Saturday, January 26, 2013

When Your Wrong: When Snarky becomes Sneering, Its Time to Step Back and Reflect

I admit it.  I got carried away while tweeting a couple of days ago.  While watching the local late night news (can you rally call 9pm and 10pm late night?).  I normally don't waste my time with 20 minutes of weather and 5 minutes of happy news and sports but there was a breaking news bulletin.  One of my favorite black hat GOP characters, Michael Brodkorb, the former GOP PR guy notorious for throwing the verbal incendiary hand grenades, was reported to have just been in a serious traffic accident.

While I never for a moment was happy that the person was physically injured, there are very few human beings who deserve that and Brodkorb has never done anything to me personally other than to really annoy me.  Hell I don't even know the man.  But the point I lost in my glee and zeal to explore the funny possibilities of political one liners that this situation presented was here was another human being, with a family and friends who were very concerned over his physical well being and here is this jerk making light of a horrible accident within minutes of it occurring.

Truth be told, I did question, for a few moments, whether this type of tweet had crossed the bounds of snarky funny and was either ignorant or just plain old mean.  I try to think that I am neither but I am hardly the one to judge. As a matter of fact, this is exactly the point I continually lecture my conservative Republican friends over when they show an utter lack of compassion when it comes to social programs or extending unemployment insurance.  "There by the Grace of God go you" I repeatedly tell them.  Good thing I am a lawyer and only very rarely listen to myself.

So it was with some trepidation that I signed in to my twitter and email accounts associated with this blog following my obnoxious tweets.  Although I noticed I had picked up a few new followers or phrased another way "a 30% increase in followers", it only goes to show how as a society we reward bad behavior and especially, bad television. But there it was like an email from my conscious or better self:  "Yeow. Ouch.Too soon. Even for that Asshat."  And she was absolutely right.  I think it was Wylie Hubbard who said "If we live in forgiveness we die in our dreams".  While I am not sure exactly what this means, I do know that if you don't live in forgiveness you will die miserable and alone.  So thanks Kimbers, I deserved that.

I gotta believe that the reason that American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother and the countless cable "real tv" programs exist, ad nausea, is the humiliation factor.  This is one big reason I refuse to watch any of these electronic forms of garbage, (unless I am visiting a good friend's home whose cable box is stuck between Pawn Stars, Pickers and H2 the search for Ancient Alien deficit spenders or some such rubbish).

My favorite (dark and after New Town, very dark) comedy of 2012 was Bob Goldthwait's brilliant "God Bless America".  Don't feel bad if you have never heard of it, like his other comedic masterpiece "Shakes the Clown" this won't be coming to a theater near you.  The best, funniest comedy dares to speak truth and Bobcat lets rip with such an honest critique of current American society that is at the same time hilarious and "soul crushing" to quote the film's protagonist, Frank.  I call it the new Shakespeare Soliloquy.

I have to believe that the idea for the movie grew out of one of the three minute rants that are so perceptive and universal that his friends and colleagues encouraged him to expand it.  Unlike a Will Farrell comedy (needlessly long SNL sketch with very funny premise), Bobcat's GBA has a story line and characters who have some depth but whom, like in modern society, we do not become too emotionally attached to.  It is that emotional detachment that allows us to see people as numbers, numbers as statistics and make policy decisions with all the thought and complexity of "balancing the household or small business budget" to paraphrase Republicans.

Here are the offending tweets:

 
Former GOP PR goon attempts one last hook up with Amy Koch but connects with bridge abutment in honest mistake. Please get well.

In stunning development reveals relationship with Koch strictly virtual. Like she was just a pigment of his imagination

And my tweeted apology:



  Doing what I did to others who I dislike for doing what they do, even to prove a point, makes me too a pile of doo. Apologies to

(And my apologies to Amy Koch)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.