Remember Who Said It

Written : May 11, 2009

No matter which side of the aisle you’re on, you should engage a person who’s on the other side in conversation. You may come to better understand what they believe and that’s a good thing. It may shock you, but stay with it. Try it, it might be interesting and you may learn something.

Recently I spoke to a couple of liberals. I asked one acquaintance, a likeable person, if he could explain something to me that I didn’t understand. Why does the left hate George W. Bush so much? I’m not sure if he had spoken with a conservative about politics in recent years because he jumped at the chance to communicate with me. We sat down and spoke softly. He seemed to feel it was multi-faceted but it was mostly about religion. It was about how George W. Bush used religion to justify what the left likes to call “his war”, the conflict in Iraq. He shocked me a little when we discussed the life issue. He said he didn’t know when life really begins, but that wasn’t the shocking part. He maintained that he didn’t really know if a baby was even alive! A baby was a jumble of needs, but is that really life, he mused? I have to strongly disagree and wondered if this guy had ever had children, but just exchanging ideas was actually a good thing. I tried to imagine my six month old grandson as not being alive, and I couldn’t! Trying to empathize with me he suggested that I think that Newsweek and Time magazines are biased to the left. “Correct”, I said.

A liberal friend was not happy about Sarah Palin. He recalled what he had heard on Saturday Night Live (not what Gov. Palin actually said). “I can see Russia from my house”, he repeated in a slow cadence, in Palin’s Alaskan accent, trying to imitate and/or to make fun of her. I believe Tina Fey (the comedian) was the one who actually said it and Fey said it just that way. What Palin really said was, “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” She said variants of that quote in several interviews, but not what my friend robotically repeated. Palin was only pointing out that the proximity of Alaska to Russia had to be taken into consideration by the Governor in some of her decision-making, but she wasn’t trying to equate that to having foreign policy experience. Liberals obviously disagree with my assessment.

What they say is definitely interesting. However, it usually boggles my mind because I don’t see things their way. Judging from Wanda Sykes’ controversial comments at the recent presidential correspondents’ dinner, there’s much exaggeration. I realize she’s a comedian, but is it really a stretch to imagine the “jokes” being quoted as the people forget who said it, but remember the mean-spirited words?

Keywords: Conservatism, Conservative, blog, politics, political, Mark Cohen, Mark A. Cohen, Liberal friends, liberal acquaintances

Keyword Phrases: “conservative blog”, “liberal and conservative”, “conservative and liberal”, “republican blog”, “From the Left to the Right”, “Mark Cohen”, “Mark A. Cohen”, “liberal friends”, “liberal acquaintances