Rise of the new Right

Last Wednesday, Chris Matthews from Hardball broadcast a very interesting documentary about the Tea Party movement - what they want and what they will do to get it. It's a very scary documentary and, at times, it is very frustrating to watch. Here are the 6 parts of the documentary. Don't watch with the lights off...

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Part 4

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Part 5

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Part 6

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Hypocrisy and Betrayal

My friend and co-worker Liz is a Republican. Though she is a supporter of gay rights, our similarities in political views end there. Liz is one of those people who will flow along with the beliefs of the Republican party without stopping to question the logic of such movement. I try not to roll my eyes every time I hear her regurgitate a Fox and Friends anti-Obama soundbite - but it is hard to control sometimes.

A couple years ago, Liz and I had a discussion about rising oil prices. She questioned me when I made the comment that oil companies are crooks and criminals and should be regulated more strictly by the government, not paying them off to look the other way. She told me that oil companies have a product that I want and therefore they are well within their rights to charge as much as they want to maximize their profits.

"Even if it means gouging the public to ensure outrageous profits in the billions?" I asked her.

"Peter, think of it this way..." Liz held up a cup and continued: "Let's say this cup is the only one of its kind in the world. I own this cup and so I have the right to price it at whatever price I want because I have no competition on the market for it. It's the exact same for oil companies. They are just protecting their interests."

What can I say: Liz is the ultimate Obama-hating capitalist.

Last fall Liz and I had a discussion about a lesbian co-worker, someone that I greatly admire and trust. When I told Liz that, she rolled her eyes and said, "I don't trust her at all! She is awful to people she calls her friends."

When I asked Liz to explain, she told me this story:

Liz had a friend at work named Arlene who had decided to retire. Before retiring, however, she had decided to spend her last summer working in the upholstery department. Every summer, a team goes through every bus in our fleet and fixes holes and tears on every seat. It's an awful, back-breaking job that I hope I am never so hard up for cash that I need to sign up for it. There is an aspect of the job, however, that isn't as bad as the one that requires crawling under seats: the person who sews the seats. This was the job that Arlene wanted.

Terry (the lesbian co-worker I mentioned earlier) is in charge of the upholstery crew every summer, so Arlene went to her and told her that she wanted the sewing job. Terry asked her to sew some samples so she could get an idea of how fast Arlene would be at the job. The two months of summer go fast and there are hundreds of seats that need to be repaired by summer's end. According to Terry, Arlene just wasn't as fast as she needed to be to keep up with the job, so Terry told her that if she wanted to work upholstery, then she would need to do the much hated back-breaking-under-the-seats job.

Furious, Arlene went to management and pulled her seniority status out. Terry was planning on giving the sewing job to a woman named Lynn who had done it several years already and was very fast at it, but Arlene had higher seniority than her. Her belief was that she should get the sewing job, not Lynn. In the end, Terry made the case that she had a deadline to think about and she was picking the best worker she felt could help her reach it. Lynn got he job and Arlene was furious. Their friendship came to an unfortunate end.

As Liz explained this, she really painted Terry as a villain. "Peter, she put business ahead of friendship! That is NEVER okay!"

Fast forward to last week.

Liz announced that she is writing a book. It'll be a fictionalized account of her adventures coming to work as a bus driver. I read what she has so far and while rough, it's not bad.

On Monday, Liz came up to me and she was very excited. "I might have a literary agent!" Over the weekend, she typed up what she has written so far of her story and sent it out to literary agents that she found on writersdigest.com. Only one of them returned her email, asking for more chapters of the book. According to Liz, the agent seems interested in representing Liz and trying to get the book published.

"That's fantastic!" I told Liz. "Did you happen to mention that you have a writer friend who also has a book?" I have been working on a book since last November. I have finished the first draft and I am now midway through the 2nd.

"No, I didn't," Liz confessed.

"Well, would you be willing to give me her information? Maybe she'd be interested in my book, too."

Tuesday morning I got an email from Liz telling me that she wanted to hold off giving me the agent's information and that she would explain later at work. When I finally asked her why she wasn't willing to give me the agent's information, here is what Liz said:

"Well, I thought about it and realized... what if this agent is only taking a certain number of clients? It makes no sense for me to put myself in jeopardy and risk her taking you as a client but not me. It's totally a business thing. I need to protect my interests!"

She was honestly dumbfounded when I told her that this upset me.

So, is it just me or is Liz being hypocritical here? I can't help but see her as Terry and me as Arlene. When the situation was about upholstery, Terry was VERY unreasonable in what she did; she was a terrible person who but business before friendship. When it comes to a literary agent, however, Liz is TOTALLY justified in what she is doing to me.

Now don't get me wrong; I understand where Liz is coming from - just as I understood Terry's side of the upholstery story. But I can't help but see Liz's blatant hypocrisy. She is doing to me EXACTLY what she hates Terry for doing to her friend Arlene. I have yet to draw this comparison with Liz, but I have no doubt that she'll find a way to insist that the two situations are completely different. She'll try to explain away her hypocrisy and justify her actions to make them look less like a betrayal. She'll make exceptions to the rules of friendship and insist that she is not doing the wrong thing, yet if I ask her if those same rules apply to Terry in the upholstery situation, Liz will insist that Terry was still wrong in what she did.

Liz is, after all, very much a Republican.

Because I'm a little bit in love with Ezra Koenig

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