Don’t judge an unsolicited opinion by its deliverer

November 3, 2009

The idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been around in one form or another for prob­a­bly, well, let’s just say a very long time.

Nonethe­less, if the adage is cliche to one or the other then all I can do is pro­vide a response with an acronymn, delivered in the pho­netic alpha­bet, kind of like you hear fighter pilots do in movies. My pho­netic mes­sage is: “SIERRA, ALPHA, TANGO, SIERRA,” which is short for “sorry about that s**t. In other words, don’t judge a book by its cover suits my needs inso­far as this — hope­fully — short post exists.

I stopped to talk with a neigh­bor upon return­ing from the store. After a few words or so, he launched into a dis­course about how the elec­tions in Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey today should tell the tale of just how screwed up that blankety-blank Obama is doing.

Now I wrote a line or two about this yes­ter­day say­ing I don’t think these few scat­tered elec­tions are going to tell any­thing about how Obama is doing in office, the state of the Democ­rats or the future for the divi­sions within the Repub­li­can party. So, I told my neigh­bor I didn’t think the elec­tions will mat­ter one damn bit except in those states. He went just right along with his rant.

I have never dis­cussed pol­i­tics with my neigh­bor. He prob­a­bly doesn’t even know I blog or have what some refer to as a “lib­eral” blog. I don’t par­tic­u­larly see EFD that way, but what­ever works. I am a lib­eral in the good sense, but mostly a mod­er­ate and con­ser­v­a­tive on other mat­ters and even lib­er­tar­ian on still oth­ers. The neighbor’s take on mat­ters is rather obvi­ous, a “watch Fox News all-the-time ultra con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can.” This is obvi­ous because he spouts the party line every time I see him.

What puz­zles me is why he thinks I would like to hear his, mostly wrong, polit­i­cal opin­ion. Is it because I look like a red­neck? I get along with some of the red­necks who live around here. I don’t get along with some of the crack­heads. So is that why my neigh­bor tar­gets me as a Limbaugh-boostin’ Obama hater?

The same hap­pens when I am in the wait­ing room at the VA clinic. Some guy wear­ing a World War II GI-rene vet­eran ball cap — thank him for his ser­vice — comes in and starts blast­ing away at how Obama is ruin­ing this uni­verse, not to men­tion the Corps, Sem­per Fi! Of course, at the VA you’re liable to get some long-hair guy wear­ing a biker’s vest with Viet­nam vet­eran patches who either starts say­ing the same type of thing, or else he goes off on the Repub­li­cans, which he blames all the way back to Dick Nixon.

Surely it isn’t just me. My past men­tal health coun­selor labeled me as  hav­ing a nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, so that state­ment should be a sign of progress, yes? Well, per­haps not. The point is, why do peo­ple who you really don’t know that well or at all approach you and unload upon you with their opin­ions — or the opin­ions of Glenn Beck, Sean Han­nity, Lim­baugh and Fox News?

The same goes for reli­gion. I don’t mind hav­ing a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion about reli­gion but I don’t like peo­ple who get in my face and tell me I’m going to Hell when in fact they don’t know me well enough to know where I might be going. Ned­er­land, Texas, for instance. I have had very civil dis­cus­sions about reli­gion with Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies who neatly parked their bikes out­side my place and were extremely polite. They even gave me a Book of Mor­mon, which I have somewhere.

But I am get­ting out of the octa­gon here. Peo­ple approach­ing me about reli­gion, I think, would be less likely based on how I look than pol­i­tics. The truth  is, though, I have to think that a good many peo­ple who give me their polit­i­cal out­look unso­licited do it because, well, I’m not sure why they do it. I guess the weather became to passé.

Some prob­a­bly do see in me the look of a Limbaugh-Palin con­ser­v­a­tive: Shaved head, over­weight, unhappy look­ing most of the time (although that is from chronic pain and not from fig­u­ra­tive pains in the ass), known to wear ball caps with the Hous­ton Astros logo. There you go.

If that be the case, then I wish peo­ple would cease and desist. Stop judg­ing this book by its cover, or what­ever the hell else it is that’s wrong with you!

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Media melodrama: Push this back

August 11, 2009

For­mer Alaska Gov. Sarah “Cari­bou Bar­bie” Palin con­tin­ues her reign of stu­pid­ity in Amer­i­can cul­ture by her remarks over the week­end that the president’s health care reform would result in “death pan­els” to decide who lives or dies.

The ex-leader and failed Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date later backed off and asked for “restraint,” per­haps because folks in her own party were call­ing her con­tentions “nuts.”

Per­haps what is worse than the moronic expres­sions and down­right silli­ness com­ing from those who are basi­cally shills for big cor­po­ra­tions who oppose health reform is that national media cov­er­age of it all has received so much play.

If it could be proven that the anger we see each day on TV at town­halls is gen­uine as opposed to man­u­fac­tured, or Astro­turf, then the over­whelm­ing media cov­er­age would be war­ranted. But I think enough doubt and enough evi­dence has been raised that these shout­ing matches that pass for civic dis­course is largely a tac­tic by big busi­ness and the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment to scare and whip oppo­si­tion for health reform into a frenzy.

It would seem after being used to gain pub­lic sup­port for an unnec­es­sary war in Iraq that the media would get it.

So much of what one sees today in, at least the national media, is polit­i­cal con­flict. That seems all that mat­ters to news pro­duc­ers and edi­tors in these national news­rooms. It is like Wash­ing­ton Post media critic Howard Kurtz observed in a WP online chat yes­ter­day when he said that the media likes to “keep stir­ring the pot and reduc­ing every­thing to melodrama.”

Is the media in such cov­er­age these days reflect­ing what the pub­lic wants to hear or are they mold­ing the mes­sage to keep stir­ring the pot and turn­ing the news into soap opera fodder?

That’s what it all seems like some­times to me and I wish the media would stop it. And stop it right now! Cover the news, damn it. If I want soap operas I will watch “One Life to Live” or read about the Palin family.

And while you are at it, will you all in the national media and on cable chan­nels quit using the gra­tu­itous use of the word “push­back.” Yes, it is a real word and in most cases the mean­ing is being used some­what in a cor­rect fash­ion. But it is a buzz­word and buzz­words get old in a hurry, espe­cially if they aren’t funny.

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What goes well with a fine Alaskan whine?

July 7, 2009

One would think for all the tough talk that some of this nation’s Repub­li­can lead­ers can blow out their wazoos that they would have skin like their mas­cot elephant’s.

That doesn’t seem to be the case though.

I saw the over­sen­si­tiv­ity of George W. Bush in per­son and on tele­vi­sion many a time, espe­cially when I cov­ered his Texas guber­na­to­r­ial press conferences.

Ultra-conservative pun­dit and de facto GOP leader Rush Lim­baugh has made his whole radio per­sona based on his inabil­ity to take criticism.

And it seems that since the time she was nom­i­nated as Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date up until the present, Gov. Sarah Palin has become that quin­tes­sen­tial Alaskan whine.

At every step Palin — whose PR built her as a rough-and-tumble jock, hockey mom and wilder­ness out­door­swoman — has found a tar­get for blame when her sit­u­a­tion went awry. Pri­mar­ily her tar­get has been the media although she has found oth­ers on which she could play the vic­tim such as the spat between her and David Let­ter­man over a crude joke the lat­ter made and later apologized.

Now that Palin is leav­ing office, she has threatned sev­eral blogs as well as MSNBC and The Wash­ing­ton Post with defama­tion law­suits over the pos­si­bililty her res­ig­na­tion might have been con­nected to ethics inves­ti­ga­tions. I thought Con­ser­v­a­tives were against friv­ilous litigation.

Even with Palin leav­ing office it would seem her vic­tory in spe­cious defama­tion suits would be highly unlikely even though it could prove expen­sive for plain­tiffs, at least in the beginning.

One has to believe that some of those ultra-conservative Repub­li­cans who talk tough and feel the solu­tion to any prob­lem is dis­solv­ing taxes and gov­ern­ment while unleash­ing nuclear bombs on our real or per­ceived ene­mies suf­fer from a bad case of the “Can Dish It Out But Can’t Take Its.”

Of course, I’m no polit­i­cal con­sul­tant or expert. I’m just a guy artic­u­lat­ing my opin­ion out loud, and mostly to myself. But if I had any advice for some of the Sarah Palins in the world who feel blam­ing oth­ers increases their own stature, it would be this: Please don’t utter any lines urg­ing oth­ers to buck up and take per­sonal responsibility.  We are used to hypocrisy in gov­ern­ment, espe­cially by your ilk, but some­times you can only take too much of a good thing so far.

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