Drubbed!

When I started thinking about posting a parody of Obama’s right-wing bashers, people around me recommended caution, saying I might be misread. But did I listen? I, who in the face of mounting evidence continue to deny the undeniable–and still believe that from my computer to your eyes, nothing is ever distorted–stuck to my guns (and that from someone who deplores the tepid gun-control laws!). Nah, I said, no way! People will understand, they know where I come from. My arguments were that regular readers of my blog a) know me well enough by now to be familiar with my precise place on the political spectrum (dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, leaning toward liberal, and b) will recognize parody for what it is.

Was I deluded! The day after I posted “Look who we have in the White House,” I logged in to my Counter Argument mail only to be hit by a relentless cascade of sharply worded comments and “unsubscribes.” On the other hand, I also received kudos as to my “courage” (why courage?), my sharp pen, my right-on parody, etc. Regular readers said that once past the shock of the first lines, they realized what I was doing and that they should never have doubted me. But those who lambasted me did so in no uncertain terms. I was called “scary,” “sick,” “a threat to national security,” possibly an enemy agent. Which I found mildly interesting. So, when tattered remnants of the tea party and conservative extremists such as Wayne LaPierre, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter and other assorted foaming-at-the mouth Obama haters daily call the President a monster on talk radios, on Fox and on conservative rags and blogs, they’re not a threat to national security but if I use the same words as satire, I become one? What they’re doing is to exercise their right to free expression under the First Amendment but when it comes to me, I’ve gone beyond the acceptable?

Okay, I’ve learned my lesson (do we ever stop learning and does all that lesson-learning ever get us anywhere?) and know that “from my computer to your eyes” doesn’t work like that–nothing travels in a straight line. Same “from my mouth to your ears.” How many times do we have to bite our tongue, too late, even with our closest and dearest, as what we express is misconstrued and misunderstood? Ah well, we are buffeted by such harsh winds in our day-to-day life, we are submerged by such torrents of words everywhere, that it becomes hard to know what to do and what to say. Yet I’m a writer. A writer who doesn’t write might as well stop breathing, so I’ll continue–on this blog, in my books, in stories, in poems. The best I can hope for is that others, beside the core group of my readers, sometimes get it right.