I should preface this by saying this isn't about politics. Well, it's in there, but more like a supporting character if anything. So before that vein pops out in your head, tell it to relax until it hears me out. Then it can do whatever it wants.
I've been thinking about politics a lot lately, since we came back to the US after living overseas a few years. Many older, conservative leaning friends are concerned we need to care more about politics, and if we don't, we must be liberal. I'm not quite sure how that works, but there it is. This being the case, I've been surfing cnn's (biased?) website and comparing to fox news'. One complaint from my friends was that the liberal media never covers the tea party. This being the case, stories like the one below caught my eye and steered my thoughts toward the real topic of this piece.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/04/tea.party.express.conference/index.html?hpt=T2
I'll say this first: I'm getting tired of hearing some one throw the "r" word around like a velcro nerf ball. Fox News got the label, and it seemed a bit of a stretch. Call them biased, since all media is. But you're stretching pretty far to call that bias hateful.
That being said, the "satire" mentioned in the article is hateful. It reminds me of a joke conservatives told me with the gist of the punchline including everyone with an accent or non Western last name being a terrorist. This was punctuated with "We're not racist." Maybe not, but the joke is. And this leads me to believe (WARNING,watch for the vein now)conservatives just aren't that funny.
Mind you, I have conservative friends who have great senses of humor and crack me up daily. I am also aware that Kelsey Grammer either is a conservative or just played one in a movie, and he's funny in that full-of-himself-Sideshow-Bob kind of way. However, when the humor turns political and tries to make a point, the gloves come off revealing some ugly, ugly fingers. Generalities are common in humor, but jokes like the ones I mentioned reveal a complete lack of common sense.
Friends will mention the Jon Stewarts out there who generalize the right. That's true, and as I realize it breaks the "don't make fun of a group you're not a part of" rule, I'm finding those jokes less funny than I used to. But this is still a far cry from attacking a group based on names or skin color. Many of these people have to put up with far too much crap as it is, regardless of their beliefs or actions, and B.S. like this doesn't help.
I'm not saying the Tea Partiers need to go to Comedy College. On the contrary, I hope members who make jokes like this continue to do so and as a consequence get disassociated from the rest of the group. Jokes like this reveal a soul I had previously thought only existed in cartoon villains. Only I believe real people can learn if their issues aren't ignored and they suffer the consequences of their actions. Kick them out of the group, because there are a few things I can't stand, and a bad sense of humor is two of them.
