I was visiting with a close relative yesterday, a relative whom I love dearly. She’s a dear woman who is also a fierce conservative.
Which is fine. Some of my best friends are conservatives. Some of my best friends are liberals, too.
This dear woman wanted me to watch a DVD that outlined the evils of…well, it doesn’t really matter. If I told you, some of you would be furious that I know someone who would think that, and some of you would be saying “Well, yeah! You SHOULD be pissed off about THAT!”
No matter: that DVD was going to be an hour or two of listening to ranting about The Evil.
And I got to thinking about listening to the ranting about The Evil. We all wind up listening to ranting about The Evil, whatever we define The Evil to be. If you’re conservative, The Evil is the bleeding-heart liberals. If you’re liberal, The Evil is the selfish conservatives. Entire magazines, television shows, radio (oh, Lord, the radio talk shows!) are devoted to ranting about The Evil.
Endlessly. And I am so tired of it. (As a side note, I can’t even begin to tell you the agony for us moderates, listening to all this crap. Here we are, trying to take the best from either side and asking everyone can’t we please just get along, and all we get is All Anger, All The Time, from Radio Free Piss.)
It’s taken me several years of being marinated in this mess to put my finger on the most annoying part about it: no one is asking me to do anything. Talk show hosts, magazines, Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh…they’re ranting about how horrid The Other Side is but no one has an action they want completed.
I don’t know about you, but I was raised by nuns and I have had enough of ranting for ranting’s sake. My life is difficult enough without looking for reasons to be pissed off. You want to be pissed off, fine. Just be pissed off with a purpose. Ask me to do something, or shut up.
And so I have decided that I am boycotting all ranting about The Evil. From news media, from relatives, from anyone. It’s okay to be ticked off. Ask me to write a letter to my congressperson; ask me for more information; ask me to send an email to a political figure; hell, ask me to hire a hit (though I can assure in advance you I’m not gonna do that).
But if you don’t have an action you want me to do to support The Fight Against The Evil, then you’re just gonna have to talk to the hand.
The hand that is reaching for the radio to change the station from Radio Free Piss.
And because I realize that I just ranted myself (and a moderate rant is a rant nonetheless) I will ask you to do this: join me, won’t you?
© E.S. Evans 2010
Mom, Interrupted 
I’ll join you! I try to look at things lots of ways from lots of sources and come up with an opinion. I have friends who are so SURE they know all the right answers, then find they get all their info from one source – often talk radio, often TV. One friend even said that she tried to listen to a variety of TV news shows so as to remain balanced, but it’s all still TV! Don’t get me wrong, I like TV 🙂 But not as a source for all my world views. I’m sure you’ve heard about Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity – I think he’s on to something.
John started complaining about the biased media, I purposely mentioned his favorite news outlet as an example. He hemmed and hawed how it wasn’t biased. I just smiled smugly and said “it’s biased the way you like, biased is biased.” Then walked away.