"What Rosanne Said..."

I would have much rather shared thoughts on an another topic, but again, our national attention is being wrested away by the media outlets infested by the thin-skinned.  For all that's occurred over the past twenty four hours, our biggest national story for the moment is Ms. Rosanne Barr, and what she tweeted.  If we could see past our collective national amnesia, we might recall that throughout her public life, Ms. Barr has been a crass provocateur with the ability inflame the sensibilities of all sides of the sociopolitical spectrum, and one who on occasion has had brief flashes of funniness.  In the 1990's, she tweeked many in middle America with her bad rendition of our National Anthem where she ended the off-keyed performance by spitting, scratching, and feigning to adjust a protective cup.  From her farm in Hawaii, she called for the public decapitation of Bankers following the Banking meltdown of 2007-08.  She had also once inflamed members of the Jewish community as she boasted of being a pall bearer at her Grandmother's funeral while she was considered ceremonially unclean.  So, when the volcano that is Rosanne experiences an eruption such as the other night, we shouldn't be at all shocked.  

"and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks." Ephesians 5:4 (NASB)

What does bother me in all of this is is the growing sense of selective indignation that seems to fall solidly along ideological lines.  In other words, the way we've become "Balkanized in our Butt-Hurt".  Many of those who are now baying for the banishment of Rosanne were themselves, chortling with joy over Ms. Michelle Wolf's shtick just a few weeks ago. But don't think I'm giving Rosanne a pass in all of this; I found her little twitter bit to be equally distasteful, unfunny, and unhelpful.

The Ad hominem attacks in Ms. Barr's tweet storm were base, crass, and unsettling.  I do hope that this was, as she confessed, done under the influence rather than typed with a clear head.  Yet this said, we're demanding that one woman be silenced as we celebrate the vicious, venomous verbal assaults of another woman.  This is a cognitive dissonance of the first order.  Our demands for civil decency must be nonpartisan.

Love one another my friends.