“For Pete’s Sake!”
(a random pagemonkey rant)

According to a study done by Wachovia Capital Services, in which they tracked the wait times (walking in until fork in hand) for 15 national restaurant chains on Friday evenings, on average we spend 14 minutes waiting for out vittles. Another study shows that, on average, we spend roughly 35 minutes consuming those vittles in the same sort of chain restaurant.

 

The figures, Gentle Reader, sound believable to me; I don’t think I’m too far out of the Bell curve by taking half an hour to gobble down once I’ve squatted.

Which means, of course, that on average we’re one third of the way through an average dining experience before we even get to the fun part - and most of us accept this as business as usual.

 

At this point in history, we’re approximately 1/12th of our way into our “dining experience” with Chez Obama.

And we’re already tapping our feet, glancing at our watches, and bitching about the service.

And, sometimes, worse - casting aspersions at a man who hasn’t shown himself to be evil or anti-GLBT in any way, merely a man who prefers to carefully plan his maneuvers for the sake of best outcome.

As my dear old Mom would exclaim, “For Pete’s sake - give {what or whomever} a chance!”

 

Dear old Mom was a conservative of the Goldwater sort, and so am I.

That, Gentle Reader, boils down to these few concepts: Defend yourself, your home and your country legally. Be respectful of others and their opinions. Be cautious when making friends or spending money, and make sure in either case that you conduct your affairs quietly and wisely.

Well, there’s actually one more concept, and it’s based on the old cliche “don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” which is a little hard to describe but amounts to not pissing off potential allies.

It would be a tragedy at this point to lose Obama’s support, because he’s the only president in far too many years to give more than neutral lip service to the GLBT community.

And we’ve just finished surviving 8 years of an administration which considered GLBT issues nothing more than political fodder to collate and organize homophobes in order to appease the Religious Right and gain their support.

It’s time for strategy, not emotion.

 

Friends, Romans, Fags… We cannot afford to adopt the shrill, impatient, illogical tactics currently dragging the Republican Party into the muck; every time grandpa Cheney opens his yap, every time Boss Limbaugh opens his, they effectively promote our cause by showing how shallow and self-centered they are.

Since there are so many “village idiots” spewing vile nonsensical things which simply make our point for us, I think we should leave the job of shrill, ugly, and deceitful up to them, as they are eminently qualified to spout such.

It’s time to reach into our communities and promote the American side of the GLBT community. It’s time to write or call our representatives.

But do it with logic and compassion, instead of heat and emotion. Do it with a sense of real patriotism. Make your point clearly instead of merely making people defensive, and this time around people will listen.

The Time, as they say, Is Ripe.

~ pagemonkey