My wife was attacked tonight... she was ridiculed, demeaned, diminished, marginalized... and the person who did this to her did it in the context of "my dick's bigger than yours, I'm insulting your wife, you're in my fucking house, what are you going to do about it"???? As a challenge to me... a physical challenge no less... repeatedly this person kept bellowing, "your wife looked STUPID, ThatSinger, your wife looked STUPID, ThatSinger, your wife looked STUPID, ThatSinger!!!"... 10, maybe 12 times in rapid succession in the unmistakable tone of an asshole looking to accelerate a verbal disagreement into a fistfight... he was referring to how my wife looked in a photograph of her he'd seen online... a photograph of her in her tinfoil hat at YearlyKos... the tinfoil had she'd made for herself as a joke at the "Make Your Own Tinfoil Hat" booth, (which, by the way she looked adorable in)...clearly a joke which went stratospherically over his head, yet somehow tweaked his permanently hyperactive reptillian brain to the extent that he became personally offended by it...
Sadly, this asshole is my brother-in-law, whom I once adored... and this entire ugly incident was precipitated by my attempt (my first since prior to the 2004 election when my brother-in-law pulled a variation on the same theme) to risk a political discussion in their home... not even a discussion really, just a series of brief asides with my wife's sister (his Republican spouse), relating to whether or not she actually believed the debate to amend the Constitution to outlaw same sex marriage was the best use of the congressional agenda, in light of.. well... everything else... as much as she wanted to say "no, of course it's not", she couldn't quite bring herself to do so, lecturing me about the foundations of society and how, in fact, marriage actually IS under siege before eventually ejecting from the conversation with the following invective:
"Well, I guess you're still in your "Yearly Kos" mode"... apparently "Yearl Kos mode" is a new pejorative which renders those of us who attended incapable and/or unworthy of serious discourse... I admit, replying that she appeared to still be in her "Ann Coulter mode" was unadulterated snark, but in all honesty, that would have been the end of it... had it not been for my brother-in-law... it was at this point that the "your wife looked STUPID" bellowing commenced...
Looking back, the realization hit me... their problem wasn't my broaching the political realm in a discussion... nor was it my wife's tinfoil hat (did I mention she looked adorable in it)? They take our attendance at Yearly Kos as a personal affront (as they do every slight criticism of their President)... they support and defend this President who's sent our best and brightest halfway around the world to "plant the seeds of democracy" yet are unable to tolerate, much less respect a divergent point of view from their own fucking family in their own fucking backyard...
I've not been in a fistfight since I was a teenager, some three decades ago... I'm certainly not going to re-enter that realm at this point in my life... with great haste we took the high road... away from that angry, Republican place...
I'm astonished, ashamed, appalled and angry... my hands are shaking... my wife is nauseated... and I'm saddened, deeply saddened by this..
At the same time, I'll not be deterred, and this time (unlike the first time), I won't be accepting anyone's inevitable apology... Yearly Kos was the most uplifting, inspiring, self-affirming experience of, if not my life, certainly the past six years... I'll neither apologize for attending, nor will I tolerate anyone's attempt at marginalizing it...
And my wife looked fucking cute in that tinfoil hat...