HAIRSHIRT 

        Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery

 
.

 

 

 

 

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Sunday, October 31, 2004

 

Civil(ity) War

I'm going nuts here. I really am. I just wrote this long, unfunny shpiel about the loss of civility between Republicans and Democrats this election that was as sad and humorless as Carrot Top. Here's why:

I went to Democratic Headquarters on 44th today to buy a new anti-Bush button. I chose the simple design with "Bush" in a circle with a line through it. Fairly straightforward, right? I then had fucking idiots all over Manhattan giving me shit because they lacked the synaptic dexterity to compute the fact that it was, in point of fact, saying I don't want Bush to win.

This pissed me off on so many levels. First off, I just spent three bucks on this damn thing and you steaming piles of monkey dung can't even tell which side it puts me on? And then, you know what? Even if it was pro-Bush, in what way does that give anyone the right to hassle me on the street? Did I attempt to solicit money for Bush? Did I get in people's faces and demand they support Bush? Did I dress my penis in a Bush outfit and put on a puppet show on 5th Avenue? No. I simply wore a button. And it wasn't even fucking pro-Bush!

The country needs to take a goddamn vicodin and chill out.

I fully admit the ridiculousness of me saying that people are going too far when I wrote just last week that Bush would burn books and send homosexuals to internment camps. (Those are both in the Republican platform, by the way.) I've realized this weekend, though, that this election is not going to be over Tuesday night. Whoever loses is going to drag the other side into court in Ohio and Florida and wherever election fuck-ups happen and, no matter the outcome, we're going to be as bitter and divided as David Lee Roth and the rest of Van Halen. Just with a little less hairspray.

I'm not saying we have to agree with each other or even like each other all that much. God knows I'm not going to invite John Ashcroft over for tea--although it would be really funny to piss in his cup when he wasn't looking. No, no, forget I said that, that's uncivil. The point is that we're going to have to live with each other after this no matter what happens. We don't have to join hands and sing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", but it would be nice if each side didn't have to act like the other side were retarded lepers.

I was watching Bill Maher's show on HBO last night and growing disgusted with his studio audience, who applauded and hissed like trained seals trying to earn a fish. Kevin Costner was on--and let me just say I'm not a fan--alongside Wesley Clark and Richard Belzer. Clark was, of course, sticking to Kerry's talking points in the hopes of being made Secretary of Handsomeness in the new cabinet. Belzer was positioning himself so firmly on the left that he'd built a house there and raised a family. Normally, Maher would have a token Republican like Dennis Miller, who could be counted on to espouse the right-wing point of view and jerk himself off over his own cleverness as he makes references that only he and three other people in the world get. Instead, there was poor Kevin Costner, who actually had a slightly nuanced point of view. Instead of choosing shirts or skins and trying to run up the score on the other side, Costner was on different sides of different issues. And the audience was booing him when he said anything they regarded as not anti-Bush/pro-Kerry. I'm not saying I agreed with him on everything, especially his dippy goatee, but I had to admire him for not towing one party's line.

Of course, then Ann Coulter came on and spewed forth her lies and venom like the she-wolf from hell that she is. Man, wouldn't you just love to toss a bag of dogshit in her face? I wish I--oh, wait. I'm singing the praises of civility, aren't I? Okay, well, I guess that I...respect Ann Coulter's perogative to see things how she does and, uh, I concede that her views don't make her an evil person. She has a right to exist and to express her opinions.

Oh, who am I kidding? If I had the chance, I'd rub her with steak and drop her in a piranha tank. Filled with Democratic piranhas. But I'd be polite as I did it.

Comments:
unsurprisingly, things here in Seattle are just as heated, but more passively. blocks away from where I live, people are holding discourse via the burning of yard signs and posting their rants about free speech on giant cardboard paper and then taping them up on their porches. whatever happened to talking to people?
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

 

 
Links

 

 
           
     
    
.