Don't take offense, dude
So it’s truly come to this: Americans – politicians and politically aware citizens alike – are down to playing the game of who can show proper outrage and take total offense to the words of talking heads and/or journalists whose job it is to write OPINIONS.
But it’s more than just simple umbrage. No, the game now is to prove that you are more outraged, more offended than the person you are running against, the person you work with, the person you love to disagree with.
With all that you hear about the advent of the online blogger and all of the strides we’re allegedly making in communication, you’d assume that more and more people were out there expressing their own opinions, exercising that fabled freedom of speech. But that’s not what you’re getting today. Instead, what you are getting is a handful of back lot game players who kissed enough of it to land in front of the microphone. Guys like Ann Coulter and others like Lettermen, Imus, Maher, Hannity, and Bodine (just kidding, Walt!). Apparently they’re the only ones who are allowed to have opinions – the rest of us can only have opinions on their opinions.
I had to laugh when the Democrats in Congress voted to condemn MoveOn.org’s “General Betrayus” ad. They had already lost the battle. Top candidate Rudy Giuliani had already successfully used the ad to remind us that MoveOn began largely to provide a smokescreen for the Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions.” And the supposedly impotent incumbent Commander-in-Chief effectively launched the best broadside in the entire argument.
“Most Democrats are [more] afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org… then they are of irritating the United States military,” Bush, nailing it, said.
(Well…sort of. Actually, what he said was considerably more mush mouthed. “And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org, or more afraid of irritating them, then they are of irritating the United States military.” We must be paying our president by the word.)
And you know, because Hillary didn’t appease the keepers of the flame of indignation quickly enough, because she “flip-flopped” on whether or not to root for the Cubs or the Yankees in the postseason, she was immediately declared unfit and unseasoned enough for the presidency.
To say that Hillary Rodham Clinton does not have the experience to be president is absurd. She has more presidential experience than any other candidate in the history of our nation with the possible exception of John Quincy Adams and RFK. She spent eight years in the White House. She slept in the president’s bed and she had plenty of time to think about things as he camped out on the couch.
So what should we keep in mind this election season? Keep your BS meters up. Don’t challenge the media, don’t challenge the candidates, but challenge yourself. Challenge yourself to filter out the stupidity and the sound bites, to not fall for the side dishes that keep our phoniest politicians feasting on the fatted tax rolls of our society over and over again.
Or, at the very least, try not to take offense.