Today while Braden attended swim practice, I laced up my Nike tennis shoes and took an hour and a half stroll on the elliptical. I passed the time with my best friend, Netflix, and two more episodes of "House of Cards," a Netflix original series starring Kevin Spacey, one of my all-time favorite actors, as Congressman Underwood, a cut-throat politico who orchestrates his success in Washington like a manipulator maneuvers a marionette.
While I never need an excuse for a Netflix marathon, today's Spacey date was a welcomed diversion from the wall of flat screen televisions broadcasting only ESPN and both national and local FOX News networks. As a literature nerd, I find sports banter banal in its first-run; I do not care to know the projections for the next big gridiron battle, but even the Sports Center loop was preferred over the FOX News continuous attention to Obama Care and Phil Robertson.
My attention shifted from Spacey's fictitious political melodrama to FOX News's delusory reportings of current political horrors brought upon the United States by Obama Care and upon Phil Robertson by the self-serving liberal political machine running wild in the United States. And I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Phil Robertson is a bigoted, back-woods Conservative Christian who said some horrendously hateful things, in my opinion, but it is farcical for FOX News to turn A&E's response to his ignorant statements into a political dialogue.
Phil Robertson's opinions about sexual orientation and race are driven by his religious and moral values, not political ideologies. While religion can correspond with political leanings, they are not synonymous, and to presume them otherwise is erroneous. His sentiments speak for a radical minority these days as evidenced by the 18 states that now support same-sex marriage--Utah approved its legislation on Friday, but the Attorney General has requested an appeal. As Robertson is neither a Senator nor a Congressman and cannot drive legislation at the state or national level regarding marriage or race or gender equality, we should allow the loon--as I see him--to speak his piece in peace. Let him speak for his views, but do not let him speak for either political party's ideologies.
Phil Robertson does not speak for me.
A&E, who has suspended Robertson indefinitely for his remarks, does not speak for me.
FOX News most certainly does not speak for me.
(Congressman Underwood could speak for me were he real.)*
As a Nation, our energies should be harnessed to choosing for office those who truly speak for us; to choosing real people, not reality people, to reflect our desires for humanity; to choosing honest discourse over scripted confabulation to change the rhetoric of America.
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