Not Necessarily The News

Sorry for the delay.

I was went through an intense Bob Dylan phase for the last few weeks, and after determining that “Visions Of Johanna” may be the greatest song ever made, I ended up with the new Duran Duran album.

Talk about a complete 360.

I’m also completely immersed in the Keith Richards book, Life.

Yes, it’s awesome.

Yes, I’ll tell you about it sometime.

But for now, I will tell you about my recent foray into a couple of news stories that I’ve become fascinated with.

You should know something about me first, and that is how I used to be motivated by politics. My family is, at least on my Father’s side, heavily Democratic. I think that it stemmed from my Great Grandfather, a World War I veteran that saw enough frontline horror that he never talked about it that much.

He kept it inside.

He also found favor with Harry Truman’s direction during the Second World War It didn’t hurt that my Great Grandfather hailed from the same state as President Truman, so he was quite familiar with Harry’s state efforts before he called Pennslyvania Avenue his home.

Here's a picture of the long-since-closed movie theatre that is on the Main Street of Hopkins, the small town in Northwest Missouri where my Grandfather lived. I'd like to rent this place with my cousin someday and play a punk rock show there. If one person came, it'd be a success in my mind.

I mention this only because I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of vitriol from the Republican side of the aisle, beginning almost as quickly as Obama was elected. I get “politics,” or at least I thought I did, but to be honest-the dialog seemed to take a nasty tone early on in his presidency.

And then it got worse.

Look, I won’t be the one who says that all of the general nastiness in politics caused the recent tragedy in Arizona. It’s abundantly clear that the shooter was not healthy and he associated some aspects of his mental illness with an innocent target and acted on his faulting wiring.

While the verbal hostilities may not have had any influence on motivating the tragedy, they certainly didn’t prevent it either. So what’s the harm is trying to “E” a little bit.

That’s my friend Ed’s slang for “Take it easy.”

“You’ve got to E, my friend!”

So why do we have to revolt against the notion-just the notion that maybe tone it down a bit because there is a large population of crazy fuckers in this country that are susceptible to triggers that cause them to snap.

Maybe it’s time to be aware of the people who listen to us, and how their instabilities may not understand that we’re not really bringing a gun to a knife fight or that Sarah Palin’s website didn’t really suggest that we shoot a U.S. Representative.

Don’t we bite our tongues around the children and not let the word “Fuck” blurt out?

Then there’s a golden-throated homeless man-a radioman, how ironic-who goes from panhandling to the Today show in a fucking week, and we wonder why he just can’t hang with the notoriety.

Did anyone think to run him through rehab prior to sitting down on Today?

Did at any time someone ponder the obvious: “There’s a reason why he’s homeless?”

Did we really think that a You Tube video would erase his prior demons and turn him into a productive member of society, eternally grateful to the man who pulled up to an intersection to make him dance for his change while recording it for the rest of us.

“Hey look! That bum’s got pipes!”

I’ve become so cynical with America that I absolutely relish going to church to be around people that try to tackle all of this world’s shit even in the face of impossible odds.

Sometimes, all we can do is pray for them to just do the right fucking thing.

Is it any wonder why I listen to the news anymore?

After all, in the same amount of time that it takes me to commute to work in the morning, I could have listened to Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

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