Rant #2,522: Goodbye

I will bet that you thought that I was going to talk about the deaths during the past few days of Kirk Douglas, Robert Conrad and Orson Bean with a title like that.

I guess I could. All of them touched me in certain ways as actors, and each was unique in his own way.

Douglas was the last of the larger-than-life movie stars--akin to John Wayne and Charlton Heston--and his dozens of films are testament to the fact that he was an excellent actor, able to play any role with aplomb. Douglas will always be remembered for "Spartacus," but he made so many other good movies over a 70-year career that it is difficult to pick another one out of the bunch as his second best film.

And in later years, he embraced his Jewish faith, even through physical problems linked to old age. He died at 103, and if anyone lived the life, it was Douglas.

Conrad lived the life on a different level. He was known as one of Hollywood's most head-strong actors, and this characteristic pulsed through his work on television, where he became one of the medium's brightest stars in the 1960s with "The Wild Wild West," where he played a James Bondish-like character in the Old West.

He went on to other series, where he wouldn't take no for an answer, and that led to a lot of frayed nerves of TV executives trying to deal with him. But he always seemed to win out.He knew who he was, and even did a battery commercial which kind of made fun of that head-strong behavior that made him popular with the public.

Bean was on another level, altogether, from both Douglas and Conrad. Some could say that Bean was the first flower child of the Hollywood generation that he came from, with his heads in the clouds at all times.

He appeared on every talk show and game show that there was in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and he never really put the focus on himself, but rather, on what he was talking about, whatever that was at the time. I remember a classic "Tonight Show" where he spoke about nothing more than his encounter with a butterfly, and you could see Johnny Carson simply going with this and wherever it was going. Bean was a master storyteller, and he could seemingly speak about any subject, to, I bet, the chagrin of his agent, who would have rather he promoted his latest work than talk about butterflies.

I also wanted to talk about another death, and this death is really as important as those of Douglas, Conrad and Bean, even though it involved not a human being, but a tenet of our very being as citizens of the United States.

No, it is not a real death, but to me, it epitomizes why the country is so polarized today, and why people cannot speak their mind on either side of the equation.

I am a Faebook friend of someone I worked with many years ago. This is a really nice person, extremely intelligent and well versed.

The person put up a post praising Mitt Romney for his decision to not back President Trump during the Senate hearings on impeachment, the only Republican who sided with the Democrats in the Senate.

Romney exercised his own free speech during these hearings, and that is fine. It didn't lead to impeachment, but he spoke his mind and that was that.

The person I am talking about put up a message praising Romney, stating that if he ran for president, he would get the poster's vote.

That is all fine and good. That is an opinion that I am sure many would agree with ... but the problem is that many would also not agree with that belief, and one of those people is me.

I wrote a reply. I don't believe it was nasty in tone, just that I disagreed with what the poster said.

Well, no sooner did I put up the message that it was taken down, as was the original post.

The poster was kind enough to say that pretty much it was not worth the poster's time to keep it up for others to answer, so the entire post--the original that the poster put up and my reply--was removed from Facebook.

I told the poster that it was their post, they could do what they want, but I do believe that if you put up a post on a public forum like Facebook, you have to expect replies, both agreeing with what you said and also, disagreeing with what you said.

The poster thanked me for being so civil in their removal of the post, and that was that.

Sure, on post on Facebook doesn't change the world, but with the removal of the post, our right to free speech has been lessened a notch once again.

I do not understand why in the world we live in, people cannot have differing opinions, be free to air them, and agree to disagree on certain topics.

I guess it all boils down to the same thing: if you put up a post on Facebook, or any such public forum, expect people to both agree and disagree with you.

What a boring world we would live in if everyone agreed with everybody on everything.

And if you do not want such a reaction, never put up anything about politics and religion i such a public forum.

Romney exercised his own free speech by his actions, and to me, that is what free speech is about, whether you agree or disagree with what he said.

The poster exercised their free speech by putting up this post, and the poster has every right to believe what they want to believe.

And I had a right to answer to that post, where I exercised my right to free speech by disagreeing with the poster's belief--and I did it in a nice way, no four letter words, no head-banging retribution, just a response in solid English.

Yes, Douglas, Conrad and Bean physically passed away during the past few days, but the right to free speech is drifting away at a slower rate, and it is getting to a point where the right to have your own opinion--and to air that opinion--might be nothing but a memory one day soon.

And that bothers me as much as the deaths of these actors does, maybe even more so.