In Nobody's 'Herd'

For two years friends have been encouraging me to 'weblog' now known as 'create a blog,' 'to blog,' and 'blogging.' I kept telling them I wouldn't know what to write. Or my thoughts are not very important, why should I torture the world with what I think. (Or anyone who might stumble onto this tiny corner of the Internet.)

Then, what to me was a surreal moment happened. I clicked on a link to a woman's blog just one day after the Healthcare Bill passed and, according to her, conservative talk radio and television was sending out 'coded messages' to their faithful followers. Understand this about me: 1) I read many different viewpoints; 2) I have said for at least fifteen years that the liberal/conservative and conservative/liberal split was going to get much worse and much uglier; and, 3) having friends and acquaintances in both camps while trying to 'keep to the middle' has been a very entertaining life.

I have sat through several of Bill O'Reilly's broadcasts and if there's a coded message in there...the key to it must be a humdinger. He actually is careful about how he phrases stuff: 'alleged'; 'suspected'; 'bears further investigation.' Now as far as Rush Limbaugh goes...I haven't heard him since the mid-nineties. He seemed on the verge of a heart attack to me then. But Mr. Limbaugh didn't strike me as a trained reporter type. Neither does Glen Beck.

But lest the gentle reader of this think I'm attacking any of these men, I think they're in good company. I give you Boake Carter. Born Harold Thomas Henry Carter in Baku, Russia ... in either the late 1800s or the early 1900s, depends on who you cite ... to a British Foreign Service family. Anyway, he became a U.S. citizen and rose to fame on the Lindburgh baby kidnapping. After being picked up by a national radio sponsor, according to someone somewhere, his "commentary became 'ascerbic'." He was not a fan of the New Deal under FDR. A different source writes, "FDR really wanted to shut him up." Hmmm, that sounds familiar.

So...if one is a bad, sinister conservative, it's acceptable to make nonsensical comments about him (or her). Suddenly the issue isn't about positions, logic, or facts. It's about sneakiness, about sending out information that only the 'initiated' can understand. The next question begged to be answered: to get the 'initiated' to do what exactly. But the answer never came. At least not in the blog that inspired this one.


I refuse to be stuffed into a pigeon hole of someone else's definition. On some issues I'm conservative. On other issues, I'm liberal. And I firmly believe, there' is always a Third Path. We Americans just haven't found it yet.