I beg your indulgence for another mostly political entry.
First, why
is everyone (and by "everyone" I mean the reporters who are still talking
about it) so confused about the Dean Screech? Yes, it was goofy and yes, it's not
a good idea to do goofy things in public while you're campaigning for national
office, and yes, it's totally fair to give a candidate a hard time for being
goofy. I understand the sampling of his speech making the rounds of the Internet
and I thought the Letterman top 10 was pretty funny. But why are some people
confused? Have they never screamed themselves hoarse at a ballbame or whatever? It
gets to a point where you try to talk and strange sounds come out and so you get
to playing with it -- and maybe even doing a trial screech -- just to hear what it
sounds like. I sort of thought that was one of those normal human
behaviors.
But I grant that it's still not a good idea on national
broadcast while running for a Serious Important Job.
I do not like
political parties, at least not when people are expected to toe a party line. I
don't even like labels like conservative and liberal which assume that a
particular stance on one issue necessarily goes with another stance on another
issue. Humans and their opinions are more complex than that -- at least humans who
bother to think, and they're the ones I case about. Case in point: I heard a story
this morning about a the big conservative convention -- these are some serious
right-wingers, who don't think GWB is conservative enough. And why? In some
cases at least, it's because he keeps building up the size of our government
instead of keeping it small. (Ick. A man who is far right on social issues while
supporting big government - worst of both worlds.) Another case in point: go read
LA on privacy rights.
LA's somewhere left of me on many issues but she's one of those who makes up her
own mind on each issue. Hello, Mr. Shrub? Weren't you supposed to be a Republican?
Weren't they the ones who used to brag about supporting individual freedoms
against that big nasty government? And I can't help but wonder if the NRA has
actually looked at Dean's position on gun control rather than assuming anyone
running as a Democrat must be in favor of outlawing all firearms. (Come to think
of it, wasn't Brady a close Reagan advisor? That's how he got shot in the first
place.)
Jo March once told her sister Amy not to "talk about labels,
as if Papa was a pickle bottle". If you've eaten one pickle from a jar, you pretty
much know how all the others will taste. Like Mr. March, I am not a pickle bottle.