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A viral photo of Kellyanne Conway sparks a debate about respect in the Oval Office.

How Kellyanne Conway sits on a couch shouldn't matter.

"Does Seeing President Obama's Foot on the Oval Office Desk Make Your Blood Boil?" reads a September 2013 headline at The Blaze, Glenn Beck's website.

Conservative sites like Twitchy, Drudge Report, and others joined in, with some accusing Barack Obama of desecrating the Resolute desk. In many conservative circles, this photo was seen as proof that Obama didn't have respect for the Oval Office. As Joe Biden would have said, it was a BFD.

Official White House photo by Pete Souza.


On Monday, a photo of President Donald Trump's adviser, Kellyanne Conway, sitting with her feet on one of the office's couches sparked its own bit of decorum-related controversy.

And yeah, while putting your feet (and shoes) on a couch is something generally frowned upon by parents nationwide (sorry, Mom), is it really that important?

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP.

There's a lot of hypocrisy and selective outrage in the world of partisan politics. There's nothing new about that, and it's (unfortunately) not going away anytime soon.

Some of the same people who saw fault with Obama's foot on the desk had no problem when past presidents put their feet on the desk and have no problem with Conway putting her feet on the couch.

President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Photo by Carol T. Powers/picture-alliance/dpa/AP.

On the flip side, people who rushed to defend Obama's right to put his feet on the desk are indignant over the photo of Conway on the couch.

So what's this really about? Is the outrage really about Oval Office decorum?

No. Of course not. How Obama or Trump or Bush or Conway choose to sit in the Oval Office is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Context, however, does matter. A lot of the outrage over Conway's photo didn't stem solely from the fact that she had her feet on the couch but the situation in which she did it. As part of an administration with a less-than-stellar record on race and open support from white nationalists, maybe the president's meeting with leaders of some of the nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities wasn't the ideal occasion for Conway to strike an informal pose.

But maybe instead of getting worked up about the little things — like whether or not an elected official wears an American flag pin or what type of food they eat (Obama's "fancy burger" or Trump's well-done steak with ketchup), maybe we should focus our energy on some of the other things that happen behind those closed doors.

Let's take some of the energy we put into being shocked about the White House furniture and refocus it on the bills and executive orders being signed by the president.

Whether it's Trump reinstating the harmful anti-abortion "Mexico City" policy, ordering the building of a southern border wall, or gutting safety regulations, the most important things we need to pay attention to in the White House have nothing to do with chairs or desks but rather pens and paper.

Photo by Ron Sachs - Pool/Getty Images.

So go ahead, Mr. President. Put your feet up if you'd like. History won't judge you by whether or not you scuffed the desk but by how you affected the lives of the more than 300 million Americans you govern.

Photo by Andrew Harrer - Pool/Getty Images.

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ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

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If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

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Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

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The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

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Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
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Some moments never get old.

On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest game show moment of all time.

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Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

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12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

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A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

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Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

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