6/09/2004 10:03:00 AM by Rob

Jesus. Some of you are just hyperpsychotic fuckmonkeys!

All of the venom on the comments, just because I suggested that Ronald Reagan was no saint. I didn't even hate him. The Union survived before him, and after him. He was charismatic, and for that alone, he is remembered fondly by many people (as long as he didn't order police with tear gas to invade his community).

I'm no closet pinko, and I resent you for suggesting it, just because I am opposed to our occupation of Iraq. I love America, and I want to see all of our troops come home alive, and in one piece. I have NEVER believed it was our business to be the World's Policeman, nor is it our responsibility to rebuild entire countries. The Iraqis are NEVER going to thank us for liberating them. You can't help someone who's too proud to accept it.

Anyway, whenever I even sneeze in a political way, you guys go nuts. I don't understand the paranoid mindset that always looks for something to go wrong, and I also don't understand the mindset that allows unblinking, unconditional faith in authority, either.

Most people (even Dubya) do good things. And they do bad things. NOBODY's infallible. Nobody. But it always seems that, when someone dies, the press piles all over each other to be the first and the most to ooze the most unctuous praise all over the corpse.

If you have half a brain, that kind of waxy love buildup ought to make you queasy.

It sickens me to see it heaped on dead politicians, on dead movie stars, on dead athletes, and in the case of people like Sammy Sosa, on live athletes, too.

Sosa is a good ballplayer, much better than average. He has won us many games. On balance, I'd rather have had him in RF the last 12 years, than, say, a parade of has-beens and never-weres. I just recoil at the unconditional love he gets, without mention of his 'grip it and rip it' approach to the game, both swinging and throwing, that has lost us many games, too.

You HAVE to balance the good with the bad, because many of us have memories, and chafe when some talking head tries to force the rose-tinted shades on my face.

Life, my friends, is not black-n-white. It's drawn with a big ol' 64-stick box of crayons, and it bugs the fuck out of me when some toothy suntan-whore tells me that chickenshit is chicken kiev.

I can tell what color it is, and whether it's oozing herb butter or something else.

---