Where have all the real people gone?

Kevin Skinner, 35, comes from Mayfield, Kentucky in the far southwest corner of the state.

[Scholar]

I'm so glad you took the time to remind me of this guy's TV debut. I was awestruck as well, and you've nailed what it is about him, Russ, that makes him so unique and enviable, really.

That real-guy Skinner would grace the TV screen during Michael Jackson's posthumous omnipresence in the media this week was sheer providence. One glance at Skinner, and another at the many contorted, cosmetically-rearranged, mangled faces of the freakazoid who doesn't understand that sleeping with little boys isn't right -- that's all you need to see how perverse and valueless our media, and many in our society, have become. It begs the question - what sort of people and values do we really want to put out there in our media for kids to emulate?

I've pretty much shut down my TV except for a handful of shows. It's become a circus freak show. If the media did more to showcae people like Skinner, Andy Griffith, the Cartwrights, Captain Kirk, the Huxtables, and less to glamorize nuts like the Osbornes, the Bachlorette pretty boys, lindsay Lohan, and the other assorted weirdos on today's TV - in other words, if the qualifications for getting on TV didn't include a lifetime of drug abuse and law-breaking, an IQ below 80, a history of out-or-wedlock pregnancies, etc,- I might replace my old tube TV with a new-fangled one, get expanded cable, and maybe even patronize some TV advertisers for a change.

[I know]

The Arbors and Golf Cart Drive.

[Proud of Mayfield]

Scholar wrote:

I'm so glad you took the time to remind me of this guy's TV debut. I was awestruck as well, and you've nailed what it is about him, Russ, that makes him so unique and enviable, really.
That real-guy Skinner would grace the TV screen during Michael Jackson's posthumous omnipresence in the media this week was sheer providence. One glance at Skinner, and another at the many contorted, cosmetically-rearranged, mangled faces of the freakazoid who doesn't understand that sleeping with little boys isn't right -- that's all you need to see how perverse and valueless our media, and many in our society, have become. It begs the question - what sort of people and values do we really want to put out there in our media for kids to emulate?
I've pretty much shut down my TV except for a handful of shows. It's become a circus freak show. If the media did more to showcae people like Skinner, Andy Griffith, the Cartwrights, Captain Kirk, the Huxtables, and less to glamorize nuts like the Osbornes, the Bachlorette pretty boys, lindsay Lohan, and the other assorted weirdos on today's TV - in other words, if the qualifications for getting on TV didn't include a lifetime of drug abuse and law-breaking, an IQ below 80, a history of out-or-wedlock pregnancies, etc,- I might replace my old tube TV with a new-fangled one, get expanded cable, and maybe even patronize some TV advertisers for a change.

AMEN!!! You hit it on the head man, TV these days disgusts me. I pretty much just watch sports but even that has gotten out of hand in certain situations. Skinner is like a breath of fresh air.

[Ridge Resident]

It was an impresive and moving performance. I was pleased that it had the same impact over the airwaves as it did in the audience. I hope he can sustain the level of engaging charm and talent.

[brad jenks]

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Here is the performance. I know most people are going to find this hard to believe, but it is the true story of how the song was written.

I don't know the author but know who he is. My wife grew up in Southern California movin up here when she was about 8 years old. One of her parent's friends were a hispanic family whose mom everyone called Aunt Sally. Anyway one of Aunt Sally's daughters years ago went into the hospital with some illness that became life threatening. Her husband was a life long screw up who sat outside the room as the life saving medical care was administered to his wife. He went outside, pulled out his pen and paper, grabbed his guitar from the car and sat in the parking lot and wrote the song.

The song originally was not written in the first person with the author losing his fight "if tomorrow never comes", instead "if tomorrow never comes" and a husband loses his wife was changed by Garth Brooks for his version.

To show everyone how unfair life can be I have to tell you what happened to the song. After his wife survived the husband continued a life of drugs and going nowhere. He turned the rights of the song over to his father for an unpaid debt and the father sold the song to a company dealing in songs for.....are your ready?

$500.00

After the song became a huge, huge hit selling millions of copies the original author contacted the company, tried to get to Garth Brooks, but all for not.......

[Frank]

brad jenks wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =Lzul5rxd-i8
Here is the performance. I know most people are going to find this hard to believe, but it is the true story of how the song was written.
I don't know the author but know who he is. My wife grew up in Southern California movin up here when she was about 8 years old. One of her parent's friends were a hispanic family whose mom everyone called Aunt Sally. Anyway one of Aunt Sally's daughters years ago went into the hospital with some illness that became life threatening. Her husband was a life long screw up who sat outside the room as the life saving medical care was administered to his wife. He went outside, pulled out his pen and paper, grabbed his guitar from the car and sat in the parking lot and wrote the song.
The song originally was not written in the first person with the author losing his fight "if tomorrow never comes", instead "if tomorrow never comes" and a husband loses his wife was changed by Garth Brooks for his version.
To show everyone how unfair life can be I have to tell you what happened to the song. After his wife survived the husband continued a life of drugs and going nowhere. He turned the rights of the song over to his father for an unpaid debt and the father sold the song to a company dealing in songs for.....are your ready?
$500.00
After the song became a huge, huge hit selling millions of copies the original author contacted the company, tried to get to Garth Brooks, but all for not.......

That was fantastic, and very moving.
I'm sitting here misty eyed.
Thanks alot for posting that Brad, and for sharing tha story.

[Dode Penrod]

What a great piece of writing, Russ! I got goose bumps when I saw Kevin Skinner do his thing on "America's Got Talent" and again as I read your column. Thank you.

[wondering]

Dode Penrod wrote:

What a great piece of writing, Russ! I got goose bumps when I saw Kevin Skinner do his thing on "America's Got Talent" and again as I read your column. Thank you.

Not to get off topic here but is your last name Penrod? My husband was a Penrod and he lived in Benton Ky before we got married. He passed away in 2003.

[jaime]

It's a rare day when I can find myself in agreement with Scholar, but on the "freakazoids" and the media circus around the death of Michael Jackson, we are brethren. Here's a piece I wrote on the subject.
Michael Jackson Died For Our Sins
By
Jaime O’Neill
On June 25th, Michael Jackson was one of an estimated 154,400 people who died, from Los Angeles to Lahore, from Buenos Aires to Bhutan, from Tokyo to Timbuktoo. According to the World Health Organization, some 56 million people die each year, at the current global average. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives, all lost in death’s daily holocaust. It took the determined efforts of the Nazis to kill six million over a six year period, but plain old death kills nearly ten times that many in a single year as a matter of course. Many are carried off by time, but many more are claimed by accident, misadventure, war, disease, or hunger, life’s implacable mortal enemies.
In the hour of Michael Jackson’s death, some 6,000 of his fellow mortals also breathed their last. All of them had names, most of them were mourned as the most significant loss their loved ones would ever know. Many of them had endured desperate deprivation, had struggled for their daily necessities, had lived lives blighted by cruel and indifferent squalor . Whatever their circumstances—from high to low--their individual stories will never be known to any beyond their small circles of friends or acquaintances, nor will the forces that shaped their experience on this planet ever attract the media attention given to the death of Michael Jackson. No remotely equivalent media resources or energies will be directed to ferreting out the corruption, the special interests, and the goliath of international power-brokering that weighs so heavily on the billions who live in the ghettos, the slums, the barrios and favelas of this world. The fourth estate has been transformed into a sideshow, an entertainment medium, yet another method of distracting attention away from any or every thing that an informed electorate might be able to do something about. News programs aren’t called “shows” without reason.
In the days following June 25th, it would have been possible to believe that all human endeavor had been suspended—that no laws were being passed, no crimes were committed, nothing of importance transpired. None of the machinations the news media is charged with noting were being noted. In effect, so far as the electronic news media were concerned, the world stopped to let Michael Jackson off.

[jaime]

We are trivialized by such media coverage, infantilized and made stupid while being kept ignorant of things that matter. Keith Olberman nattered on for over an hour on the subject of Michael Jackson, Wolf Blitzer was heard to say “we all grew up on his music,” forgetting even his own age and personal history in the hysteria, and while health care reforms got whittled away by a corrupted congress, George Will and George Stephanopoulis spent ten minutes on a Sunday morning public events show discussing whether or not the Michael Jackson coverage has been excessive.
The coverage was not excessive; it was insane. When our grandchildren come to face the scourges that are building for their futures—overpopulation, pollution, global warming, dying oceans—they will look back at us and wonder who left the inmates in charge of the asylum. They will wonder at our sense of priority and importance, and they will find a symbol for all that ailed us in “the King of Pop,” a cartoonish figure with a white glove, whitened skin and a very dark side who we deemed to be more important than the host of problems from which we sought the most mindless diversion.
Today, more than 150,000 of our fellow human beings will slip on over to the other side, their passing unheralded and unregarded by all but a few. Those who don’t die will consult the news to see if anyone who truly mattered found themselves among the dead.

[jaime]

Rare is the day I agree with Scholar, but we share the same reaction to the freakazoid collection gathered for the Jackson "memorial," and the media insanity. This is a piece I wrote on the subject, for those who share the sense that the Jackson thing was waaaaay beyond overblown.

Michael Jackson Died For Our Sins

On June 25th, Michael Jackson was one of an estimated 154,400 people who died, from Los Angeles to Lahore, from Buenos Aires to Bhutan, from Tokyo to Timbuktoo. According to the World Health Organization, some 56 million people die each year, at the current global average. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives, all lost in death’s daily holocaust. It took the determined efforts of the Nazis to kill six million over a six year period, but plain old death kills nearly ten times that many in a single year as a matter of course. Many are carried off by time, but many more are claimed by accident, misadventure, war, disease, or hunger, life’s implacable mortal enemies.
In the hour of Michael Jackson’s death, some 6,000 of his fellow mortals also breathed their last. All of them had names, most of them were mourned as the most significant loss their loved ones would ever know. Many of them had endured desperate deprivation, had struggled for their daily necessities, had lived lives blighted by cruel and indifferent squalor . Whatever their circumstances—from high to low--their individual stories will never be known to any beyond their small circles of friends or acquaintances, nor will the forces that shaped their experience on this planet ever attract the media attention given to the death of Michael Jackson. No remotely equivalent media resources or energies will be directed to ferreting out the corruption, the special interests, and the goliath of international power-brokering that weighs so heavily on the billions who live in the ghettos, the slums, the barrios and favelas of this world. The fourth estate has been transformed into a sideshow, an entertainment medium, yet another method of distracting attention away from any or every thing that an informed electorate might be able to do something about. News programs aren’t called “shows” without reason.
In the days following June 25th, it would have been possible to believe that all human endeavor had been suspended—that no laws were being passed, no crimes were committed, nothing of importance transpired. None of the machinations the news media is charged with noting were being noted. In effect, so far as the electronic news media were concerned, the world stopped to let Michael Jackson off.

(cntinued up on Post 9)

[jaime]

Double posted. Sorry, though I don't know how that happened.

[Answer]

The most profound reading I have done on the subject. Thank You.

[Dode Penrod]

wondering wrote:

<quoted text>
Not to get off topic here but is your last name Penrod? My husband was a Penrod and he lived in Benton Ky before we got married. He passed away in 2003.

Hi "wondering" Penrod....

Yes, I'm from the Ohio Penrod clan and have done quite a bit of research into our ancestry. Tell me your husband's given name and date of birth, as well as his parents' names if you can and I'll look him up. Most of the Penrods started out in Fredericksberg, MD and then migrated to Somerset County, PA. From there they went to Kentucky, Ohio and west. There is a town in Kentucky named Penrod which you probably know about.(Don't let my name fool you. I'm female, never married, so I'm still keeping my original surname.) Let me hear from you.

[Fan]

Does anyone there at Mayfield actually know Kevin Skinner.??

[Fan]

He seems like such a sweet guy

[Fan]

I loved it when all the judges and audience was laughing at him....looks whos laughing now...this is a good point on why not to judge people just because they are not wearing 200.00 pair of boots, or 100.00 pair of jeans. And talks with a southern draw...At least his clothes were clean. He is more real than the judges

[wondering]

Dode Penrod wrote:

<quoted text>
Hi "wondering" Penrod....
Yes, I'm from the Ohio Penrod clan and have done quite a bit of research into our ancestry. Tell me your husband's given name and date of birth, as well as his parents' names if you can and I'll look him up. Most of the Penrods started out in Fredericksberg, MD and then migrated to Somerset County, PA. From there they went to Kentucky, Ohio and west. There is a town in Kentucky named Penrod which you probably know about.(Don't let my name fool you. I'm female, never married, so I'm still keeping my original surname.) Let me hear from you.

My husbands name was Mark Penrod and he passed away in 2003.

[hot tamale]

wondering wrote:

<quoted text>
My husbands name was Mark Penrod and he passed away in 2003.

i knew a chad penrod long ago,bless his heart he died in a car wreck in the 90's at a young age.

[wykkan]

brad jenks wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =Lzul5rxd-i8
Here is the performance. I know most people are going to find this hard to believe, but it is the true story of how the song was written.
I don't know the author but know who he is. My wife grew up in Southern California movin up here when she was about 8 years old. One of her parent's friends were a hispanic family whose mom everyone called Aunt Sally. Anyway one of Aunt Sally's daughters years ago went into the hospital with some illness that became life threatening. Her husband was a life long screw up who sat outside the room as the life saving medical care was administered to his wife. He went outside, pulled out his pen and paper, grabbed his guitar from the car and sat in the parking lot and wrote the song.
The song originally was not written in the first person with the author losing his fight "if tomorrow never comes", instead "if tomorrow never comes" and a husband loses his wife was changed by Garth Brooks for his version.
To show everyone how unfair life can be I have to tell you what happened to the song. After his wife survived the husband continued a life of drugs and going nowhere. He turned the rights of the song over to his father for an unpaid debt and the father sold the song to a company dealing in songs for.....are your ready?
$500.00
After the song became a huge, huge hit selling millions of copies the original author contacted the company, tried to get to Garth Brooks, but all for not.......

i believe it. i've sen alot of people do alot of stupid things for drugs and money.it's really sad that he never straightened out his life.you'd think he would have after his wife's near death experience,but i'm glad she survived,tho.