In our efforts to stand up for the elderly of the Motion Picture Home, we may have become hyper-sensitive to the mindless injustices visited not only on the aged and infirm, but also upon our children. I find myself becoming particularly enraged when, in our passionate disregard for someone as vacuous and potentially lethal to our existence as Sarah Palin is, we go after her kids.
I read a post from a “friend” of mine on Facebook, Michael Dean Shelton, that linked to a Huffington Post story regarding Willow Palin's banter over Facebook with friends that featured her use of some egregious and pitifully juvenile homophobic slurs. Michael, who could very well be gay (he is a young, good-looking guy, in showbiz, who lives in West Hollywood — go ahead and connect the dots) is one of my typical and cherished Facebook relationships: friend in avatar only, slipping in and out of the ether, who I've never met but have achieved a digital bond with.
The salient point that Michael made impressed me as individualistic, insightful and astute. He seemed to be bucking the trend of some of his other fellow travelers that chose to chastise him for not following the obvious direction of their group-think. That point being, in Michael's words: "…attacking a 16 year old — this is an issue for her parents and not the world." Michael went on to lay into a couple of organizations that I suspect are trying to make political hay of this youthful gaffe.
Michael distilled his anger into something that was simply elegant and right-on in his summation. In other words, this is for the family to address. Not the media, not vapid talking heads, not politicos on either side of the aisle. Change the channel.
We seem to bristle quickly when words like this arrive with a loud knock at our own front door. Had Willow chastised her friend with "screw you and your dad is a fat Jew bastard," I might have taken more umbrage to her words. However, let's be real. Calling another kid a “faggot,” or characterizing something annoying or disturbing as “gay,” is the fault of a society that embraces misogyny and racism in its music, depraved and grisly violence in its cinema, and gynecologically vivid images on its monitors.
It's the same society that breeds schoolyard bullies, financial industry pirates, and hypocritical politicians and clergy who are more expert in achieving a wide stance in an airport men's room stall than they are in dealing with the truth of their own sexuality. If we could channel that negativity into compassion, then we could care less about asking, and would not find anyone who even remotely cared to tell.
It's the regurgitation of not only a right-wing agenda, but of a socially aware demographic that forgot what it's like to be the underdog, and having gained momentum in numbers, is forsaking common sense. No, I'm not talking about homosexuals — I'm talking about liberals. We shun the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh until we look in the mirror to see them staring back at us.
Going after Sarah Palin's kids because you can't stand Caribou Barbie brings you down to the level of those whose childish words and racial and homophobic verbal arrows are part of their daily lexicon. You are an idiot, pure and simple. I would sooner gargle with razor blades than I would vote for Sexy Sarah, and would do anything in my power to derail her bid for anything higher than a reality series — but her kids are off-limits, verboten, taboo.
Sarah Palin will self-destruct on her own. We needn't capsize the innocence of a poor kid who didn't ask to become a part of that peculiarly Palin gene pool, whose only offense was to use the wrong word in a conversation that she thought was private.
Get over it. Don't heap your bile on the results of “Dancing With the Stars” or a child's internet posts. Instead let's focus on the head of Medusa.
