Washblog

is that relentless negativity is not going to win any allies, even if people agree with some of your points. Something positive in your life MUST balance it, for your own sake as well as anyone you encounter.

Remember this was an event where one of the themes was outreach to at-risk youth, not the Seattle Curmudgeons' Annual Crank Competition.

Leon probably has no clue that he drives people away. Or maybe his need to vent is more important. If you practice armchair psychology, how would you interpret it?

Nothing wrong with passionate declarations; I detest it when people patronizingly respond with "chill out" or "take a pill" or "take a deep breath". Does anyone, anywhere, respond obediently to that? Still, it might be taken as a hint that you're entering the rant zone.

Don't we somehow have to channel feelings of (righteous) outrage into productive channels that actually engage people? Those with wriing talent might employ stylish use of irony and satire like famed curmudgeons H.L. Menken or Ambrose Bierce. (I don't think they had satisfying personal lives though, can you imagine being married to one like that?)  Jon Stewart transforms his inner ranter into comedic brilliance. Kurt Vonnegut was a curmudgeon and a cynic, wasn't he? But it was tempered by wit, insight, and a way with words.

This incident made me think about such things....Do you have any other examples?

by dinazina on Thu May 03, 2007 at 06:24:01 AM PST

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then embarass them & then laugh at them.

let me try something different

1. I acknowledge that I, LIKE EVERYONE, has a side which may not be katie couric all the time, AND

2. this is another difference, I also admit to nurturing the non-nurturing un-katie side at times.

twits like this flashback me to Holyoke MA, unemployment in double digits, HUGE per capita bar to resident dead industrial town, 197X

and I'm 17 in a bar drinking 60 cent schooner drafts. after about 8 or 10 EVERYTHING sounds great and EVERYONE sounds nuts.

before you laugh at them, make sure you know if they are right or left handed, and make sure you ain't close to that hand ;)

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Thu May 03, 2007 at 07:57:06 PM PST

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I'm surprised and pleased to see this story rise to the rec list weeks after posted...someone must like it....

I was hoping to get more interest in the theme of emotional venting, and more votes in the poll, but thanks...

by dinazina on Thu May 17, 2007 at 03:34:05 PM PST

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As a matter of fact, I had a somewhat similar experience just recently after Claudia Kauffman's town hall meeting. There was a fellow there who introduced himself as "a sixty-nine year old curmudgeon" and went on a five-minute rant about the government taking half his money and wasting it, etc., etc. I'll certainly give him credit for "truth in advertising" regarding his self-description.

Since most of his rant was about money spent on education, and since that is a hot button issue for me, I decided to confront him a bit after the meeting. I won't try to repeat all the barbs and accusations we tossed back and forth. Suffice it to say that one of my friends decided to stick around for a bit in case we came to blows and I needed backup (thanks, Ken!). We didn't.

After going back and forth for a while, he finally suggested we sit down and continue talking. We wound up talking for the next 2 1/2 hours! He was really a very interesting guy. I'd describe his beliefs as being mainly Libertarian in philosophy - limited government, strict Constructionist, etc. He said he had fired the same diatribe at Steve Johnson when he had been the Senator before Claudia.

Thumbnail background: He grew up in Pennsylvania, where his father was a coal miner who had helped unionize the workers (he says he remembers his father digging buckshot out of his leg where then-Colonel Douglas MacArthur's troops had fired on them). After graduating from Penn State with a degree in Accounting, he joined the Navy in 1961 and served 6 1/2 years in Vietnam. Got spat on in the airport when he returned. He retired after 20 years and became a truck driver and Teamsters member. Somewhere along the line he picked up a second degree in Business Admin.

He was very critical of the big multi-national corporations and was equally critical of the unions (he felt they blew it by becoming corrupt. We agreed on that). He was extremely well read and knew a great deal about history. We just drew different conclusions from our respective research and experiences.

I think I scored certain points regarding education by giving him specific examples of teachers' salaries as compared to private-sector salaries and pointing out that education has to compete for people in a free-market system, and also by pointing out what a horrible patchwork of funding we have for our educational systems.

In the end we finally agreed that what society needed was to work more cooperatively with each other and less competitively. We walked out to the parking lot together (still talking all the way), shook hands and left.

Sometimes people's rants come from strongly held convictions; sometimes they just come from pure frustration at seeing things that offend/frighten them and that they don't understand. It can be useful to try to get beneath those feelings and see where they are coming from.

As to the specifics of Leon's rant, I think I would have followed the "West Side Story" line with something like, "We never had that population density and degree of poverty here, either." It might have been hard to get Leon to step away from his anger enough to consider the factors that affect people's behavior, and that might have been too deep a discussion.

I'd have to agree with Leon that a lot of current behavior wouldn't have been seen in the past. Maybe you could say that if the Sharks and Jets had had access to MAc-10's, it would have been the same, but I don't think so.

Personally I think a strong case can be made that much of what we are seeing in society is the natural outcome of the over-emphasis on competition that is inherent within Capitalism, which has become our de facto moral standard. But that's a discussion for another time.

by Gordon Glasgow on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 07:21:48 PM PST

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