I'm as Mad as Hell...
Pardon me for the following paragraphs, but I've just suffered through one of the worst shows I've ever done in my career. As such, I need to blow off some steam tonight, and unfortunately there are a large number of people who will be on the receiving end of it, but in most cases they deserve it. I am sick and tired of having to open the paper everyday and read dumb statements and dumb opinions and dumb letters, and I am sick of trying to engage in conversations with several different types of people who just find ways to push my buttons. See if you can sympathize with me on some of these things...
I am sick of people who cannot think for themselves, and tend to follow misguided group thinking. Some examples are Democrats who all seem to use the same "talking points" when attacking this or that legislation, or fanatical listeners of Rush Limbaugh who swallow what he's saying whole without bothering to check sources or find proof. Conspiracy theorists would also apply. When confronted with something they don't understand, rather than trying to answer it with logic, common sense, and hard evidence or facts, they rely on conspiracy theories, ridiculous attacks and misguided accusations, or just good old fashioned name-calling. I'm sick of trying to put across a good point, often based on facts to a person, only to incur the following responses: "idiot", "moron", and worse.
I am sick of people who write letters to the editor without thinking about what they wrote first, let alone checking facts. This would describe much of the anti-mall crowd during the whole Carousel expansion debate in Syracuse last year. More recently, it would describe a Baltimore Sun letter-writer from Towson, Md. who was distraught over the fact that after the 9-11 attacks, it took our president 12 whole hours to come up with an Oval Office address to the nation. It's her belief that instead of hop-scotching to secure locations to discuss strategy and find out exactly what happened, President Bush should have zipped straight back to the White House (which at the time was feared to be the target of the next hijacked plane) and gotten right in front of the camera, like oh, say, Bill Clinton would have done. My question is what would you rather have seen? The brilliant, calm, reassuring speech that our president gave the evening of 9-11, or a hastily-constructed soundbyte, built on only hearsay and preliminary, unconfirmed reports? I felt better that the president was on the phone talking to advisers and the vice-president, rather than the American people, because he was trying to get a handle on the situation. There will be more examples later...
First, however, I must also say I am sick of hearing people try to tie two topics together that have nothing to do with each other. In that same day's Baltimore Sun that had the aforementioned letterwriter (I would say what I really think of her, but that would make me a hypocrite after the whole "sick of people calling me names when I make a good point bit"), Thomas Friedman of the New York Times blasts Bush for, of all things, not using the surge of patriotism and volunteerism in the wake of 9-11 to pass the Kyoto Treaty. I'm confused... what does pride in your country have to do with ramming through an environmental treaty that nobody else in our anti-terrorism coalition will pass, that will severely damage our economy, and only has the support of a small minority? What's the argument here? "If we don't stop using fossil fuels, the terrorists have won?" This is like all the no-lifers who have consumed all their life's work into one issue. Most of the time, they're anti-abortionists. These are the people who would call whatever talk show I used to produce and find a way to relate whatever the subject of the day was to abortion. I'm sure many of them flooded the phone lines of America's talk shows after 9-11 and chanted, "If we don't ban abortion in America, the terrorists have won." I have said before in this column how I think that anyone who lets their views on one issue dictate their lives has a very distorted worldview. I just wish I didn't have to be constantly reminded about it...
Columnist Jules Witcover is someone who I have often disagreed vehemently with; he has this tendency to show hero-worship to Al Gore, and as such he likes revisiting the 2000 election and cheering for Gore's return in 2004. However, more and more often I find myself agreeing with things he says, mostly because he does sometimes make points that the majority of Americans agree with, and they're well thought-out. Well, in Wednesday's Sun, he assailed Hillary and the other Democrats who attacked Bush when they found out he might have had knowledge of an impending terrorist attack before 9-11. He said, "Only the most jaundiced would believe" that Bush knew the attacks were going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Mr. Jules Witcover doesn't get why 9-11 happened, none of us do, but he didn't make dumb accusations. Well, irony of ironies, on the opposite page, there was a letter to the editor by one such "jaundiced" individual who believed that 9-11 was indeed, Bush's fault. After all, he claims, they attacked the World Trade Center before, he should have known they would go after it again, and remember Harry Truman-- "the buck stops here". Therefore, Mr. Jaundiced writes, blame Bush. Today, I got to read another such "jaundiced" individual's opinion, this one being that the Democrats have every right to attack Bush on 9-11 because that's what Bush's fellow Republicans did to Clinton for 8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Republicans never blamed Clinton for the tragic deaths of over 3000 Americans (although Rush does put some blame on Clinton for 9-11, and some conspiracy theorists claim Clinton's responsible for at least Vince Foster...) Perhaps I should just quit reading the letters page altogether, reading foolish statements like these probably makes me more mad than anything else that happens in an average day.
You know what else I'm sick of? I'm sick of people using money as an excuse to complain. I can't tell you how many times during my Susquehanna years I heard, "I pay $26,000 a year, and...", often ending in a complaint. Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and told you to go there, you forked over the money cuz you wanted to, so in my eyes you have no right to complain. After all, in most cases, the people who bitched about this particular thing probably had their parents paying most of that $26,000. But it happens elsewhere, too. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a member at the YMCA where I work start his or her complaint with, "I pay (insert dollar amount here) to go here, and..." Again, nobody put a gun to your head, you paid the money because you wanted to, so you'll have to deal with some of the problems that come up. For anyone to try to use money as an excuse to not have to deal with the occasional hassle is just plain stupid. The only reason I would think someone would use that excuse is to make the person they're complaining to feel like the complainer is above them on whatever grand pecking order there is. Sorry, in my world, everybody's equal, regardless of how much money he or she makes or spends. You don't like it, fine, just don't expect me to deal with you in the way you want me to.
Again, I apologize for turning this usually humorous and thought-provoking column into a full-blown pissed-off rant, but you know sometimes people just need to vent, and that's really what I created this for anyway. Right now, the column is not published, I don't hold it up to lofty journalistic or columnist standards, cuz I don't have to. So, it is what it is, and this week, it's about me being mad and sick and tired. Hope that doesn't rub you the wrong way...
I am sick of people who cannot think for themselves, and tend to follow misguided group thinking. Some examples are Democrats who all seem to use the same "talking points" when attacking this or that legislation, or fanatical listeners of Rush Limbaugh who swallow what he's saying whole without bothering to check sources or find proof. Conspiracy theorists would also apply. When confronted with something they don't understand, rather than trying to answer it with logic, common sense, and hard evidence or facts, they rely on conspiracy theories, ridiculous attacks and misguided accusations, or just good old fashioned name-calling. I'm sick of trying to put across a good point, often based on facts to a person, only to incur the following responses: "idiot", "moron", and worse.
I am sick of people who write letters to the editor without thinking about what they wrote first, let alone checking facts. This would describe much of the anti-mall crowd during the whole Carousel expansion debate in Syracuse last year. More recently, it would describe a Baltimore Sun letter-writer from Towson, Md. who was distraught over the fact that after the 9-11 attacks, it took our president 12 whole hours to come up with an Oval Office address to the nation. It's her belief that instead of hop-scotching to secure locations to discuss strategy and find out exactly what happened, President Bush should have zipped straight back to the White House (which at the time was feared to be the target of the next hijacked plane) and gotten right in front of the camera, like oh, say, Bill Clinton would have done. My question is what would you rather have seen? The brilliant, calm, reassuring speech that our president gave the evening of 9-11, or a hastily-constructed soundbyte, built on only hearsay and preliminary, unconfirmed reports? I felt better that the president was on the phone talking to advisers and the vice-president, rather than the American people, because he was trying to get a handle on the situation. There will be more examples later...
First, however, I must also say I am sick of hearing people try to tie two topics together that have nothing to do with each other. In that same day's Baltimore Sun that had the aforementioned letterwriter (I would say what I really think of her, but that would make me a hypocrite after the whole "sick of people calling me names when I make a good point bit"), Thomas Friedman of the New York Times blasts Bush for, of all things, not using the surge of patriotism and volunteerism in the wake of 9-11 to pass the Kyoto Treaty. I'm confused... what does pride in your country have to do with ramming through an environmental treaty that nobody else in our anti-terrorism coalition will pass, that will severely damage our economy, and only has the support of a small minority? What's the argument here? "If we don't stop using fossil fuels, the terrorists have won?" This is like all the no-lifers who have consumed all their life's work into one issue. Most of the time, they're anti-abortionists. These are the people who would call whatever talk show I used to produce and find a way to relate whatever the subject of the day was to abortion. I'm sure many of them flooded the phone lines of America's talk shows after 9-11 and chanted, "If we don't ban abortion in America, the terrorists have won." I have said before in this column how I think that anyone who lets their views on one issue dictate their lives has a very distorted worldview. I just wish I didn't have to be constantly reminded about it...
Columnist Jules Witcover is someone who I have often disagreed vehemently with; he has this tendency to show hero-worship to Al Gore, and as such he likes revisiting the 2000 election and cheering for Gore's return in 2004. However, more and more often I find myself agreeing with things he says, mostly because he does sometimes make points that the majority of Americans agree with, and they're well thought-out. Well, in Wednesday's Sun, he assailed Hillary and the other Democrats who attacked Bush when they found out he might have had knowledge of an impending terrorist attack before 9-11. He said, "Only the most jaundiced would believe" that Bush knew the attacks were going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Mr. Jules Witcover doesn't get why 9-11 happened, none of us do, but he didn't make dumb accusations. Well, irony of ironies, on the opposite page, there was a letter to the editor by one such "jaundiced" individual who believed that 9-11 was indeed, Bush's fault. After all, he claims, they attacked the World Trade Center before, he should have known they would go after it again, and remember Harry Truman-- "the buck stops here". Therefore, Mr. Jaundiced writes, blame Bush. Today, I got to read another such "jaundiced" individual's opinion, this one being that the Democrats have every right to attack Bush on 9-11 because that's what Bush's fellow Republicans did to Clinton for 8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Republicans never blamed Clinton for the tragic deaths of over 3000 Americans (although Rush does put some blame on Clinton for 9-11, and some conspiracy theorists claim Clinton's responsible for at least Vince Foster...) Perhaps I should just quit reading the letters page altogether, reading foolish statements like these probably makes me more mad than anything else that happens in an average day.
You know what else I'm sick of? I'm sick of people using money as an excuse to complain. I can't tell you how many times during my Susquehanna years I heard, "I pay $26,000 a year, and...", often ending in a complaint. Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and told you to go there, you forked over the money cuz you wanted to, so in my eyes you have no right to complain. After all, in most cases, the people who bitched about this particular thing probably had their parents paying most of that $26,000. But it happens elsewhere, too. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a member at the YMCA where I work start his or her complaint with, "I pay (insert dollar amount here) to go here, and..." Again, nobody put a gun to your head, you paid the money because you wanted to, so you'll have to deal with some of the problems that come up. For anyone to try to use money as an excuse to not have to deal with the occasional hassle is just plain stupid. The only reason I would think someone would use that excuse is to make the person they're complaining to feel like the complainer is above them on whatever grand pecking order there is. Sorry, in my world, everybody's equal, regardless of how much money he or she makes or spends. You don't like it, fine, just don't expect me to deal with you in the way you want me to.
Again, I apologize for turning this usually humorous and thought-provoking column into a full-blown pissed-off rant, but you know sometimes people just need to vent, and that's really what I created this for anyway. Right now, the column is not published, I don't hold it up to lofty journalistic or columnist standards, cuz I don't have to. So, it is what it is, and this week, it's about me being mad and sick and tired. Hope that doesn't rub you the wrong way...
Labels: politics, random thoughts
posted by Dave | 11:49 PM
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