Same Movie, Different Cast

As much as we’d like to think every day the world starts anew, and for some it does, for many that’s not the case at all. We don’t actually strike the set at the end of each day-we dim the lights and head for someplace home and dry, or close, and step back and away from the magic lantern until tomorrow.

Hamlet had some choice words about tomorrow. Mine, alas and alack, aren’t even close when  marveling at how all those yesterdays set us up for where we and who we are today. How can a people who move so quickly never reach their destination, or even a consensus on where we should be going?

A fortnight or so ago, Rush Limbaugh managed to anger, annoy and offend an enormous number of people who, until that moment, had little in common with one another. I guess a small ‘thanks, junkie, for bringing us together’ is in order, as is (I suppose) some forgiveness from me, for a personal failing in his history. I should do the high-minded thing and will eventually, but not today, chubby.

I don’t listen to/watch Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Keith Obermann (Grammatik wants me to spell his name as Doberman; what a sense of humor they have at Microsoft!), the AFLAC duck or Rachel Maddow-not (just) because of their politics (I think I worked with a pretty broad brush there; sorry, duck) but because one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor and I live in a tent. One that I’d like to think is large enough for everyone, no matter how cranky they are.

I don’t know when ‘fair comment’ transcends the protections of free speech and becomes hateful and hurtful but I’ll concede that defending every moron’s right to her/his opinion, including me, gets a lot harder when what they’re saying is just awful and close to indefensible.

I can tell you I’ve been chided by folks on both sides of my political spectrum for not being willing or wanting to denounce/support the guy and or the Liberal Media Cabal that’s ‘persecuting’ him. I’ve visited Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, skippy-I’d suggest we take it easy on the “P” word. Especially since all you have to do is what I do-use the on and off switch on the radio or grab the clicker. Afraid you can’t resist the temptation? Listen to this. Yeah, GACK! But we loved it and it sold millions of copies. You’re reset now, right? No need to thank me.

Besides, coming back to ceiling and floor-it wasn’t that long ago that (I think; I’m lying, I know) Bill Maher had some pejoratives characterizing politically prominent women of the conservative persuasion in tenor and tone that made me cringe. If you wondered why there’s no link back, it’s for the same reason El Rushbo didn’t get one. I’ll not encourage that kind of boorishness in this neighborhood.

As a nation, we’ve been through this demonization of the other side throughout our history. Admittedly, I’m not sure ‘Van, Van is a used-up man’ is analogous to announcing some village in Texas is missing an idiot or that the citizenship of the President is suspect. We are all entitled to our own opinions on any issue-but not to our own facts.

And if we don’t work a lot harder to bring back civility in our civil discourse we’re going to become the dysfunctional country in the middle of North America while Canada and Mexico develop an appreciation for situational relationships as postulated by Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty.

-bill kenny