SEL-DISCOVERY#2

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> In an earlier blog that started this “series” I wrote:
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> "I am feeling sorry for myself. I just had my gall bladder removed. I
> sold my wife’s tricycle because she hates it. My recumbent bike is
> sitting with flat tires in the garage.”
>
> One of my readers, a successful writer herself wrote: “That could be the
> opening for a short story, a memoir, or a novel.
>
> How many times have I heard that one? It is one of many variations on a
> theme that continues to haunt me, continues to dog my life because
> people who remember me as a cranky radio talk show host, want to hear
> again about all those days.
>
> Some remember me with anger. Some remember me with affection.
>
> So perhaps I should write a memoir which would have to include the
> inside scoop on being a “cranky radio talk show host.”
>
> You asked for it. Here goes: To be good at it you have to possess two
> things: anger, and intolerance.
>
> You can’t just pretend to be angry and intolerant, you have to /be/
> angry and intolerant. In spite of comments made recently to me by an old
> fellow radio guy that all the radio talk show hosts were only “putting
> it on.” The anger and rudeness was all part of an act.
>
> He’s dead wrong. At least for me. I am angry. I am intolerant. A radio
> talk show let me ventilate by removing the civilized barriers that keep
> us polite when inside we are seething. I let the inside out.
>
> I am still angry, which is why I write many cantankerous entries in my
> blogl
>
> The same respondent who told me I had the opening for a memoir chastised
> me for spending so much time fulminating over everything that is wrong.
> She tells me I should look inside myself more. I have, I’m not thrilled
> with what I found, but it is me. Another respondent, coincidentally some
> I worked with many years ago, who still carries on with her writing,
> wrote about having to get out from under everything I had been before
> but at the same time encouraged me to keep writing.
>
> Forgive me the soul-baring
>
> I chatted with my wife who is always telling me to stop being angry
> about things that don’t really matter. “You’ll only make your blood
> pressure go up for nothing,” she says. She’s talking about things that
> irritate me. I am irritated by people who, when they are driving seem to
> have their minds in another place or have no idea where they are going.
> She (my wife) is at me for shouting at the television every time someone
> makes a terrible grammatical gaffe. “I’m trying to watch and you’re
> distracting me.” Once you have allowed yourself to vent anger, you
> continue to do it. The difference today is that nobody is listening.
>
> “But,” I reminded her, “I’m not talking about the little angers or
> irritations. I’m talking about the big things, the behaviour that
> matters in an otherwise civilized society.”
>
> Here is a short, but far from complete, list of things that make me angry:
>
> Ideologues, political or religious, whose decisions are always made on
> the basis of whether or not they fit with their ideology. It usually
> applies to people of the hard Right or Left, who cannot make decisions
> independent of their so-called “core” beliefs. I can believe I’m saying
> this: I exempt Stephen Harper, since he seems to have transcended his
> neo-con beliefs and has proclaimed himself to be in favour of the
> government using financial stimulus to help the economy recover.) Even
> the arch-enemy of anything that stems from government, our finance
> minister, has found a new pragmatism. Maybe it’s all just a ploy to stay
> in power. But that’s cynical.
>
> Ideology creates an intellectual straightjacket. Every decision you make
> has to be backed by ideological certainty. So, for my erstwhile friends
> on the left, who, in the name of Social Justice, think they can embrace
> every lost cause and every forlorn protestor, simply because they must
> always be on the side of protest.
>
> Or the hard-line religious right, who make all decisions based on what
> they believe tube canon or gospel. So the madness of outlawing stem
> cell research because of some notion that somehow a frozen 4 cell thing
> is “life.” So they invoke things like: “I can’t fly in the face of my
> basic principles.
> ” No pragmatism. No notion about things like the greater good for the
> greater number.
>
> I make this comment fully aware that many of you will ask” “As a Jew,
> how do you tolerate the orthodox view of women as inferior, or Israel’s
> right to take what “God has ordained.” The answer is: I don’t.
>
> I am echoing what generations of thinkers and philosophers have said –
> that many people simply can’t think critically enough to make decisions
> but fall back on whatever dogmas they hold dear, dogmas that offer no
> room for individual decisions. In fact, these are the people who feel
> most comfortable hemmed in by a rigid set or rules and by rulers who
> brook no heresy.
>
> Next time out, I’ll deal with intolerance. I’ll deal with the precious
> notion that “everyone is entitled to his/her opinion.”
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