The Real News

Greetings, Citizens.

I have some cousins in Kansas that I am in contact with through Facebook. (Kousins from Kansas.) I haven't actually seen or talked with them in decades. Yesterday one of them posted that they were headed to a Tea Party rally. Shocker: Some poor, white folks from Kansas are teabaggers. My first thought was to respond (attack?) on said Facebook page with some highly charged, witty, sarcastic, Liberal retorts, but I stayed my sword. I had my finger on the trigger - but I couldn't pull it. I spared them my 'socialist' wrath out of pity. Pity!

And that got me to thinkin', my cousins are poor, white, overweight (it needs to be said), Walmart shoppin' hicks. And as much as I love ridiculing this class of Americans (teabaggers, not hicks) I have to admit that this lifestyle (lifestyle?) is where yours truly emerged - like a calf bursting from the juicy birth canal of a pregnant cow - and was raised. I was born and raised a hick. Too far from Chicago to say I'm from Chicago, but close enough to worship at the Church of the Bears. How I escaped (escaped?) no one knows. And by escaped I mean transcended the ignorant, narrow world of what I can only identify as fear of the unknown.

I have a point: I hate playing this game where one label tries to one-up another label. Because let's face it, we have been and always will be labels. Maybe I live in the wrong part of the world to be all self-righteous about this sort of thing. I open the paper every morning and read about the war of words between political parties, I see the bumper stickers, I watch TV. I want to rise above the petty bullshit. How do I do it?

I wish political affiliations were handled like the price of our homes, or our salaries - things you don't fucking talk or ask about. Think about all the other things we could be talking about... I'll make a list!

• Sex
• Art
• Music
• Baseball
• Poetry
• Food

Make these the top stories on your "news network" and I'm there, Chief. Everything else is just boring, yo.