Hooray! AM New York Says I'm A 'Rabble-Rouser'!

I received a newspaper review from AM New York.

If they meant to be critical by calling me a 'rabble-rouser', then they do not know of whom they speak.

They couldn't give me a higher compliment. I'm thrilled. My aim is definitely to rouse the rabble. Fuck the phony 'objectivity' that thinks you can sit around and academically 'discuss' what is happening to our nation with the same kind of bloodless, dispassionate attitude with which one might lay wagers on an ant-race.

Hell yes, I'm mad; hell yes, I'm pointing fingers. It's way past overdue. The right has turned 'liberal' into an epithet that makes Democrats and the media alike quake in fear at the thought of being labeled as such; mostly because that's the Republicans' worst fear - real liberals, real liberalism. And the same can be said of 'angry liberals'! We have learned to back off of standing up for ourselves and our values for fear of being branded 'angry'.

Oh noo-oo-oo-o! Please, Mr. Luntz, pleeeze don't call us 'angry'! Look! You can kick us in the groin as hard as you like - we won't be mad! Go ahead! Kick us! See, we're not angry at all! Just don't call us that scary word!

Just as Barack Obama has to find a way to avoid being called the 'angry black man', so as not to ignite the fears and prejudices of the most ignorant section of the electorate, Democrats should know that calling us 'angry' is the Republican way of telling us what they're most afraid of - Democrats who are mad about the way they've been rolled in the back alley by this administration. When African-Americans decided they'd had enough of being treated like shit for hundreds of years, and decided to do something about it, civil-rights activists were accused of being 'angry', because those who had the power and privilege - white men - were terrified that they were going to have to deal with this just fury. So the tactic of accusing the disenfranchised of being 'angry' is a time-honored Republican tradition. And for the last eight horrific, traumatic years, Democrats have been disenfranchised.

Call me what you want. I don't care. I'm mad, and I hope you are, too.