ASHLAND, Oregon — Intellectually, I know that bees are dangerous, busy, determined, single-minded little creatures, but it is only when one of them regards my soft, pink (in my case) flesh as an enemy to it and by extension, all the other brother and sister bees, and plants its painful hot stinger therein that I understand on a visceral level the stupefying depths of their dangerous, busy, determined single-mindedness. A parallel can be drawn to my intellectual and visceral understandings of the loony left. I submit the following true and cautionary anecdote.
In October of last year my wife and two daughters attended a George Bush rally in nearby Medford, Oregon. Twelve thousand people attended, making it the largest single gathering in the history of southern Oregon. Having provided a few hours of get-out-the-vote phone calls for the Republican Party, they finagled special tickets and were lucky to stand ten feet in front of the great man. (Their only disappointment was being shoved aside a big fellow as they were about to shake the President’s hand.) My wife swears it was every bit as exciting as when she watched the Beatles perform in Kansas City from a distance of 387 feet.
Don’t even think you can begin to imagine the impact seeing President Bush had on my 11-year-old daughter, Texel (pronounced Teshel). Standing under the very shadow of the energetic, excited leader of the free world while 12,000 exuberant supporters shouted and cheered behind her effected a not-to-be-denied urge to MAKE A STATEMENT. Specifically, she decided, without even bothering to discuss it with her parents, to draw her line in the sand of the local alternative school where she and other homeschoolers (lockstep liberals for the most part) share a few classes during the week.
Texel emerged from her bedroom that next morning festooned from head to toe in Bush for President buttons, bumper stickers, hat, and a hand-drawn sandwich board sign. She was locked and loaded, ready for school, with an eager, innocently smiling face that makes the young Shirley Temple’s wan and pallid by comparison. Yes, Daddy’s Little Republican Rascal darn near broke my heart. You should have seen her in tap dance class, her signage flapping cheerily like the wings of freedom. Priceless.
She wore the stuff of her free speech bravely that day, proudly taking the worst the lib kids could dish out (and they learned well from their tolerant liberal parents), remaining as unaffected by their taunts as George Bush is by Molly Ivins’. Texel had fun poking President Bush in their noses. What a role model she’d make for Republican Senators!
Now, a very liberal woman, who is also a family friend, happened to see my daughter at the school. While she politely refrained from foaming at the mouth in our presence, she went home and was compelled to write an article drawing comparisons between my daughter’s experience with the Bush Rally and hers. Turns out she had been a protester in a group that found itself in the way of the presidential motorcade after the event. Local cops wrinkled some protesters’ clothes and, alas, let go a few rubber pellets in the left leaning direction. Of course the local ACLU is suing for the unparalleled trampling of civil rights.
Her article appeared in CommonGround.org, a far left site on the order of MoveOn.org.
All well and good. Glad to know my Little Republican Rascal wrinkled the faces of the far left. But here’s the nub. The other day I learned that in response to her piece in Common Ground, the author received over 600, count ’em, six hundred, personal emails!
Ouch. Let me brag for a moment and say that I’ve written 8 or 10 mighty fine pieces for this publication — mighty fine indeed — and have received roughly but an equivalent amount of emails and letters to the editor. My guess is that other contributors to TAS normally have about the same results.
I’m not the least bothered my friend received 60 times the response for her one article than I’ve received for all of my ten (which, again, if I may say so, were top notch pieces, thank you very much). More power to her.
Not that she needs more power. Hardly! She was well on her way to individually responding to each and every email she received when her address book was erased!
Out of compassion I have only one thing to say to the over-active, obsessive loony left buzzing bees of the socialist hive: GET A LIFE!!
Don’t liberals have anything else to do? Like, read a good book or get a good night’s sleep now and then? Or maybe, just stop and quietly think something through instead of being locked in chronic knee-jerk reaction? Perhaps the Republican Party can sponsor a mass market psychological counseling program for hard left Democrats and cure them of their anal-obsessive (should that be hyphenated or not? Hmm. I wonder) political behavior.
What is it about conservatives that inspires a lazy fare of political involvement? Do you think George Washington bothered to write Thank You Notes to the four or five guys who rowed his boat across the Potomac so that he could save our country? No way. But an 11-year-old Little Republican Rascal wears a few Bush-Cheney signs and 600 (count ’em, six hundred!!) liberals are up half the night firing emails sharing their thoughts about it across the country. Condoleezza Rice is up for the Senate vote for Secretary of State, and the same 600 are probably firing off emails about that, too. Bush holds a party or two for his Inauguration, and they’re all firing emails. Like the Duracell Bunny and Michael Moore, they just keep going, going, going.
Type, type, type, type, shout, shout, shout, shout, protest, protest, protest, protest, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, whine, whine, whine, whine.
Alas, I have learned firsthand that the fringe left is as tireless as it is tiresome.
