Aren’t we all just basking in this “new era” of Obama? Isn’t it great? Fantastic, right?
And yet, if Ann Coulter called President Obama a “nigger” on national TV, after a short period of blustering by the national media and a couple thousand more interviews for Ann, she would emerge even more popular than ever. It’s the truth. That’s been the trajectory of her career all along.
We Americans want to taste blood, and we don’t much care where we get it from.
I remember clearly being in the grocery store just days after Dale Earnhardt had crashed his car in the Daytona 500 and died. There on the magazine rack was a one-off publication with the headline “Dale Earnhardt: American Hero.”
What a crock. Earnhardt drove fast in a sport where people don’t want to watch drivers crash and die – they want to watch drivers crash and walk away. He failed even in that measurement. And to say that endless fast left turns are the criteria for an American hero is, frankly, insulting.
So last night my mother calls me, all upset at Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for taking a few bong hits. “Doesn’t he know he’s a role model? He should be more responsible than that,” she said, passionately.
Well, in this I have to disagree with her. Michael Phelps wasn’t a role model to anyone, except perhaps people who want to win swimming competitions. He’s an expert in a vanishingly narrow field, with a talent that is never going to advance the course of humanity in any respect. That’s not what makes a role model.
Let him smoke in peace. And let’s buy a sense of perspective as a nation, shall we?
I feel revulsion toward all different kinds of crapweasel right-wingers. But I’ve come to realize that I have a special loathing for those, like “comic” Dennis Miller, who considered themselves liberals until the “wake-up call” of 9/11. This isn’t even about Miller in particular. It’s about all those weak-willed, weak-minded souls who decided on 9/11 that it was OK (not only OK, but productive and correct) to hate Muslims and the poor and union members and anyone else who might threaten the already fake version of their lives they had built in their heads.
Millions of bullies were created on 9/11. And the fact that they had to live through the same harrowing events and images as the rest of us doesn’t excuse them.
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