TRANSKRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
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Shalom friends.
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Bob here.
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If I asked you how to spell the word for the category of red and blue and green and yellow, etc., well if you lived in the United States you'd spell it C O L O R.
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If you lived in the UK or Australia, you'd spell it with a U, that is C-O-L-O-U-R.
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Oh, which is right.
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Both, of course, not because I'm a politician, nor am I unwilling to call out wrong when I see it.
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It's just that there are factors which make color correct or color with a U correct, most notably National Convention.
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What about prayer?
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If I asked you to say a prayer and you were a Catholic or an Orthodox Jew, you might ask me which prayer I was soliciting and look for a prayer book.
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If you were a Pentecostal, I would have to ask you to pray, not say a prayer, and you would burst into spontaneous and convincing prayers.
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It's all about convention, that is, style you have learned and practiced in communal situations.
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I was raised to open doors for females of any age and at any time.
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I don't always do that, but it is in my practice, it's convention.
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There's nothing written in the US or Australian Constitution about this, but it's simply etiquette and conventional practice.
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Today I flew from Australia to the United States, and as is my custom, I wore a business suit.
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When I was eleven, I took my first flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City and did not wear a suit.
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But most of the men wore at least a sport coat and many wore ties on that plane.
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That was the convention of the day, and I still maintain that in these days.
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I suppose we could use the term etiquette or common practice.
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Even the word custom could define convention.
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So I had to look it up.
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The Oxford English Dictionary says convention is, quote, a large meeting of professionals or political party members.
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It also refers to a widely accepted custom, behavior, or method, social convention, or an official formal agreement between countries or leaders.
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It signifies traditional expected standards of behavior.
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I like that.
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Convention is the normal.
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Counterculture is abnormal.
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There is a time and a place for breaking free of convention.
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Actually, I was thinking about government and the people, and when was it in the US that mistrust and disregard took on a new normal, rather than the convention of respect given, not necessarily earned, it was just given.
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I'm sure there are ideas others have floated, but the 1960s didn't start with the gyrating hips of Elvis or the Fab Four from Liverpool.
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For Americans, I think convention was tossed out the window in January 1961, when John F.
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Kennedy, the youngest person ever elected to the presidency, did not wear his top hat in the inaugural parade.
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He did wear it as he and the others moved from the White House to the ceremony of the inauguration.
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You see, wearing the top hat was the norm, it was the custom, the convention.
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When JFK tossed it aside more metaphorically, he tossed away the moorings that kept the presidency what it was to have been and what George Washington helped make it to be.
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After that momentous toss, it's no wonder that just eleven years later the shock waves hit the world in Watergate scandal and the commensurate resignation of Spiro Agnew as vice president and Richard Nixon as president?
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Am I saying that Kennedy removing his hat was the same or even the beginning of the break-ins at the Watergate Hotel and the downward spiraling lies of the leadership through the campaign of 1972?
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Am I saying that Bill Clinton, the most notable and visible child of the 60s, who became president later followed suit by removing his trousers while Kennedy only removed his hat?
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I guess what I'm comfortable saying is that convention is not all bad.
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And sometimes traditions keep us rather than we keep traditions.
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How different the world would be if we would and could trust our leaders today.
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If what they said and did was honorable and kind.
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Maybe like in the Aussie classic The Castle, I'm hearing the phrase Telamy's dreamin'.
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Turn a new leaf, overturn convention when it makes the world a better place, not when it simply suits your fancy or your own custom of disregard.