Due to some comments and email that I’ve recently received, I find it necessary to post a few things that I do believe because as one guy put it, I don’t seem to believe in anything.
Sometimes, on ocassion, okay, most of the time, I write things simply just to tweak your pink tomahto nose.
Why?
Because what I have come to believe over the past political season and subsequent victory dance/whine-fest is that the extreme branches of both parties are edging closer and closer to complete meltdown and the sooner they fall apart the better. I believe that these runs to the extreme are based on several factors.
One. 9/11 freaked people so badly they’re still looking for anything to believe in that makes them feel safe. Some folks ran back to the 60s because…well…they don’t remember the 60s except that the music didn’t suck and they got laid a lot so… Some folks ran further back to what they think the 50s were like because the image of an America where everyone is white and Christian and well-dressed is soothing to them. Folks, it’s 2005 and we’ve got to, we have to, start dealing with the realities of THIS world.
I think this is one area where the terrorists have won. We’re more divided now than we were before 9/11, and it’s becoming more, not less serious. We knee-jerked to our respective corners and now we’re fighting each other out of them instead of the bad guys…who are laughing their asses off.
Two. Money. The media understands that extreme sells and they’re playing it to the fullest. Sometimes I think the “true believing kool-aid drinkers” are meeting for beers after work and giggling their butts off. Michael Moore is giving Rush high tens, “Good column dude, I just might have a movie idea to respond to it.” “Thanks Tiny….got any Vicodin?” Malkin, Coulter and Dowd are slamming tequilla and planning their next trip to Cabo. Franken and O’Reilly are in another booth, planning their next trip to the tropics, Franken’s checkin’ the personals, O’Reilly is staring at Malkin thinkin’, “Tahiti baby…”
Seriously. Theater is politics and politics is theater. Always has been. Always will be. If you think for a moment that anything you see on television or the movies or hear on the radio hasn’t gone through 15 revisions, edits, camera angles, you need to re-read your Plato.
Three. Glen Reynolds. Heh. See four.
Four. Frank J.. Because it’s going to piss Frank off to be one under Glen and that’s just fun in and of itself.
Five. Kos. Just because most of his readers annoy the crap out of me.
Six. Fox News Channel. More specifically the SWOOSH, “Fox News Alert.” It used to be when you heard the swoosh, you’d focus on the TV for a moment to see what was happening. Most of us have learned to ignore the swoosh because it’s become meaningless. Others have gone the other direction. When they hear the swoosh they bustle over to the TV, shouldering aside lesser mortals, to see what they’re supposed to be excited about next. I swear in my office some of the wingnuts can hear the swoosh through walls and over vast distances. I believe there’s an underlying secret swoosh in a higher frequency that only minions of Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch can hear. They stand around the tube nodding solemnly about the state of the world and low speed chases. I’ve learned to ignore the swoosh and listen for one guy’s “Holy sh*t.” That’s usually an indication of a real news alert that may actually be interesting or entertaining.
Seven. CNN. Because they gave up even trying to pretend to be objective once Fox News started to gain in popularity. It’s like Ted Turner and his boys rolled up their sleeves and grinned, “Game on!” Hasn’t gotten any better.
Eight. R*U*S*H. Rush. The band. 2112. The album. After too many bottles of Boone’s Farm and too many sessions with the headphones in our youth, there’s an entire generation of us who are watching this mess unfold and all we can hear is “Overture/The Temples of Syrinx” as we watch it all unfold and we wonder how the hell those ugly guys from Canada who played so well could be so damn prescient. (I learned a new word from a reader this week.)
Nine. Okay, forget Rush, I was just trying to use “prescient” in a sentence and the coffee just kicked in and even I don’t know what eight was all about other than my head is starting to become a little too in synch with the shuffle function of iTunes.
Ten. Red Rain. See?
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that wraps up my entire point. You normally don’t see cars with Northern Sun products all over them, but I think someone’s daughter was home from college. The bumper sticker reads, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” See, I think it should read, “If you’re not laughing your ass off, you’re not paying attention.”
That’s right…if you’re not laughing, you’re not taking any of this seriously enough. And believe me, I write this to remind myself much more than I do to remind you.
The divisions are artificial, created by those who don’t want us working and thinking together. Like it or not, deep down inside, we’re all very much the same.
That’s what I believe.