Thursday, March 5, 2009

I might even change my mind about Rosie O'Donnell

I've not been a fan of Rosie O'Donnell ever. I thought nothing of her drama or comedic roles and less than nothing about her political and social rantings and positions. I loved it when the View finally axed her, when her magazine folded and her talk show died. I've had it in for her ever since she gave Tom Selleck a hard time over firearms when he was her guest years ago.
HOWEVER, I was impressed and touched by her performance in the TV movie America, where she played a psychiatrist working with foster group home kids. I don't know and don't care to look it up, but I assume she was a driving force behind the movie as opposed to a mere actress in it. Going with that assumption, I applaud what she did, and the statement she and the movie made. The treatment of foster kids in this society is a terrible unspoken scandal. So many either end up in disastrous foster homes, or no homes at all, save for so-called group homes. Lets call a spade a spade here. There are no such things as group homes. They are what they always were before the term group home was coined - they are orphanages! ORPHANAGES!!!!!!!!
How many of you entered the world on your own at 18 having aged out of the orphanage system? What safe harbor or base do these poor souls possess when they turn 18? I suppose the more together ones can throw themselves right into the military and bootstrap their way through adulthood from there, but not every kid raised in a normal family is that together at 18 - how much more so the kids who've essentially been orphaned, possibly for years and years?
Society needs, whether fed, state or local funded, to either provide, or strongly encourage and help facilitate privately, some kind of safe harbor for such kids. Perhaps do more to recruit sponsors and mentors for them, even if those folks are not able to actually take them in full time as family.
I don't have the answer, but getting such answers is the business of those we put in office. This could happen to any of your kids, God forbid, should something happen to any of you.
As for Rosie O'Donnell, I can appreciate one major value folks like her provide society. She's like a perpetually angry avenging angel. She's continuously pissed off about stuff and unfortunately in our society, those tend to be the only knids of people that get things done or get bad situations publicized.

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