Mr. Angel: A tender tale tells everyone the nature of great love

Carol Forsloff---Loneliness, despair, poverty happen to many people in life with images we see so often in almost every area of the world, now captured by a song in ways that make us feel we are that rejected individual whose special friend embraces without judgment and shows just what love might bring to take the pain away. 

The shiny golden retriever seems to glow with joy, that special friend that can greet an old man who goes home to an empty, brooding, dark and chilly place. The dog is there as a safe, soft corner and looks with eyes that see with trust and sympathy.  We feel this as the song unfolds, and as we do, the fears, the hurts begin to fade with time, just as we imagine it was for the old man whose dog became the everything that made his life worthwhile.

Employer has legal responsibility when sexual harassment extends to social media

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Gordon Matilla---Significant torment develops from sexual harassment, an emotionally-charged act. Social media further complicates matters and allows the problem to spread into wider and wider areas, therefore causing more widespread and intense abuse.  In many cases, as it extends the workplace, employers can be liable for some of what happens..

Social media provides new outlets for workplace interactions to occur, some of which can be negative and harmful. As of March 2013, there were more than one billion active Facebook users. Nearly 700 million of these people post at least once daily. With so much interaction, the workplace boundaries have become blurred. It should also be noted that employers can be held liable for some of these problems of sexual harassment..

What is sexual harassment? Generally, if an individual, or a group of people, exhibit unwelcomed sexual behavior towards another, it constitutes sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is not confined to one specific act. But can include a number of behaviors, that include, but are not limited to, the following:

- suggestive behavior
- sexual jokes or questions
- physical contact
- offensive gestures

Sexual harassment does not have to be explicitly sexual in nature. The conduct must simply be directed toward the targeted individual because of his or her gender. Sexual harassment is gender neutral in the sense men can harass women and women can harass men, and members of the same sex can sexually harass one another.


An attorney tells us there are two types of sexual harassment, quid pro quo and hostile work environment. Quid pro quo sexual harassment occurs when an employer demands sexual favors from a subordinate under the threat of job-related consequences, such as job-retention, promotion, or performance reviews. Hostile work environment sexual harassment involves situations where the victim's employer(s) or coworker(s) acts in such a way that the inescapability of their improper conduct makes the victim feel uncomfortable because of his or her sex, thus making the work environment "hostile." This commonly occurs as the result from ongoing physical contact or inappropriate comments.

Social media has expanded the confines of the workplace and home boundaries, so a given employer must realize employees are digitally connected. Therefore an employer can be held responsible if an employee is being harassed by a coworker whether in the office or in the digital world.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allow sexual harassment, as employees have the tools to post offensive words or pictures about one another. They can also be involved in cyber-bullying. An employer has the duty to address this problem when it occurs.

Employers can request information regarding their employees' social media accounts if a sexual harassment claim is made. Employers can't ask for access to social media accounts for employment purposes but does have the right to act wisely in stopping sexual harassment.

Bullying: the cycle of abuse found in birds and humans

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Carol Forsloff - Larry ran home from school with six boys chasing, egged on by one of the louder, more aggressive of the boys, the leader and the bully whose popularity attracts power, as happens not just in schoolyards but in life and politics, a tactic that is used to do great harm to individuals and communities.

A new science study on birds reveals that not just humans grow up to be bullies if they have been victims themselves. The finding that abused Nazca bird babies become victimizers later on  verifies the social science research that has found the cycle of abuse in humans means the child who is bullied and abused is likely to victimize his/her own children.

The bully is often an anxious, fearful individual whose poor self concept is elevated by exerting control over others. The bully boy finds chasing Larry a way to secure a following, to ensure he has a base to make pronouncements after all. The crowd of children he attracts finds being part of the bully’s gang keeps any of them from becoming a target, as the “in group” members would thought of as safe.

People give power to bullies because of their own fears. They see how the bully exercises power and worry they may be next. The bully’s target particularly lives in fear because he or she never knows when and how pain will be delivered.

While many people think of bullies only at work and at school, these individuals are everywhere, using a variety of mechanisms to control. For some, a terrible silence added to the look of contempt can hurt every bit as words hurled in high decibels across a playground. Barbara Coloroso tells us in “The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander, “Bullying is not about anger . It is not a conflict to be resolved, it’s about contempt –a powerful feeling of dislike toward someone considered to be worthless, inferior or undeserving of respect. Contempt comes with three apparent psychological advantages that allow kids to harm others without feeling empathy, compassion, or shame. These are: a sense of entitlement, that they have the right to hurt or control others; an intolerance towards difference; and a freedom to exclude, bar, isolate, and segregate others.”

Multiplied by many, bullies can become a group, a powerful group with members attracted to the controlled sureness of the leaders, the aggressive speech, and the resolve to be one of the powerful in association with the bully to avoid becoming a target. This can help form extreme political parties or individuals who attract followers who act out what some interpret as rage, sometimes in violent ways.

The bully is therefore a Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, or the neighbor, and to end the behavior, experts tell us, adults in authority and peers need to get involved. In other words, it takes a village to end bullying, so that people become aware of its harm to communities and to themselves.