There's a fair amount of shit being lost over Ellen Degeneres sitting next to George W. Bush at a Cowboys game and not stabbing him to death with her drink straw. The article makes cogent points for why Bush was a terrible, terrible president. Yes, he probably should be in the Hague answering for war crimes.
But he's not. And it's not Ellen Degeneres's job to hold a war crimes tribunal in the owner's suite at a Cowboy's game.
If anything, here's another way to frame it:
Disgraced religious bigot who tried to stop same sex marriage is forced to sit next to a wealthier, more popular lesbian and her wife.
There is an exhaustion about purity politics in the age of Twitter and microwaveable outrage. Just punch a button and get piping hot venom! So, yes, Bush was terrible. In some measures he was worse than Trump (though Trump's actions in Syria threaten to dethrone Dubya). But here's the thing. All these Internet Brave Voices, if you were to sit them down next to Bush or even Darth Cheney, they wouldn't move. They wouldn't launch into a piece by piece diatribe over Bush's many failings as president. They would sit and stew and maybe leave early. Few people - when confronted with another actual human being - say the things they saw online.
Ellen has a philosophy of being kind to everyone who crosses her path. That's her creed. She has no obligation to live by yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment