Crush the one you love

I was watching the Olympics yesterday and they showed a clip from one of the Dutch commentators on a sports network I never watch. The woman, herself a former skater, made comments on an Italian couple that was figure skating and she was beating them senseless with words, ridiculing every movement they made. Since they were dressed like gypsies I couldn't help but fully agree with her, but still it was fascinating to hear a commentator bash atletes this openly.

The problem is that being brutally honest may be fun to strangers who don't understand what you're actually saying, but when you have to criticize friends, family members or other less or more loved ones in one way or another, often times it hits home quite hard.

Case in point; a guy I used to know in high school became sort of the president of the student body (however no elections were held and he was the only candidate) and started acting a little, well cocky. So I co-wrote a highly intellectual, very intelligent, very mature article in the school newspaper criticizing him and his administration....

Yes. I called him a Nazi.

The article wasn't allowed in the paper because the principal refused to publish it, so we wrote a second article complaining about the decision not to publish the first one in which we basically called the school principal a Nazi (come on people! running gags! they're funny! work with me here!). This article did get published but the guy I wrote about basically didn't speak to me for a year (and honestly who can blame him).

This may not be the best example of lovingly reminding a person of some of his or hers less than perfect qualities (mine for instance are calling people Nazi's for no reason) but how do you do it? How can you respectfully point out a flaw to a loved one or friend-of-sorts without having them hate your guts? Being the genius I am (overestimating myself might also be one of my flaws) I came up with one pretty darn good solution.

A telephone service for crushing dreams.

You can just call them, explain the problem and then a nice friendly woman with a warm voice calls your friend and tells them "Hello, we've received word you are considering a carreer in stand up comedy and/or musical. Well, we know you are a kind hearted person that people love but unfortunately you are not funny, so you probably shouldn't. Have a nice day!".

As long as everybody acts mature and only uses it when really necessary I think this will be a huge hit. Don't you? Oh be brutally honest.