Hatred


My friend Dani is just so chock full of mean-spiritedness and hideous political fury that I almost can’t talk to him. He has said things that even the Bush administration won’t admit, he is further right than the people we can’t believe are that far right. And the weird thing is that I am comforted by his politics. I can think of many people who are nowhere near as adamant about their politics as Dani, and yet I think they are ultimately somewhat more destructive.

Americans as a whole seem to be mystified by what could have driven the terrorists to attack New York City. Yet, so many of them hated New York City before the attacks, and hate it still afterwards. How many times have people talked about East Coast Bias? About the leftist newspapers in New York and Washington?

Most of my religious family won’t go see an R-rated movie. Many of them want to home school their children, to protect them from the social evils that live in the American system. Many of my friends talk about Starbucks and Walmart and McDonald’s as if they are evil institutions trying to take over the world.

I have known bible-belt Christians that were as anti-American as middle eastern Arabs. I spoke with a woman, my age, back in ’95, who insisted that the existence of Hillary Clinton was a sign of the coming apocalypse, and she quoted scripture to me to prove it. There are smart people who are in favor of curtailing the right to privacy in an attempt to thwart those who would destroy our “freedom”.

This mobius strip logic might seem idiotic. Wait, “might” has nothing to do with it. This *is* idiotic. These people, in my humble estimation, are small minded morons. Anyone who decries the loss of the general store to the Walmart can kiss my ass, Walmarts are awesome and you can get anything you want for half the price. If they’re putting you out of business, come up with a better idea, don’t whine about the winners.

Look, my business is ridiculous. The three of us *killed* ourselves to break even on this show, and when we did it was considered a frickin’ *coup*. But we don’t sit around and bitch about how movies are stealing audiences from plays, or about stunt casting or bad Broadways musicals. We’re trying our own ideas, and if they don’t work then we don’t deserve to win.

So, that’s why I like Dani. He doesn’t claim we are attacking Iraq to give them democracy, he believes we’re attacking them because we had to attack someone, and they were the easiest target. Hideous, yes, but logical.

My dad once said that Angie Harmon had a big butt. Aside from the fact that she doesn’t (and that, if she’s got a big butt, then I’m a rhino), I liked the fact that he said what actually bothered him, he didn’t start talking about her acting. Say something ridiculous that you actually believe, not something reasonable based in half truths.