Monday, September 14, 2009

Mr. Wilson Insults Washington
by Dorothy Durio Collins
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.Car.) has really gone and showed them all up. The rooster has crowed, the chicks are running around and the arrogance level has been raised to the hilt when it comes to Republican political sideshows in Washington.
Not only did he call President Barack Obama a liar during a major policy speech, but he had the audacity to then "apologize" for the remark and then fishtail out of it and brag that he had done so. On "Fox News Sunday," he said to anchor Chris Wallace, "I have apologized already to the President, he has accepted that apology; but I will not be silent and I will continue to represent the American people against this..fraud." It was the best non-apology I have ever seen.
Uhm,  but excuse me, Mr. Wilson,  I'm an American. I didn't vote for you, I don't live in South Carolina, and you don't anywhere near represent what I believe and what almost 65 percent of the voting, thinking public of this country think as well. Do you think yourself so important that you had to make an ass of yourself in front of millions of Americans on TV?
Some are dismissive about your outburst. Your naysayers give you a pass by pointing out that the Parliament and House of Commons in England are raucus; Italians a little more so; Philipinos have to have armed police at the door to keep order; and the Taiwanese just plain old fight.
We in this country, until recently, had a measure of civility about us. SO just beacuse these other countries have these problems don't just give us a pass. I'm not talking about Bush "Family Values," whatever the hell those were, I mean treating each other like we would ourselves. Those days passed after John McCain and Sarah "Deer In the Headlights" Palin opened the door to hate-mongering (racism is what it's called) in October and early November of 2008. I hated to see my country go down the john.
I get so sick and tired of the vitriole that comes out of the mouths of Sarah Palin, Barbara Bachman and Rush Limbaugh, just to name a few. The problem with them is that they have overstepped the line between genius and madness and they actually believe what they say. I don't believe that I have ever heard Sarah Palin finish a sentence. Nor have I heard Rush Limbaugh back up any statement he has made with a cold, hard piece of paper that can be looked upon on the internet or a library. Plus, Limbaugh makes money doing what he does, so he has the impetus to lie. You have to pay to make a comment on his website, so it's fans only, please.
The bad thing is the folks they appeal to are the folks who have the most to lose politically. They are the ones who will be on the back-end of the "Just Say NO!" movement because they believe what these people tell them. They are like lambs to the slaughter under the personal ambitions of a few. The 75,000 who were on the Mall this past Saturday were there at the behest of Limbaugh and Fox News; I don't believe there was a single sign that protested the same thing. But the underlying tone, I believe, was "racism."
What these poor folks DON'T realize is that they've been outsmarted. They've been outwitted by people who will say anything to make a buck. It's their damned job to come up with using word like "I hope he FAILS" or "I think he's a Nazi" or such other ridiculous non-sequiturs. They think this stuff is real. Believe me, it isn't. I haven't heard of a black Nazi--remember what happened when Jesse Owens showed Adolf Hitler what a non-Aryan could do at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin?
I knew in November the Republican Right had taken it too far already when my daughter phoned me on Election Night and just tore me one end up the other because Obama had won, calling me an "n-lover," a racist, a "Nazi" and any other thing she could think of. They got to her. The 21-plus years of  affection and love-thy-neighbor I had taught her had been completely undone by one year of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and most of all, Sarah Palin, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. I had to hang up on her. It made me sick to my stomach and I cried for several days.
So when you think it's funny that Wilson called Pres. Obama a liar, think again. If you want your country to be the in-your-face, aggressive, angry, pathological country that we've seen come out of the closet this past few years, make Joe Wilson, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin your role model.
 Or you can take the path of least resistance, live in peace, and look to the good guys who ARE trying to make a difference -- the Olympia Snows, the Sonia Sotomayors, the Jimmy Carters, the Barack Obamas.
It takes too damn much energy to be so angry all the time. Perhaps Mr. Wilson and the far right will figure this out before they kill us all.

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