CBS' Big Brother: The Hardy Ames Hill National Monument

I originally posted "The Hardy Ames Hill National Monument" on September 15, 2009 on the following social networking site: http://teebeedee.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-hardy-ames-hill-national

Since its inception in the year 2000 the CBS TV reality series Big Brother has been hosted by Julie Chen, who works for CBS News and is married to CBS President, Les Moonves.  Vernon Jordan has ties to CBS News.  Come to think of it, Vernon Jordan has ties to President Obama, who is also referenced in the following post.  But then, Vernon Jordan has ties to everybody!

Hardy Ames Hill, a native of York, Pennsylvania, was a contestant on the CBS reality series, Big Brother 2, hosted by Julie Chen, during the summer of 2001: the year the world changed. Hardy distinguished himself as a young man with integrity -- someone you would want for a friend. I thought he was a truly decent person, and definitely the finest person to participate in the Big Brother series since its inception in the year 2000.

Last Sunday night I watched the season finale of this summer's Big Brother. I thought of Hardy Ames Hill and then the following line from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, came to mind:

"They're a rotten crowd," . . . "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."

That was the second time that I thought of that line recently. It also came to mind last week when President Obama was heckled by a third-rate congressman during the President's address to Congress.

http://teebeedee.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-second-shouter-theory

Be that as it may.

I first read The Great Gatsby in my first year of college, at Penn State. That was during the spring semester, 1972, when I was 18 years old. What you don't know when you're 18 is that you'll be 18 for the rest of your life. The English instructor was a young woman named Ellen Furman. I remember that we also read William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in that English course. Ellen Furman introduced me to Faulkner. I think she still teaches at Penn State Abington, outside of Philadelphia.

Excerpt from Big Brother 2: "You fucked with the wrong bull, I'm telling you.  You fucked with the wrong bull."