"Everybody has a Tooshie"

I don't know if anyone remembers it but years ago, maybe over a decade ago, there was a great animated series on Comedy Central called Dr. Katz.  I used to love the show and watched it as often as possible.  Dr. Katz was this little, liberal, Jewish psychiatrist in San Francisco who dealt with his nutty patients,  his bitchy and passive agressive secretary Laura, and his loser son Ben.  Ben was 24 years old, had no job, and didn't work.  He simply lounged around the house all day, not doing anything (Dr. Katz was very lenient with his son) and would occasionally ask out Laura.  Well one of the funny reccuring themes in the show was that Dr. Katz would often promote his book, "Everybody has a Tooshie".  I know it was a joke on a tv show that hasn't aired for years but I think it really rings true.

You know, in light of all the violence around the world and all the problems we face, I think it is important to remember this.  Regardless of what race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, color, height, weight, health status, religion, relationship status, or level of education, we all have a tooshie.  It's a realization of equality. In this day and age, people are discriminated against because of their skin color, their religion, their height, their weight, because they're sick or disabled, the list goes on and on.  I think the biggest problem is that we all look to manufacture differences and look to blame people for our problems and people who act differently from the rest of us become easy targets.

Looking around the world, looking here in the United States, looking at home in West LA, it can get depressing sometimes.  There is so much conflict and so much discrimination.  People can face discrimination for any number of reasons.  They can be gay or lesbian, too short, too fat, too white, too black, too latino, too Asian, too Persian, too Arab, too poor, too secular, too single, too urban, etcetera.  And one of the things that bothers me is the use of our differences in political campaigns.  All the time there are manufactured conflicts between those who are married vs. those who are single, those who are religious vs. those who are secular, Christian vs. Jew, Christian vs. Muslim, Christian vs. everyone else, Muslim vs. Jew, gay vs. straight, urban vs. suburban vs. rural, vs. exurban, woman vs. man, "Americans" vs. Latinos.  And of course if you say anything about it, suddenly you're a bad guy who beleives in "victimization".  Frankly I'm sick of it.  It's time that we all stood back, took a breath and realized that everybody does in fact have a tooshie.  

Now perhaps Republican operatives and strategists realize and understand this concept.  They just don't particularly care, they want to win.  They want power and glory.  They're not concerned with the consequences of their actions.  Here on Kos though, we should have a mission, we should take a stand.  It may be tempting when we're goated into fighting amongst ourselves on dividing lines (not ideology but the other stuff I've gone on about), but we will not fall for the trap.  At the end of the day, we're all people and we all deserve equal rights and fair treatment.