Take The Pledge, You Intolerant Bigot

Leaving San Francisco was one of the great joys in my life. At long last, I wouldn't have to spend most of my day being lectured about being a racist and a bigot simply for having come into existence. Living now in Caliente, in an area that is populated by whites, Mexicans and African-Americans who are too busy working together to waste time talking about tolerance, I thought I had gotten away from the legions of self-righteous hypocrites.

On the other hand, living the solitary life (family aside) I tend to watch a bit more television than in the past. Most of what's on is worthless, so I use the TV for background noise. But there are some shows worth watching, and there is one network that has done an amazing job of producing fun, interesting, thought-provoking fare. That network is USA. Sure, the vast majority of programming is nonsense, but their percentage of good stuff is far better than the networks and less over-the-top than pay cable/satellite channels.

To a greater or lesser degree, the shows I enjoy most and actually watch include White Collar, Royal Pains, Psych, Covert Affairs, In Plain Sight, and my absolute favorite, Burn Notice. For those of you who haven't figured it out by now, I'm not a cultural snob. I can quote Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Jefferson with the best of them. But sometimes life needs to be a bit more middle-brow (even low-brow under the right circumstances). So unlike so many of my friends and associates, I freely admit that I am a TV watcher. I laugh at the humor, tear over at the sad parts, and allow myself to be manipulated for those few hours by clever writers.

USA developed a theme a couple of years back called "Characters Welcome." I tended to ignore it because it was the usual pap. They would gather many of their stars together to say things like "I'm half-Mexican, I'm a Jew, I'm a Christian, I'm spiritual, I'm a single father," and other things of no note. In other words, these Hollywood/TV babies thought that all those things made them "characters," when in fact it simply made them Americans. Still, I didn't feel pressured into politically-correct thinking, nor was I either convinced to watch USA shows or refuse to watch them because of their little commercial squibs.

Lately (apparently for a month), the network has developed a new theme: "Characters Unite." The first of what is planned to be an entire month's worth of such feel-good messages was done using one of their pretty-boy stars of dubious sexuality telling us that he has taken the pledge, and wants all of us to join together with him and give up our intolerance. We must cast out our evil demons of bigotry and learn to love and respect each other's religions and beliefs.

Now I grew up with a 2000 year old message from a Jew with long hair who told us "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and "even as ye do unto the least of these my brethren, ye do also unto me." So I've tried to follow that admonition with a mix of commendable success and terrible failure. Somehow, listening to a rather twisted version of the same message delivered by a vacuous child who was born twenty-five or thirty years after the Civil Rights movement, I am not motivated to rush out to the nearest person not of my race or religion, wear sackcloth and heap ashes on my head, and hug him in a show of slobbery brotherhood.

So what brought this all about? Was it the perfidious Jews practicing their satanic rituals? Or was it the Catholics hiding incendiary bombs sneaking down the street to burn down a Lutheran church? Perhaps it was the evil Buddhists, chanting constantly in order to keep all their neighbors awake at night and unable to function the following day. Maybe it's the Hindus trying to keep us all from having that hamburger at McDonald's lest the slaughtered cow that forms the main ingredient be somebody's grandmother. Or maybe it's all of them joining forces to murder that atheist in his bed. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Apparently, USA knows, but so far they have failed to enlighten us on just who is the perpetrator of this discrimination and who is the victim.

But you can rest your minds about one thing. We know without a doubt that at least one group is guilty of none of this horrible hatred. Islam is, after all, the religion of peace, and we also know that no more than fifty or sixty of them worldwide have ever done anything that violates the rules of that religion of tolerance and love. And joining with the Muslims throughout the world, the USA stars are echoing the loving brotherhood of Mohammed by giving us the following mission statement: "Characters Unite represents a movement committed to combating intolerance and discrimination, and to promoting greater acceptance and mutual respect."

USA will "donate $1.00 to its nonprofit partners for every pledge made during Characters Unite Month." Now doesn't that just warm your cockles? And since USA hasn't actually identified the victims of this massive outpouring of American intolerance, I'm going to assume that one of those "partners" is CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations).

The whole campaign must have formed in the minds of the loving honchos at USA after several rounds of mass murders of American Muslims, uncountable burnings of Muslim mosques nationwide, public stonings of Muslim children, and the horror of group rape of innocent Muslim women in Poughkeepsie, Omaha and Bismarck. For shame, you bigots. You are attempting to wipe out an entire religion--the one that tolerates everyone, keeps women in high regard, and would never consider attacking those of a different faith or of no faith at all. Least of all would the religion of peace consider mass slaughter of civilians who aren't at war with anyone.

The great thing about movie and TV actors is that they see more than just the usual violent acts of bigots. They live such lives of scholarly study and deep introspection that they can see things we mere peasants can't see. Subtlety. They are also motivated to hector us for such massive acts of non-violent (so far) opposition to the building of an Islamic monument right next to the hole in New York City created by a few wacky kids who falsely claimed to be Muslims.

You should all cooperate with USA and their script-reading intellectuals by going to their website and getting that dollar for CAIR by swearing: "I took the pledge against prejudice, intolerance and hate." Just go to the link that says: "Support Characters Unite and spread the word throughout the world." Forget that outdated admonition "go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel." There are bigger fish to fry than what that insignificant bigoted Jew said 2000 years ago. It is time to cling to your olive branches and Korans and abjure all those other intolerant religions.

I'll have to close now so that I can myself take the pledge. I shall then spend the rest of the day speaking to my children and grandchildren about my lifelong mistakes made while I was an unthinking bigot. And as for the subtlety, I shall also point out to them that it was my secret intolerance and hatred of other religions that I cloaked in the misleading words "self-defense." Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. How do you say that in Arabic?