Exasperation
In my email inbox I saw, just now, the title of my Ahead of Time email that I receive each Monday before the magazine appears in our mailbox each Tuesday...
and Ann Coulter is to grace the cover.
I don't know what to say. I almost always steer clear of politics on this blog because all too often the topic can ratchet off to poor taste and plus, really, there are other people better informed than me who can put into words much more succinctly and deliberately the things I can only vaguely postulate in my head...
BUT, I think that Ann Coulter, the celebrity pundit, is so symbolic of what is going wrong all around us right now. And it's not just because she's a crazy Republican who spouts her mouth off with the intent to sensationalize rather than rationalize; it's because there are so many others like her. (Bill Mahr, I'm talking to you. You seem to be the hateful left to her hateful right.) What I have against Ann Coulter is that she's so good at doing what she's doing, and it's as much because she's supermodel skinny, with long viciously died blonde hair, as it is because she's smart and fiercely erudite and passionately crude.
I feel so hemmed in, sometimes, by other people's narrow-sightedness--that inability to recognize that Gray is a color as much as Black or White.
I wish it would all just go away. The insensitivity. The shouting matches. The condemnation. The hateful invective. I wish it would all just go away.
Which makes me a Democrat, I guess. At least that's what it seems like to me sometimes--like the whole party has its head stuck in a gigantic hole like a clumsy ostrich, wishing things would just get better. Which is not true, of course.
These are just issues close to my too-soon broken heart. I just want some tolerance, people. I want some thinking outside of the box, and then I want a little sympathy for the thoughts that just can't seem to escape.
and Ann Coulter is to grace the cover.
I don't know what to say. I almost always steer clear of politics on this blog because all too often the topic can ratchet off to poor taste and plus, really, there are other people better informed than me who can put into words much more succinctly and deliberately the things I can only vaguely postulate in my head...
BUT, I think that Ann Coulter, the celebrity pundit, is so symbolic of what is going wrong all around us right now. And it's not just because she's a crazy Republican who spouts her mouth off with the intent to sensationalize rather than rationalize; it's because there are so many others like her. (Bill Mahr, I'm talking to you. You seem to be the hateful left to her hateful right.) What I have against Ann Coulter is that she's so good at doing what she's doing, and it's as much because she's supermodel skinny, with long viciously died blonde hair, as it is because she's smart and fiercely erudite and passionately crude.
I feel so hemmed in, sometimes, by other people's narrow-sightedness--that inability to recognize that Gray is a color as much as Black or White.
I wish it would all just go away. The insensitivity. The shouting matches. The condemnation. The hateful invective. I wish it would all just go away.
Which makes me a Democrat, I guess. At least that's what it seems like to me sometimes--like the whole party has its head stuck in a gigantic hole like a clumsy ostrich, wishing things would just get better. Which is not true, of course.
These are just issues close to my too-soon broken heart. I just want some tolerance, people. I want some thinking outside of the box, and then I want a little sympathy for the thoughts that just can't seem to escape.
posted by Kate at 10:44 PM
5 Comments:
AMEN! As you know I have gay uncles, and seeing all these gay marriage laws just kicked to the curb is really painful for me. In fact, the way they are being treated is no better than the way black people were treated just thirty years ago. There's other stuff too, but you're right. It all boils down to open-mindedness. Isn't it weird to you that my parents are democrats? I found that surprising.
Think Barach Obama and Theresa Heinz; vote your conscience.
i find ann coulter less objectionable than michael moore, primarily because i can think of ann coulter during sex without suffering a "total systems failure".
plus, i think i'm one of seven people in the district who voted republican in the last election (voting with my checkbook and such). that, and i generally find the stridently smug voices of activist liberals annoying. but, i don't identify with the religious wing of the party, so it's a bit of an identity crisis for me.
Audra, I hear you there. Sometimes I wonder about myself that I have such a difficult time understanding why such a great majority of people act and think like they do. Is it intolerance for intolerance? This kind of mind play that I engage myself in is the same kind of thinking that made people lable Kerry a flip-flopper. I cannot understand why in this country gay people have a second class citizenship.
Anonymous, I am definitely thinking Barach Obama (though he's still just a baby), but I'm thinking more Hillary Clinton than Theresa Heinz Kerry.
Lancelot, that you can tolerate Ann Coulter more than Micheal Moore because of her sex appeal (or at least because of her relative inoffensiveness when it comes to sex) speaks volumes for why she's so successful. I find the general catty, obnoxious agumentative vibe of celebrity pundits on the whole to be very irritating. And that includes Micheal Moore.
That you're Republican but choose not to associate yourself with the religious right--well, I can see how that would lend itself to an identity crisis, but it also shows that you can pick and choose within your own party the good and the bad. That kind of discernment and skepticism seems healthier to me than blanketed following.
Okay, I'm done with the politics now.
Dang.
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