Happy Holidays to me. AT&T decided it'd be a great time to dump an extra $137.14 payment on top of my regular one for this month's bill. Time to go hunt a hapless customer service representative down.
Some post-election commentary. First, the light stuff:
Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are
Now the serious(ly boring - beware):
Hypothetical situations seemed to be the argument of choice when it comes to matters of fuzzy accusations on subjective topics. For example, just recently, CNN's Campbell Brown made the argument that Governor Ed Rendell would not had made his off-mic "no life" comment if Governor Janet Napolitano had been a male. What is frustrating about this is that there no way to either justify or disprove this statement. Napolitano will never be a man (barring a sex-change, but that's an entirely different ball park - whoo, Oregon!), hence Rendell will never get to either prove or disprove Campbell Brown's conjecture. Instead, what we get is nation-wide outrage and public denials/apologies that continue until another event provides fodder for non-evidence based pondering.
Granted, making hypotheses is inherent in the world of politics. Focusing on particular issues and laws in preparation for the unknown future is a necessity. [Cue cheesy West Wing quote about non-written commandment of making a better place for our children]. So of course, every responsible politician and political analyst has to think outside the box, come up with an array of issues that could potentially come up, and adjust accordingly. But (I'm hoping) more often than not, these responsible discussions are based on previous knowledge, events, and laws that have set precedence. What my beef with hypothetical arguments is that, regularly, they are used as a means to justify irrational self-righteousness, unfounded attacks on character, and a means to feed fear and paranoia - all under the guise of coherent "intellectual/factual discussion." They're also ridiculously easy to use because research is not necessary and what better way to present an argument than to use evidence that can't be disproved because it doesn't exist?
In summary: Facts. Previous knowledge of events. Data. Pretty important stuff. Back up your argument. "What ifs?" - not so much.
And after my long-ass rant against "what-ifs" comes something completely contradictory: "What if your child turned out to be gay?" [Warning: more rambling ahead]One (of MANY) things that have been brought to my attention through the whole Prop. 8 debacle is the inherent fear in parents that their kids will be gay. Something that Prop. 8 supporters gleefully utilized in their campaigns. One comment I heard from a supporter (paraphrasing, of course): "The gay community can live however they want, but when they're teaching their lifestyle to my kids, that's going too far."
I'm going to ignore the obvious discussion of the non-connection between gay marriage and schools since I'm pretty sure a Google search would return a much more eloquent analysis than any one I would have to present. My question is: "Why is it a big deal that your children are aware of LBGT relations or might turn out to be gay?" Obviously, if you have a problem with gays, period, your children are definitely off limits. But what about the people like the supporter above? Who are open-minded enough to acknowledge the LBGT community's existence without wishing damnation upon them but having their kids do the same? Huge NO. If you're "okay" with gay people, why not be okay with your child being gay? I really don't have an answer to this or, basically, it's just an exercise to not so subtly (and pretentiously) point out that despite the best attempts to present an image of tolerance, it seems to be human nature to react with a "HELL NO" when "different" hits too close to home.
In summary: After all the not-so-deep analysis above, I follow with my own non-PC, completely partisan take:
"Get. Over. It."
And to end the entry on an inane note, something cool from coolhunter:
Annnd. Happy Holidays to me, again. Courtesy of Jess, again:
1 comment:
wasn't it Serosa?
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