Conservative for a Month!

Lest I be accused of only listening to those who agree with me, I am going to be a conservative for a month. Not like Mr. Colbert (wish I had his talent, if only so I could get a chance to vomit on the tarmac after getting a ride in a fighter plane (sigh)), but more like your average angry Georgian. I am not going to listen to MSNBC, or read the NY Times (well, maybe a little), but I will rail at the Wisconsin unions, and complain that Obama is a communist Kenyan Manchurian candidate.  I am still going to listen to NPR, but only in the car: I do not wish to develop road rage. Nor will I read David Brooks. He is a sixth-string intellectual trying to pass for fourth-string, and usually falling on his face. Besides, he’s in the Times. Instead, I will read the Boston Herald, watch O’Reilly and Hannity, read Milton Friedman, and say that Anne Coulter passes for really hot. I may even undertake the Ultimate Challenge: Listening to Glen Beck.
I understand the need to listen to people with the same views. I know the scenario:  It’s the end of the day. You’ve been stuck in traffic behind some fellow American , perhaps driving a Cadillac Escalade or a Hummer or one of the other gas guzzlers that give good profits to our country, emblazoned with bumper stickers that say, “God, Guns, and Guts Made This Country Great!” or “Why the Hell should I have to press ‘1’ for English?” Meanwhile, someone else with an NRA sticker and one that reads “WAR never solved anything except slavery, oppression, genocide, communism, fascism, and nazism …now for terrorism!” gives you the finger just because she doesn’t like the way you drive. Annoyed, you flip through the stations and you can’t get NPR, but yet there seem to be a hundred Country-Western music stations with someone either whining about his cheating wife or his drinking problem (family values!) and while being tortured by these omnipresent philistines you contemplate that the music program was just cancelled at your kids’ school while the police work details seem to be spreading like the fusarium wilt that’s attacking your heirloom tomatoes. You know what you need: you need the comforting voice of Tom Ashbrook or Rachel Maddow. You need the indignation of Keith Olbermann. You need the unsurpassed humor of Gail Collins, or Tina Fey being all mavericky. You just need to hear somebody that agrees with you for crying out loud, that shows the world how the other side is not only full of idiots, but evil idiots. And not just evil idiots, but evil warmongering  evolution-denying wife-beating Huddle House-eating gun-toting bass-boating undereducated or country club elite overarmed child-hating red-baiting selfish Chicago-school worshipping odious IDIOTS!
But therein lies the rub. America, at least the America I was taught to love, buddy, doesn’t gather under the balcony to raise our arms in agreement. Not us, Mack. We argue. We contend. We listen to the other side, before respond with a body blow to the spleen. Metaphorically speaking, naturally . We entertain long moments of self-doubt in which we wonder, “Jeez, what if I am wrong?”
This shouldn’t be too hard. I came out of college all ready to believe the disciples of Hayek (Friedrich, not Salma, whom I am still prepared to believe in) and pumped to vote for the Gipper. We all make mistakes, and my life since the Iran-Contra revelations began to edge me further left—culminating in a full break when Pat “I’m not dead yet!” Buchanan declared a culture war—until I ended up as the unabashed liberal (not a progressive, thank you very much) that I am today.
So that’s it. March Madness. Let’s see if I survive.