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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
with many interesting reactions. Some things to note:
The left did it too. From car bombs and street trashings for 'peace' in the 60s to the accusations of child molesting based on 'recovered memories' in the 80s and 90s, the left has a lot to answer for in terms of setting the current tone of stridency in this country. Nobody found it fun to be called racist, sexist, or a warmonger back when it was young and brash liberals who were doing it.
It was the left which first asserted that 'the personal is the political,' a malignant notion which is behind the current smearings of decent politicians like Kerry, Gore, and McCain, as well as the exaltation of moronic politicians like Bush just because "you can have a beer with him." In many ways, today's right is a copycat reflection of the worst sins of yesterday's left.
The basic problem is that it's too easy to live in your own private cocoon in America. You don't have to live with your parents and they don't have to live with you. You don't have to listen to the people they listen to and they don't have to listen to the people you listen to. At the few get togethers, people don't think they have to get along and so they don't. Both sides yell at each other like farm yahoos at city slickers.
The media on all sides exacerbate the problem because all of them pander to their various constituencies. There is no longer an objective media in this country in the sense of putting out the facts as they are and letting the chips fall where they may. There is only a media that fears to offend its patrons and thus many people have grown intolerent of hearing any differences whatsoever. Blogs don't help this at all; to the contrary, blogs appear to be only increasing the tendency of many Americans to want to live and think entirely inside their own idiot mafias.
When I saw a one-sentence summary that Wil Wheaton's holiday dinner was almost ruined by "Bill O'Reilly and other right-wingers" I was understandably curious. I wondered if some crazed skinhead had attacked him based on what was said on television.
What I read was a letdown. Poor Wil had an argument with his family over the death penalty. And what's more, it was the political Rights' fault; Wil would never hate his family so he transferred the blame to the Right.
This is nothing more than Mr. Wheaton not liking his family's views on a subject and that soured him toward his family gathering. I doubt his family would say Christmas dinner was almost ruined. It is Mr. Wheaton who is so radical in his beliefs that the night was not pleasant. Maybe he should spend next Christmas dinner with people who agree with his political views. Then he will have no reason to be bitter.
P.S. "Blades of Steel" rules!
I commute for my out-of-town teaching job and actually spend two nights a week with my mother and stepfather. Fox is their TV channel of choice. Limbaugh is in their kitchen and their bathrooms, their cars. But if you think this is torture for this college instructor, imagine this: If Fox isn't tuned in, then Trinity Broadcasting Network is.
My mother was distressed that one of her Wednesday night TBN "prophecy" shows had apparently been suspended. (These shows review current events to prove that apocalypse is edging ever closer. The return of Christ, the rapture, the Tribulation, and eternal damnation for non Christians virtually within sight) I was rushing out the door for my night class when she ran to me, literally wringing her hands: "Hal Lindsey's Intelligence Briefing isn't on again! What's going on?"
I love my mother. I hate her politics and her religion, but I love my mother. I promised to do some internet research that night when I returned from school. "We'll find out why it's not on, Mom," I assured her. "Don't worry."
I spent the next three hours instructing my night students in composition theory, ethos, logos, pathos and the power of rhetoric. Then I trotted back to my Mother and stepfather's pleasant ranch in the nicest neighborhood in town. I hung up my coat and rolled up my sleeves and sat down at the computer. Soon I had discovered that Trinity was suspending Hal Lindsey's show, according to Hal Lindsey, because he was pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim.
As I read this aloud to Mom, she was indignant. Of course Hal Lindsey was pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim--the Bible was, too! Oh, those liberals at TBN, being politically correct! Her blood pressure, mostly dangerously high, was surely getting higher. "Don't worry, Mom," I said again. "You can write TBN a letter and tell them that. Be an activist! Let your voice be heard."
"Will you do it?" she asked. "Will you write them a letter and tell them how upset we are about their politically correct, anti-Israeli policies?"
Oh, reader. Can I admit this in anonymous cyberspace? The next day, I sat in my book-lined office at a public institution where I am an assistant professor and I pulled up the Trinity Broadcasting Network website. I clicked the Contact Us icon. I began to compose a letter in which I said something like: We want to protest Hal Lindsey being removed from the air. We think his positions are Biblical..."
It was at that moment that I caught myself. My God. What was the matter with me? How could I compromise my integrity, my belief system, my values, my lack of religion, all for the immature and neurotic need for my mother's approval,a woman with a tenth grade education and a King James Bible and a world view so shrunken and bigoted that I blush in shame... this woman's approval has driven me for my entire life.
I am happy to say, I powered down my computer in the middle of this letter. I was humiliated and surprised that I had almost completely sold out. I know how hateful and divisive the radically right can be, but tiptoeing around them will not accomplish anything. We have to be at least as bold as they are in asserting values. Would my mother have stroked out if I said, "I am not writing any bullshit letter to protest the suspension of your bullshit prophecy show"? Probably not. And I know that swallowing all the poisonous diatribe I hear firsthand and recycled is not doing my blood pressure any good.
I agree that along with reasonable and measured responses to the rightwingers in one's life, humor is a great resource. When my seventy-year-old mom watches George Bush speak on television, she actually melts. Her face glows. She says, with as much passion as I've ever heard from her, "I love that man."
You can only laugh(in private). You laugh until you cry (in private).
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
