OPEN FORUM: SLAP

By DELMAR LEATHAM

Over the years, the film industry has institutionalized the ‘SLAP.’ Let’s just take a look at one of those films: Gone With The Wind. This film is full of slapping. Slapping men, slapping slaves, slapping children, slapping animals. No one is safe from the slaps of Scarlett O’Hara.

You’re probably wondering why the movie has so much slapping? Well, it’s because Scarlet is crazy. She is self-absorbed, in love with her looks and unaware of the world around her. Most men fawned over her; that is until she meets Rhett Butler.

Rhett is definitely the most perfect man for Scarlett and one of the few that could match her in arrogance and cockiness. But even he doesn’t quite dodge the slapping bullet. However, the second time he sees her winding up for a blow, he ducks, sending her tumbling down their ridiculously high staircase.

There’s only one thing better than the slapping in this movie. It’s her personal assistant (slave) Mammy! She has the tough job of identifying the truth to crazy Scarlett. Most importantly, she’s one of the few people who never gets slapped.

I for one have misunderstood the term ‘slap.’ The company that I worked for, occasionally needed to change its software provider. One of those changes required two of the employees to go to Texas for training. I thought I heard the trainer say that their office was in the back of a store called “The Slap and Tickle.” It sounds like a boutique you would find on the Las Vegas strip or on an episode of the Academy Awards.

Realizing I must have heard the name wrong I thought maybe they meant Slap and Tackle. It too would be an appropriate street vendor cart outside the Academy Awards.

When the two people from our office returned from their training, they informed me that the name of the store was actually “The Snack and Tackle.” A shop that is completely at home in Texas. My misunderstanding of the word slap had been corrected.

While it is never OK to slap another person, it seems even more reprehensible to make fun of people with handicaps or serious illnesses. I was taught to laugh with people not at people. When did it become fashionable to say something cruel about someone and then say, “I was only joking?” If someone says they were only joking they are trying to avoid the consequences of their actions.

The Academy of Motion Pictures should punish with equal zeal those persons making crude remarks from the podium as well as the crude behavior of audience members. Two wrongs don’t make a right. There are consequences to your actions. Not everything is a joke. You cannot shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

The following quote is attributed to John Wayne. “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted and I won’t be laid hands on. I don’t do this to others and I require the same from them.”

I believe Will Smith quit the Academy and then the Academy expelled him. I’m reminded of the old saying “You’re fired and the reply: “You can’t fire me I quit.” At the end of the day movies are just entertainment and not a tutorial on how to live our lives.

On a lighter note, while I was at the Fair a young lady in the community, who had read my last article about eliminating gophers, related to me her trials with the infamous rodent.

It seems that she had tried many of the solutions I mentioned in my article. Her new twist on the old problem was poison gopher treats. She would roll a poison pellet in peanut butter and coat them with oatmeal. Then she placed them in the fridge in a special container marked with skull and crossbones. Once they were hardened, she placed them in the gopher burrows and for a few weeks her backyard was free of the pests. They soon returned.

The decision was made to dig up the entire backyard and put in a pool. The gophers are now lounging poolside with their children and are waiting for the next round of gopher treats.

Those gophers can hardly wait for the movie of their lives to come out. I wonder which actor will receive the Oscar for the best performance as a slap-happy gopher? I am easily entertained.