{"id":258,"date":"2013-05-07T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/07\/friend-isnt-a-throwaway-word"},"modified":"2013-05-07T12:49:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T12:49:00","slug":"friend-isnt-a-throwaway-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Friend\u2019 isn\u2019t a throwaway word"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Politics \u2013 and chiefly its practitioners \u2013 tend to cheapen certain words and even occasionally values.<\/p>\n<p>Take the word \u201cfriend,\u201d for example.<\/p>\n<p>How many times has one heard the word \u201cfriend\u201d used to describe a congressional colleague when the person who tosses the word out likely cannot stand the sight of the person who he or she has just described.<\/p>\n<p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may have done it the other day in talking about Republican colleague Ted Cruz of Texas.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/video\/senate\/298051-reid-calls-cruz-a-schoolyard-bully\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/video\/senate\/298051-reid-calls-cruz-a-schoolyard-bully\">http:\/\/thehill.com\/video\/senate\/298051-reid-calls-cruz-a-schoolyard-bully<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The use of that word in such a seemingly cavalier fashion bugs the daylights out of me.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know either of these two men, although I\u2019ve read enough about them over the years to know plenty about them. Maybe they\u2019re best pals, but I rather doubt it. Reid tossed the \u201cfriend\u201d label at Cruz while saying on the Senate floor that the freshman Texas senator acts like a \u201cschoolyard bully\u201d on budget matters. <\/p>\n<p>Over my more than six decades on this Earth, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I can call \u201cfriend.\u201d I have been careful for many years not to use the word to describe individuals with whom I have friendly relationships but who don\u2019t qualify as \u201cfriend.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>How do I describe a friend? He or she is someone \u2013 other than a spouse of a member of your immediate family \u2013 to whom you can say anything. These are individuals who you love unconditionally and who are there for you through thick and thin. Two of the individuals on my short list of friends go back with me a very long time; one of them goes back to the seventh grade.<\/p>\n<p>So when I hear the word \u201cfriend\u201d thrown around the way Harry Reid did on the Senate floor, I just shrug and maybe chuckle to myself. He\u2019s not telling the truth.\u00a0 He has cheapened a once-valuable word.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politics \u2013 and chiefly its practitioners \u2013 tend to cheapen certain words and even occasionally values. Take the word \u201cfriend,\u201d for example. How many times has one heard the word \u201cfriend\u201d used to describe a congressional colleague when the person who tosses the word out likely cannot stand the sight of the person who he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=258\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u2018Friend\u2019 isn\u2019t a throwaway word<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}