Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  I am writing to you because I am a person of strong opinions - not all of which are well informed or intelligent.  Nevertheless I feel compelled to share.

I’ve seen this video posted several places in the last few days; if you haven’t, here it is.  A small warning - there is some (edited out) language and a little crude humor. Onward we go.

Here’s the thing:  I am so not qualified to write about this on any sort of political level.  If I’m going to be honest, I don’t even really get politics.  I mean, I understand on a basic level how it all works and what the parties and candidates stand for - but it affects my brain the same way math does.  It almost hurts.  It takes all my concentration to do it right.  Once I walk away from it for a moment, much of the information disappears.

However - artists speaking truth?  This is my area.  This is what I do, all the time - try to share truth and meaning through art.

It’s part of the artistic temperament - and a wonderful strength - to feel things deeply.  To be passionate about what we believe to be true. To want to express our “point of view” then, through our art. We long capture an image in a photograph that perfectly expresses the truth of the subject, or to find the phrase that brings the poetry of that certain situation to the surface. As actors, we reach for the place where the work of it all falls away and the realness of the character, the situation, the truth of who I am reaching across the space to you - is what shines through.

Art, at its best, provokes, inspires, tells the story, asks the question. It pulls at us and turns us around and takes our breath away or brings us to tears because we suddenly see something entirely new.  Or something we already know, just from a completely different angle.

It doesn’t whack us on the head and call us stupid.

Maybe this video bothers me so much because it smacks of something that I cannot stand happening within my particular area, the church, and that is for someone to condescend to the very person they are trying to convince. To put them even farther on the outside.  I mean, really, if you watch that trying to see it as if you truly were an unregistered voter - what are they saying to you?  That you’re dumb, uncaring, lazy, or worse. The purpose, much more to me, seems to be self-congratulatory, a make your way around the internet pat on the back - an insider chuckle for all of us who are smart enough to know better. Sound like anyone you’ve ever met in a church?

Maybe I’m missing something.  But I really wanted to like it.  Things like this have been done better - have been done really really well.

So this new video - I was rooting for it.  In fact, the reason I stuck around for almost 5 minutes is because I kept waiting for the turn, the clever ironic joke…but no.

I don’t think I’m the one that missed it this time.

this time last year: a note about my mental state (10. 10. 2007)