to a man who beats her is not love. Consider for a moment what Dr. Phil McGraw, if he had daughters instead of sons, would have said and done to a boy who had beaten up his daughter three weeks earlier. Yes, that is what you should have done.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

– For precipitating a Canadian political crisis a few months ago while the worldwide economy was peering off a cliff, by sticking his finger in the eye of his political opposition. Sage Spencer, December 2008, A Canadian Coalition Government?

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir

– For expelling ten international humanitarian aid agencies from Sudan and threatening the well being of millions of Sudanese. You have already being charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, by the International Criminal Court. Haven’t you done enough already to damage your people?

Who are presently your ?

Sage Spencer

Next Blogum: April 2009