red states rule
10-14-2012, 10:49 AM
Once again we see how tolerant, open minded, and civil libs are when people openly disagree with them
Last Monday I penned the most difficult opinion piece of my life. I wrote here (http://www.debatepolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/buzz-bissinger-why-i-m-voting-for-mitt-romney.html) that on the basis of the first presidential debate in Denver, in which Mitt Romney performed with stunning vigor and enthusiasm and President Obama performed with stunning aloofness and arrogance (this wasn’t simply a “bad day” as he later described it but a profoundly disturbing one), I had made a decision to support the Republican nominee for president.
As a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong Democrats, I noted repeatedly that the decision was anguished, difficult, emotional, but rooted in a sincere conviction that I could no longer back a president who no longer acted like he wanted to be president, who offered a vision for the country as original as those college essays you can buy off the Internet, who in front of 70 million viewers acted like he had 90 minutes to kill before going out to dinner with Michelle for their 20th anniversary. Coupled with Romney exuding a belief that this is a country that can still move forward, not backward. Coupled with Romney's return to the moderate he always was as Masschussetts governor.
As it turned out, the anguish of the column was the fun part
What followed was reaction—thousands of comments on The Daily Beast website and Twitter and Facebook; writers from national media outlets trying to pick the column apart because they were outraged that one they considered part of the tribe, a journalist and author, would actually turn away from the ingrained liberal leanings of the profession sans Fox that are part of reportorial membership. My wife disagrees with me to the point where beneath our agreement to not talk politics is the hard crust of resentment and marital spats. My book editor disagrees with me. Most of the thousands commenting disagreed with me. An entire town disagreed with me when I wrote Friday Night Lights, so I am used to disagreement. But this did leave a sour taste, because what I wrote was so measured and careful in which Obama, for all my disappointment after the debate, was also cited as someone of great and admirable principle, just as Romney was cited for having serious flaws.
The response to the column, for me at least, is far more interesting than the column itself. I did not write it to inflame—anybody actually reading it could see that. I wrote it to show that reflexively clinging to political party beliefs without any room for tolerance whether liberal or conservative, is exactly why this country has fallen into disrepair. I wrote it to show that we have to move beyond the dangerous reactionary conviction where liberals believe there has never been a good conservative idea in the history of the Republic and conservatives believe there has never been a good liberal idea in the history of the Republic.
I realize now that I was naive to think any of that would percolate through. But I did learn some valuable lessons:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/11/buzz-bissinger-on-being-savaged-by-the-liberal-media-after-backing-mitt-romney.html
Last Monday I penned the most difficult opinion piece of my life. I wrote here (http://www.debatepolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/buzz-bissinger-why-i-m-voting-for-mitt-romney.html) that on the basis of the first presidential debate in Denver, in which Mitt Romney performed with stunning vigor and enthusiasm and President Obama performed with stunning aloofness and arrogance (this wasn’t simply a “bad day” as he later described it but a profoundly disturbing one), I had made a decision to support the Republican nominee for president.
As a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong Democrats, I noted repeatedly that the decision was anguished, difficult, emotional, but rooted in a sincere conviction that I could no longer back a president who no longer acted like he wanted to be president, who offered a vision for the country as original as those college essays you can buy off the Internet, who in front of 70 million viewers acted like he had 90 minutes to kill before going out to dinner with Michelle for their 20th anniversary. Coupled with Romney exuding a belief that this is a country that can still move forward, not backward. Coupled with Romney's return to the moderate he always was as Masschussetts governor.
As it turned out, the anguish of the column was the fun part
What followed was reaction—thousands of comments on The Daily Beast website and Twitter and Facebook; writers from national media outlets trying to pick the column apart because they were outraged that one they considered part of the tribe, a journalist and author, would actually turn away from the ingrained liberal leanings of the profession sans Fox that are part of reportorial membership. My wife disagrees with me to the point where beneath our agreement to not talk politics is the hard crust of resentment and marital spats. My book editor disagrees with me. Most of the thousands commenting disagreed with me. An entire town disagreed with me when I wrote Friday Night Lights, so I am used to disagreement. But this did leave a sour taste, because what I wrote was so measured and careful in which Obama, for all my disappointment after the debate, was also cited as someone of great and admirable principle, just as Romney was cited for having serious flaws.
The response to the column, for me at least, is far more interesting than the column itself. I did not write it to inflame—anybody actually reading it could see that. I wrote it to show that reflexively clinging to political party beliefs without any room for tolerance whether liberal or conservative, is exactly why this country has fallen into disrepair. I wrote it to show that we have to move beyond the dangerous reactionary conviction where liberals believe there has never been a good conservative idea in the history of the Republic and conservatives believe there has never been a good liberal idea in the history of the Republic.
I realize now that I was naive to think any of that would percolate through. But I did learn some valuable lessons:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/11/buzz-bissinger-on-being-savaged-by-the-liberal-media-after-backing-mitt-romney.html