High School Bullies All From Red States?Instapundit links to
this post at Salon (brief ad watch required).
Jones asked the crowd of several hundred filling the Swedish American Music Hall on Market Street -- who'd also come to hear from the likes of George "Framing" Lakoff and MoveOn.org co-founder Wes Boyd -- how many of them were born and raised in San Francisco. A handful of hands went up. How about born and raised in California? More hands. But not that many.
Jones, who grew up in Tennessee, told the crowd that he'd felt out of place as a kid -- like many of them probably did -- and moved away. But over the years spent in more liberal places like the Bay Area, he somehow forgot how to talk to folks from his old hometown. He said that when he goes back to Tennessee for Thanksgiving and launches into a 10-minute monologue about politics, he's met by embarrassed silences from his relatives, the very kindest response being: "Well, that was a mouthful."
"How long are we going to let being bullied in high school run our lives and run our movement? It's time for us to have some kind of homecoming," he said, to vigorous applause from an audience apparently now eager to connect with long-lost red-state brethren.
Fellow panelist Adam Werbach, the former President of the Sierra Club, who now sits on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, offered this rallying cry: "We will dissolve junior high!"Now of course, the irony is that far more people are moving to Red States than from them. And as a Red Stater who grew up in what is now a Blue State, I can tell you that bullies are quite common even in the most liberal areas. Beyond that, I don't quite get the anecdote--is Jones suggested something different than a 10-minute monologue (which, as Glenn points out, nobody particularly enjoys no matter what the subject)? If so, then what does the bullying point have to do with anything? Is the argument that having been bullied, lo those many years ago, makes one give monologues rather than let someone get a word (or a punch) in edgewise?
Of course, the anecdote reminds me of nothing so much as this (unintentionally)
hilarious Maureen Dowd column.
