(Image from this post.) I’ll never love anybody as much as I love the people who refuse to treat politicians as if they’re anything more than human beings, almost always flawed ones who thirst for the opportunity to tell other human beings what to do with their lives. Look at that picture. In amongst the mass of political activists - themselves desperate to get politicians into office who will crackdown on women, on gays, or minorities - there was one who showed up with a sign that read, “Frothy Santorum” a reference to Rick Santorum’s neologism. In other words, somebody was simultaneously possessed to wade into a crowd of people there to advocate for particular politicians and communicate his own, simple message: Rick Santorum is an asshole. (At least, I assume that’s why s/he was there. I suppose that person might have been trying to reclaim the term from the gay and straight activists who championed its use as a response to Santorum’s caveman politics.) That is a person I can be friends with. The same sort of thing happened to President George W. Bush in 2006. A student at Kansas State approached the microphone at a rare public question-and-answer session to ask the president if he’d seen Brokeback Mountain: “You’re a rancher. A lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ if you’ve seen it.”  Predictably, people get uptight about this sort of thing, indignantly asking how anybody could ask the President such a thing, then getting the vapors and passing out. What’s important though about acts like this is that they, intentionally or not, remind us that not everybody worships at politics. Nor should they. To put that another way, it is sometimes okay to simply call another person an asshole, or in lieu of being quite so crass, finding a clever way to do so that gets the same message across. The guy with the sign last night? Jeremy Parker in 2006? Others throughout history? They might as well have been saying, “Hey, this guy’s an asshole. Let’s not forget that.”

(Image from this post.)

I’ll never love anybody as much as I love the people who refuse to treat politicians as if they’re anything more than human beings, almost always flawed ones who thirst for the opportunity to tell other human beings what to do with their lives. Look at that picture. In amongst the mass of political activists - themselves desperate to get politicians into office who will crackdown on women, on gays, or minorities - there was one who showed up with a sign that read, “Frothy Santorum” a reference to Rick Santorum’s neologism.

In other words, somebody was simultaneously possessed to wade into a crowd of people there to advocate for particular politicians and communicate his own, simple message: Rick Santorum is an asshole. (At least, I assume that’s why s/he was there. I suppose that person might have been trying to reclaim the term from the gay and straight activists who championed its use as a response to Santorum’s caveman politics.) That is a person I can be friends with.

The same sort of thing happened to President George W. Bush in 2006. A student at Kansas State approached the microphone at a rare public question-and-answer session to ask the president if he’d seen Brokeback Mountain:

“You’re a rancher. A lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ if you’ve seen it.” 

Predictably, people get uptight about this sort of thing, indignantly asking how anybody could ask the President such a thing, then getting the vapors and passing out. What’s important though about acts like this is that they, intentionally or not, remind us that not everybody worships at politics.

Nor should they.

To put that another way, it is sometimes okay to simply call another person an asshole, or in lieu of being quite so crass, finding a clever way to do so that gets the same message across. The guy with the sign last night? Jeremy Parker in 2006? Others throughout history? They might as well have been saying, “Hey, this guy’s an asshole. Let’s not forget that.”

3 months ago