Saturday June 13 2020
Procter & Gamble, of which I am an alumni, has a well-moderated Facebook group for retirees and others who have left the company while in good standing. It’s a closed group and volunteer-run and, as these things go, has two moderators. With over 2,200 members of the Life After P&G Facebook group, it’s a way to share thoughts and questions with other former Proctoids from all over the world. Lots of info sharing in a professionally maintained manner that we would expect from an elite group such as ourselves *exaggerated throat clearing*.
By the way, if you overhear a Midwesterner pronounce “process” with a long ō, they’re prolly a Proctoid. I just know this. I can’t explain it.
Alternatively, there is another closed group that was created for Life After P&Gers in the Cincinnati region. This is a whole nuther animal. It’s an individual who created it and she alone moderates the conversations. What could have been a good thing, is actually not even close. She posts whatever message she wants and will deny others to share their thoughts if they dare to contradict with hers.
This is merely one more example of that bloated and pale underbelly that is social media, but gosh darn it, I’m frustrated in how it affects me. While I would love a well-moderated exchange of ideas within my regional P&G family, this is not a safe place to do so. This Facebook page moderator tamps down anything she doesn’t like, and doubles-down when called out on it. With only less than 350 followers, I haven’t exited the group because I’m curious to see how this progresses.
That’s with a long ō, you know…prōgresses.
In the wake of Dr. Amy Acton’s resignation, I suppose I’m still a bit sensitive to those who were unable to see her vision of lowering our risk of mass infection. So when this Life After P&G Cincinnati page moderator decided to post a negative message about Dr. Acton, my hackles were raised. And when she closed off commenting, I felt the first sparks of anger.
How dare she post something so inflammatory and deny anyone the right of rebuttal? With the power of social media, that’s how. It’s her FB page and anybody with an account can make a page of whatever their mood of the day guides them to. Heck, I made one just about my dogs. She can title it anything she wants, while we have the choice of following or not. The Consumer Goods deity of P&G doesn’t care about challenging such small things.
So on her FB page she posted a story from a militant Christian organization that purports to have an exposé of Dr. Amy Action, including an interview with her estranged mother that challenges what Dr. Action has shared about her childhood. I do look for two sides of a story when it’s available, but really this other side has flies buzzing over the shit log of it.
Operation Rescue has an agenda, as all political groups do. Name dropping is just part of their plan for greater public exposure. OP is pro-life, Amy Acton is pro-choice. Their interview of Dr. Acton’s mother is suspect if only for its out-of-the-park hyperbole. At minimum, it’s hearsay. At best, well, it’s the same. One person’s word against another’s.
At its worst, however, it merely supports where the reader’s loyalty lies.
Both agree, Dr. Acton and her mother, that they haven’t seen each other since the court appearance regarding Dr. Acton’s claims of sexual abuse by a step-father. But as the mother watches Dr. Acton on her daily COVID updates, she’s concerned about how she “talks with a child’s voice” and worries about her mental health. Operation Rescue builds on this to make claims that Dr. Acton could indeed be mentally unstable and making decisions based on the delusions of a madwoman.
There’s more, because there’s always more, but I don’t want to commit any more head space to it.
One part of this that I don’t understand is that the mother proclaims herself as a Baptist. She says that it’s upon this religious belief that she bases her life decisions upon. While Amy Acton is a practicing Jew, my guess is that she converted later in life. I haven’t come across anything that explains this. But I admit, I haven’t looked that hard. Her choice of faith doesn’t really matter in all of this, except for considering her detractors who are tossing out the slurs like it’s what’s driving her decisions to “destroy their lives.”
The problem is, facts are boring, right? Amy Acton claims to have lived in twelve homes in eighteen years, all in abject poverty. Her mother says this is untrue, it was only seven homes. Amy says she was sexually abused by her stepfather. Her mother says he was accused by a daughter of another marriage and that’s where Amy got her idea from. Amy was removed from her mother’s home to live with her biological father, where she thrived and was set off on the path for a career as a doctor. This biological father is the same man her mother says was physically abusive.
She says, she says. Is that what perks our ears, a virtual cat fight?
Meanwhile, outside of this digital drama, there was a protest rally here in our small town yesterday. Some called it a memorial march, intended to recognize a young woman local to our area who was shot a few months ago. The shooter remains unidentified to this day. The victim was a student of Northmont and the Montgomery County Career Technology Center. Her friends used her name as a reason for the march along Union Boulevard and ending in front of our Englewood Government Center.
Once there, many had signs with negative statements against the police force and chanted “Hands raised! Don’t Shoot!” Which is not exactly a problem in our little burg. But one of the many mantras used for Black Lives Matter, so this was another opportunity to keep the momentum going.
Unlike the protests in downtown Dayton, this one ended peacefully.
Donnatopia 