Lifestyles of the poor and nameless

A recent email subject line said "Usher admits he's bisexual". I opened the email and attached was a sound file of a radio station's commentary on Usher's "coming out". According to the announcer, Usher posted a letter on his website stating that he was "coming out". The announcer speculated that someone might have been about to blackmail Usher, so Usher decided to get the jump on them. The sound segment was about 3 minutes long.

For some reason, this sounded fishy to me, so I did a quick Google search. Pretty soon I came up with a website which stated that the whole thing was an April Fool's Day "hoax". I wouldn't call this a HOAX. I'd call it SLANDER and a possible lawsuit.

Recalling my best friend's April Fool's Day "hoax" in which he claimed to have been diagnosed with cancer, I have to wonder how society became so desensitized that we must stoop to these levels of insensitivity for a "joke".

I wonder if the announcer would have been amused if someone made statements about HIS sexuality and broadcast them on the airwaves.

I don't know the origins of April Fool's Day, but when I learned about it in elementary school, the jokes were simple: put a buzzer in your hand and shock someone when you shake hands with them; put a fake animal on your friend's desk; "hey look over there!....ha ha, made you look"

I understand that as we mature, our sense of humor becomes more sophisticated....but why should that sophistication give way to insensitivity?

As far as I see, nothing good comes from it. Well, unless you're Ashton Kutcher and you can make millions by creating a show like Punk'd. If we spent as much energy doing positive things as we do on making retarded April Fool's Day jokes, I think something really big could happen.

If that radio host had used the 3 minutes of air time plus the planning time to send out a positive message...;

if my friend had spent the hour and a half involved in his ridiculouscancer "prank" to read to his little nephew...;

if Star & Bucwild would just shut up in the morning....lol. Or maybeuse some of their morning airtime to uplift and encourage peopleinstead of talking all that destructive, "hateration" garbage...

who knows what could happen.

So that's my $.02: Next April Fool's Day, do something constructive and positive for the people around you.