Throwing Rice, Hurling Insults...America Has Forgotten The Difference...

The world watched, with great interest and not just a little admiration, as the youngest grandson of Queen Elizabeth and an accomplished, confident young American woman exchanged marriage vows in the history drenched atmosphere of St George’s Chapel in Windsor.

America, by the millions, witnessed the event via global broadcast, an event marked by not only the amount of pomp and circumstance expected at a traditional royal wedding but also, in an obvious and remarkable leap into a more contemporary attitude, a bride who walked unchaperoned until the final few steps of her aisle journey, a sermon from a passionate Chicago preacher, rocking a Chapel more accustomed to a stately, if not stodgy, presentation with one artfully edging right up to the line marked “old time religion”, as well as the culturally diverse sounds of a 20 member gospel choir singing the Ben E King classic, “Stand By Me”, a cello performance by the first black winner of a major British music prize and culminating with the sounds of Etta James version of a song that became synonymous with the American civil rights movement, “Amen/This Little Light of Mine”.

Hyperbole aside, this wedding was a breakthrough of sorts, a mixture of deeply rooted tradition and modern, even progressive, attitude. No windows were rattled, and no walls got shaken down, but the times, they were clearly a-changin.

Inevitably, given the magnitude of the event, personal expressions, opinions and observations were thick as Yorkshire pudding, via, of course, the mixed blessing marvel of the 21^st century, social media.

Let me offer you some of those opinions and observations, in this case, pulled from the Facebook page of the talk radio station where I guest host from time to time.

“Billions of watchers? Doubtful…We won the war in 1776, so who cares?...Wouldn’t watch it if I was paid to do so, can’t really wrap my head around all the hype…Who cares…she was one of Hollywood’s elite saying if Trump was elected President she would be leaving the country, my thoughts are she is Great Britain’s problem now…”     And, from a keen and insightful mind of few words…”who cares…Trump 2020”.

The temptation on this end of the microphone, instinctively, is to offer up a little quick draw and a rapid fire couple of shots, starting with something like “keepin it classy, America”. Or, to be more accurate in this example, “keepin’ it classy, Sussex County, Delaware” as that’s where this little babbling brook of pride, passion, pettiness and poison babbles.

The second inclination is to wander off into a pointless commentary about either free speech or politicizing a non-political event or even the wedding itself.

I’m not a fan of pointless commentary. I like a good point on commentary. I make it a point to try and put a good point on commentary. And, whenever I think it applicable, I enjoy sticking that point as far up the closest tight ass, or group of tight asses, I come across.

But, before I furnish the foil, let’s deal with those three tentative topics of chit chat…in reverse order.

First, the wedding itself. Here’s the very bottom of the bottom line list.

It was their wedding. Not yours or mine. And whatever they wanted to do was their business. Not yours or mine. And if you are one of those feeling the need to chime in on the how, what, when, where or why of any of it, you need to mind your own damn business. Because when it comes to what you think of their wedding, or the marriage, or, even them, personally? Well, to borrow an eloquently constructed phrase from one of our previously quoted commenters…who cares what you think?

Politicizing a non-political event? Admittedly, we live in very political times, passions are high, tempers are stuck in flare mode and pretty much anything can be quickly, if not instantly, turned into a partisan potshot. Unlike your average current office holder or Evangelical anything, though, I won’t play the hypocrite card, so, I’ll freely fess I personally have to bite my tongue more than you might think I bite my tongue to keep from “going there” with every breath I take, every move I make. But, again, at the bottom line, it wasn’t a political event, it wasn’t promoted that way and pretty sure no one in the families saw it as a political event, so using the ceremony and the accompanying pomp and/or pageantry as yet another excuse to wave those really stupid looking Make America Great Again caps in our collective faces is, at the least…at the very, very, very least, an act of callousness, classlessness, ignorance, well, hell, for those who get all flustered when I use big words…it’s just rude.

Yo’ mama taught you what rude means, right? Hmm. Lesson didn’t stick too well. That’s unfortunate.

That brings us around to that battle weary, not just a little frayed at the edges phrase that pays…free speech.

And here’s where I get to use that finely pointed point I referred to earlier.

Stick your free speech. You’re rude. And you need to shut up.

But you won’t will you?

Because whatever you say, even it it’s callous, classless, ignorant or…say it with me, rude, it’s your right, right? Your right as an American. Says so right there in that Constitution that you’ve become a scholarly expert on in the last couple of years.  That Constitution that was written a long time ago, in a culture and society far, far away, a culture filled with men of passion and temper and emotion, not unlike modern passion and temper and emotion, but, and here’s where things go south these days, also a culture of courtesy and respect and refinement and decency and adherence to basic, even primal, human virtues, like courtesy and respect and refinement and decency.

But the age of Trump ain’t the age of Jefferson, baby.

Hell, the age of Trump ain’t even the age of “The” Jeffersons, baby.

It’s an age of venom and viciousness, hatred and bigotry, ignorance and intolerance, animosity, attack and avarice…yeah, I know, sorry, big words again.

It’s an age where opinion is no longer a contribution to conversation, instead, it’s a blunt object, a sharp dagger, a locked and loaded, fully endorsed, bought and paid for by the NRA weapon used to hurt, harm, maim, malign, yes, I do actually know what all these words mean and, yes, I often do use them just to piss you off.

It’s one of the perks of being on this side of the microphone.

But, again, not wishing to be branded the hypocrite, let me offer this by way of constructive contribution to the conversation.

Ignorance, hatred, bigotry, intolerance, venom, viciousness…. ain’t nothin’ new.

Meet the new human being. Same as the old human being.

Failed, flawed creatures, we are. A perplexing and paradoxical concoction of love and hate, pride and shame, kindness and cruelty, compassion and selfishness, arrogance and humility…good…and evil.

Don’t believe me? Pick a history book. Any history book.

Better yet, pick up a Bible. Not just for breakfast, or use in spreading sanctimonious like Nutella on a baguette, those revered, while pithy, pages are chock-a-block full of the aforementioned conflicts raging like a river inside the hearts and minds and souls of mere mortals like you…and me.

What’s different, what’s both egregious and heartbreaking, in this particular bullet point on mankind’s timeline, is that what makes us weaker and poorer and less than we can be, could be…should be…is that our better angels are currently getting their asses kicked in the proverbial battle.

Hatred, bigotry, intolerance, pick a failing, any failing, are not currently on the list of failings.

Borrowing, one more time, from our friends The Jeffersons, those failings have moved on up. To the top of the list of regular, typical, even expected behaviors.

It’s called normalizing.

It happens when something unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable, either through careless disregard of the safety protocols in place to prevent leakage or lazy indifference to the dangers of not keeping an eye on the cork sealing the bottle where those toxic human flaws are stored….or, and here’s where it gets particularly pathetic, when the cork is purposely yanked out of the bottle, allowing those toxins to spill into the mainstream of our lives, said yanking done for no other reason whatsoever than to further the personal ambitions of someone whose inner emptiness can only be filled by praise and worship and adoration for doing a job they are staggeringly unqualified to do.

A job that innately requires the capacity for uniting, as opposed to dividing, inspiring as opposed to inciting…a job that cannot be successfully done without that capacity…and, more importantly, the ability to exercise those skills.

Suddenly, like the heart attack that comes in the middle of the night, courtesy is displaced by callousness, kindness is rudely shoved aside by cruelty, compassion’s throat is cut by the serrated blade of intolerance.

And what was anathema…becomes normal.

That’s the thing, too, about corks.  Sometimes, they simply can’t be put back into the bottle.

Champagne is like that.

The kind of champagne you might find at a wedding.

Even a wedding that was a mixture of deeply rooted tradition and modern, even progressive, attitude.

A wedding that brought a diverse tens of thousands of that nation’s citizens to the streets to cheer and celebrate and respect and honor two apparently good and decent people who took part in a respectful, compassionate, inclusive ceremony.

And not a cheap shot, foul mouth, intolerant yammer..or red cap..within a thousand miles.

Actually, 4,417 miles to be exact.