I normally take great pains to avoid this jagoff, but up pops a YouTube someone sent me and there's his face. Bill O'Reilly, pinched and angry as usual; and this time he was jabbing his finger at our own Representative Colleen Hanabusa.
Her reaction, or rather her kind of amused nonreaction, was pleasantly typical of my new Hawaiian home. Easy going, even smiling at times, answers that drive forever pissed off GOPers like Bill just batshit nuts. But hey, that's what we call Hawaiian style. Hawaiians just don't like geting angry, as a general rule. What's to be angry about? Sun, sea, sand, palm trees and smiling people. Only Bill-o could possibly make vinegar out of that.
Oh, and he tried. His little high blood pressure tirades were punctuated with some footage he took of his himself in Hawaii just recently, as he dredge up any dirt on this, the Politically Bluest State in the union, that he could muck up. Homeless people, a couple of hookers in Waikiki, righteously enraged did-you-see-thats. Cut back to Colleen where she manages to get a few words in edgewise before The Mouth cuts her off again.
What my mind was trying to grapple with, was…why Hawaii? Usually the wingnuts target places like Manhattan, Boston, Detroit, Hollywood, any place that operates as centers of learning, industry, technology or culture. Hawaii is the world's favorite vacation spot. Paradise in anyone's language. What's his angle? It's like trying to push a hula dancer into a fistfight.
Then it dawned on me: he hates our freedoms here. He and his morally, politically bankrupt party. They hate us all. They hate us for our near unanimous acceptance of Gay people. They hate us for our liberal, alternative spiritual ways. Our ashrams and off shoot churches, our retreats and holistic healing centers. Our off the grid farming, energy and sustainable life technology. Our habit of wearing flip flops instead of making them, like Mitt Romney did. Our easy going, loving way of being that is more anxious to see the beauty of another sunset than to stress about who is getting a government check.
People like Bill hate us because Hawaiians are as much about ohana - family - as they are about themselves. Ohana is a particularly threatening concept to the GOPs because it combines the terrifying idea of extended families, tight communities and "kuleana" or obligation into one horrendous new take on collectivism. Picture Marx in a Hawaiian shirt, thowing a shakah with a grin. Bill had to scrape the bottom…no, the outer sides…of the barrel to come up with scant evidence of vice in any big city like Honolulu. Such great efforts to defame a place that no one can understand the urge to defame.
In the end, what Bill hated most was that he couldn't get Rep. Hanabusa's goat. He could not handle "Aloha". See, deep in the heart of people like Hanabusa is a wish for even the most virulent enemy to experience ohana, kuleana, ho'oponono (making things right) and Aloha, because so doing will finally bring some love to their tortured souls. Yes Bill, you went home after that interview to your cold home, wrapped in your serious coat, shooting glances of hostility and suspicion to every dark face you pass in your society of lack, forever underseige. Colleen Hanabusa probably headed to luau, or a good island beer, and had a laugh.
They hate us because that's how we do it in Blue Hawaii.
