7/17/03 Columbia County, NY (23 days until wedding)
Wow, I sure got hoodwinked. A writer who calls him or herself "Guignol" wrote a letter to me telling me I'm a self-righteous liberal ass who is "out of touch with the life of the average person who's not splitting his time between his country home and his urban home." I spent about 1/2 an hour crafting a well-thought out, meaningful letter back to him explaining my vantage point, AND THE LETTER WAS RETURNED AS NON-DELIVERABLE! A made-up email address. I can't believe I fell for it.
Anyway, in the letter I promised not to mention Guignol by name, nor quote him, but now I say fuck it. Among his statements were this: that I had "put upon" the elderly because of my last blog's proposal that all drivers over the age of 80 get a simple visual acuity and response-time test. He said that elderly drivers are as safe as anybody else, and their accident rate "isn't even close to drivers under 25, particularly under 20. I need not go on."
Well, he should have gone on and done some research, but that's okay, because I did it for him. By the way, our geriatric friend ended up claiming two more lives today, including another baby.
My guess is that Guignol, like all knee-jerk conservatives, views a driving-acuity test for the elderly as one more way Democrats are getting Big Government into our lives. As for the "self-righteous liberal ass" part, he sure as hell is right. As I have oft scribed in these hallowed pages before, this is not the place to go if you're looking for cool-headed dialogue that gives equal time to conservative viewpoints. I mean, right-wingers get all three branches of government, all the major media outlets, Fox News, Clear Channel, and the entire AM dial - and I get my blog. I think it's a fair trade-off.
And my "ivory tower" lifestyle? Not that I should explain this, but since these are my rules, I'm going to. I live in Brooklyn, fairly cheaply, in an integrated neighborhood. Tessa and I bought a house upstate during a depressed real-estate market and got a steal - and we only afforded the down-payment because her father died and left a trashbag full of silver coins in a closet.
I grew up in Eastern Iowa, and then in the piedmont of North Carolina. Occasionally, I was able to live in some pretty amazing places due to my father's bizarre job, but if any of you have been in the arts, you know a conductor's life is a lot of charisma and not a ton of money.
While I was in North Carolina, I shopped at Walmart and wasn't even being ironic. I lived under the poverty level for seven years. My life now is blessed with the riches of good friends, the best fiance in the solar system, and enough invested to keep us afloat in times of lean. So don't talk to me about an ivory tower, Guignol. We all suffer or bask, struggle or grow complacent, in our different ways. I came by my misanthropy honestly.
Posted by at July 17, 2003 11:33 PM