This day April 21, 2021, My Man–who sold me My Pillow–starts Frank, his version of Twitter— the social media gripe box President Trump used to give New York Times political reporters something to write about.
Mike Lindell says he wants ‘clean speech’ and ‘won’t allow foul language or threats of violence’ on Frank.
If that had been all the rules you had to follow in my high school junior year, Bill Fraser and I might have won the Texas state debate championship.
World War 2 was still being fought when Bill and I won regional and went to the state debate championships in Austin. Instead of separating boy and girl debaters, that year they mixed the sexes. Speech teachers in Austin, our judges, were three women.
In the first round we West Texans were pitted against two girls from Alice High School, located in the Rio Grande Valley area. We were pretty confident. I had won our district in debate the year before. Bill would win state one-act play honors playing the narrator in Our Town, go on to be a Baptist preacher. We felt we were born to orate and debate.
When the ‘rejoinder’ came, I felt a little levity would help before I destroyed the girl’s position. I started,
“…these Lilies of the Valley have told you….”
The three women judges started making notes on their critique sheets.
Bill and I canceled our Austin tourist court reservation. Started driving back to Abilene that afternoon.
Photo by James Steidl at Shutterstock
