Category: Liberal Minded Editorial Commentary

By Order Of The Queen Of LaLa Land

Joe…out and about as we did our Adopt-A-Highway time today

If I were the Queen, I would make quite a few changes.

1) Every person over the age of the 18 would be required to work at least one hour unpaid per month serving in their community by working at shelters (people or pet), picking up trash outside, assisting the elderly, or otherwise aiding the less fortunate.

2) Anyone demonstrating a lack of understanding between “yield” and “merge” would be put in the dungeon.

3) Gummi bears would contain no calories and comprise the largest portion of the Food Pyramid.

4) The punishment for tossing a cigarette butt of a car window would be beheading.

5) Every model would be a size 8, and not the current size 8 (which is actually a size 12).

6) Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, headwriters for the now defunct, popular ABC drama LOST, would have to explain every single mystery they left unanswered from the show. I’m not kidding. Just because the show was called LOST does not mean it should have ended with every single viewer actually being lost.

7) Every household would be required to recycle at least 50% of their household trash.

8) No man over the age of 19 would be allowed to wear plastic, white sunglasses…unless he was Shaun White.

9) Wolves would be reintroduced in all lower 48 states to help control the deer population. They might eat a few people too, but that would simply prove Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest postulation.

10) Justin Bieber and Lindsey Lohan would be placed in a rocket and launched into outer space where they might actually be happy together, but no one would care.

11) Women’s uteruses would be free from government legislation, same-sex marriages would be not only granted but socially accepted, and stay-at-home parenting would be the most highly regarded profession.

12) Tattoos of any Disney, Looney Tunes, or other cartoon-like character would have to be placed on a body part not seen by the general public.

13) All men would be required to lift the toilet seat before peeing and place it gently back down into place afterward. Any man caught in non-compliance would be forced to clean every toilet in their home every day for a full year.

14) My husband (who is not the king, by the way) would be locked in shackles for an indeterminate amount of time for stealing the covers and then complaining about how hot it was while he was sleeping.

Perhaps my queenly wishes seem a bit ridiculous. I suppose you think the only thing I am the Queen of is LaLa Land. There’s no way even a queen as powerful as I am could bring about the kind of sweeping change I’m espousing here. You silly fool! It’s not my job to figure out how to make these things happen. That’s your job. I’m the Queen and you do my bidding. End of story. Now, get busy or off with your head.

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Hoodiewinked

Me in one of my six hoodies. I have hoodie issues.

For the sake of my sanity, I generally refrain from watching any news. This is something that started when Hurricane Katrina hit and my then 5 year old son started asking questions about what he was seeing on television. I decided that my sensitive child didn’t need all the sensational coverage the news provides these days. Now, instead of watching the news, I read it online from a variety of sources…including sources that normally run contrary to my own opinions. That is the only way I have found to ensure fair and balanced news coverage.

Because of my antipathy for television news, I was largely out of the loop on the shooting of Trayvon Martin. I missed the President’s comments to his parents, I missed Geraldo’s crazy ranting about hoodies, and I missed hearing about Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jacksons’ concerns regarding racial profiling. Today I finally sat down and read through some information to get a better perspective. There was a lot to sort through, but I found myself returning to the same thought repeatedly: this hoodie-wearing kid, armed only with Skittles and iced tea, did not have to die. George Zimmerman called 911. That was his duty as a civic-minded, neighborhood watch captain. That is all he should have done, and if he had done just that Trayvon Martin would more than likely not now be a top news story.

Despite being fairly liberal, I am not anti-gun. I’m fine with the second amendment. I’ve chosen not to own a gun because of our sons, but I don’t expect others to give up their firearms simply because they’re not my thing. What troubles me, though, is how gun possession seems to make some people believe they are the law. When Zimmerman spied Martin, Martin was not in the process of stealing someone’s car or breaking a window and entering someone’s home. He may have looked suspicious to the neighborhood watch captain, but he wasn’t doing anything illegal. Instead of allowing the authorities to address his concerns (wasn’t that the point of his call to 911?), Zimmerman apparently followed Martin on foot against the advice of the 911 operator and there was a deadly altercation. Would he have been so brave if he’d not been carrying a concealed weapon? Maybe. Maybe not.

I have six of hoodies and I do wear them, sometimes with the hood up because my ears are cold. I think about my sons. They like hoodies and Skittles too and their ears get cold. Someday I hope they will be teenagers. Do I really need to wonder about their safety if they’re out walking at 7 p.m. on a Sunday night wearing their hoodies? Do we really need to be that afraid of one another?

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Fake Plastic Trees

Our tattered and often read Random House copy of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

We took the kids to see The Lorax tonight. I have to admit that I pushed to see it. We’ve had the Dr. Seuss book in our house for years, and it’s a favorite of mine. On a camping trip years ago we were introduced to it at a ranger-led evening program. I liked the story’s message, but moreover I like Dr. Seuss.  I can’t help it. His books are just too much fun to read aloud, and I love to read aloud to our boys.

I could give you my review of the film, but I won’t. I will let you see for yourself what you think of it. What I am going to do instead is briefly address the controversy surrounding the film. On Fox News late last month, Lou Dobbs accused The Lorax of indoctrinating children by “espousing the virtues of green energy policies.” Having read the book many times, I must admit that I missed that agenda altogether. I also can’t recall any comments in the film about energy at all. While there are messages about pollution and destruction of the environment, the film (like the book) is a cautionary tale about abusing the finite resources of the planet on which we live. The Lorax plainly “speaks for the trees” which, in the story, are being felled at an alarming rate until ultimately every last truffula tree has been cut down.

Now, I’m not afraid to admit that I am left leaning. I am. Lou Dobbs could definitely lump me in with members of the liberal left with an environmental agenda. While I’ve never actually hugged a tree (at least not intentionally or while I was sober), I do try to respect the environment or at least acknowledge the importance of its existence. I mean, we currently occupy the only planet that we’ve thus far found can support human life. If we kill off the fish, birds, and trees on this planet or pollute or otherwise mismanage our water resources, we’ve got nowhere else to go. Unlike the refugees aboard Battlestar Galactica who can reside on a giant space ship traveling through the universe in search of another home, at this point in time if we ruin our planet we’re effectively screwed.

What saddens me the most about the controversy surrounding this film is that there is any controversy at all. The idea that there’s something inherently evil or ill-advised about caring for our planet is ridiculous. I also refuse to accept that it’s only liberals who care about conservation. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican president who over 100 years ago set aside 230 million acres of land under federal protection. He knew then the importance of presiding over nature with care and conscience. If Lou Dobbs and other members of conservative media want to view The Lorax as an attempt to indoctrinate the youth of this country with a “liberal” agenda of environmentalism, they’re welcome to their opinions. I’m going to reach across political lines and stand with Teddy on this one. I don’t want to live in a world like Thneedville with fake, plastic trees.

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”   ~Theodore Roosevelt

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