Rant & Rave

I thought I’d wait a couple days before commenting on the President’s news conference. You know, get some perspective, avoid any knee-jerk reactions, that sort of thing. But it isn’t helping. Those sixty-two minutes were absolutely devoid of any meaningful substance regarding our policies in Iraq. The closest thing we get is “it’s been a tough week.” I want to think our president has some capacity for seeing things as they are rather than how he wishes them to be. I want to think his intellect is agile enough to react to changing circumstances. But I’m not seeing that. I see a man who, when asked why he has to appear with Cheney before the 9/11 Commission, blatantly and unimaginatively dodges the question. I see a man who cannot think of one mistake–not one—he has made over the last three years. Jesus, if all he had said was that he once put on a pair of mismatched socks, that would have been preferable to watching him stammer for thirty seconds like a kid who hadn’t done his homework. I thought that along with the whole born-again thing came some humility. I’m not seeing humility. I’m seeing a smug sense of arrogance that is getting people killed.
Okay, I’m done.
Some people in the disability community are protesting the new film United States of Leland. I guess it’s about a teenager who murders another kid with autism. A lot of people are upset because apparently the film asks the audience to feel sympathy for the killer and because the kid with autism is treated as little more than a plot device. I got an e-mail at work asking people with disabilities to write letters to the editor criticizing the movie. This kind of protest bothers me. I’m not about to criticize any work of art I haven’t seen myself. And even if the movie is a worthless piece of shit, don’t we have better things for which to fight? One movie isn’t going to make or break society’s attitudes about disability. Yeah, yeah, I get that negative stereotypes of disability in the media is a bad thing, but are we gonna also start burning copies of Moby Dick because Ahab is one major amputee prick? How about Dickens and his whole pity party for Tiny Tim? I’m sorry, but sometimes identity politics really piss me off.