The Funny Farm

The Start Of The Madness

Tomorrow I will be attending my annual family reunion. This year it's in Holly, Michigan (population : 200 more when the family's in town) (it would be more, but not everybody goes to the reunion any more). And this year it appears that only my parents and myself will be representing our branch of the family tree - only 3 of the 12 family members (my parents and my siblings and their sig-o's) of my parents' generation and my own that would normally have attended the festivities.

My personal experience dealing with the elements of wrongwing nuttery began four years ago, at the 2000 version of the reunion. I talked to one of my cousins, and asked him if he was going to vote for the cokehead (the Chimperor) or the pot smoker (president-in-exile Gore). He proceeded to fill the air with conservabot takling points from that time, and spent fifteen minutes telling me about how wrong I was about pRezNit Prozac, how dare I call him a cokehead when there's no proof, yadda yadda yadda. He then finished off the conversation by saying that, yes, Gore is a pot head so he can't be trusted. And that he couldn't believe I was so ill-informed about things - he told me I needed to start looking around the internet before I spread wild, unsubstantiated rumors about the Torturer in Chief.

Needless to say (but I will anyway), I was somewhat taken aback upon basically hearing the opinions of El Chupa Cabra coming out of my cousin. Especially coming from someone whose opinions I respected since childhood, and whom I considered to be a respected elder in my personal circle. Even then I was aware of the hatemongering and hypocrisy emanating from that particular orifice, and I was upset that what was coming out of my cousin's mouth could have been copy for PigBoy's show (maybe not in its' more, um, logically inconsistent moments, but still...). And I was upset because it seemed to me that my intelligence was being challenged by my cousin's assertions as well. But, more than anything, I was upset because it seemed to me that what I thought was a pillar of my world view was now shown to be a minion of the Dark Side.

So, anyways,... it's now four years later. I feel honor- and duty-bound, as a card carrying memeber* of the Forces For Good In Our Time, to ask my cousin once again about his feelings in the matter of our current political situation. I don't think I'll be asking him if he is voting for the cokehead or the pot smoker this time, but I will hopefully have the cojones** to say that I was wrong when I talked to him four years ago.

I should have asked him if he wanted to vote for the drunken cokehead who deserted in wartime or the religiously insane pothead who actually went to Vietnam. And I should have been reading Rush Limba-Lying Nazi Whore before I talked to him about pResident Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

* - yes, this was a Freudian slip. But it seems somewhat appropriate as I have been stretching my talents (cough) as a sloganeer within the grounds of the Funny Farm these last couple years.

** - pronounced co-(as in cold)hone-ays here at the Funny Farm.

Posted by (: Tom :) at August 7, 2004 08:12 AM