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As I was in search of a decent Irish bar and a hot Irish Coffee after a very cold day that was the Inauguration of President Barack Obama in Washington DC, I literally almost walked right into Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's "Morning Joe." If you're a political junkie like me, you certainly catch his show even though it comes on in the wee hours of the morning on the West Coast (ok, most of the time I'm asleep but I do try to watch it.)
After righting myself to avoid a collision I asked Joe if I could interview him on camcorder and get his thoughts on President Obama's speech. He gave permission and I promised to hold it to about 2 minutes. Scarborough said it was the greatest speech he heard since JFK's 1960 inauguration speech but most important, Joe took time to remind us that we're all Americans. I have to explain the context: while it was a great day, with a record 2 million to 3 million people in attendance (I think more than that), some took time to boo George W. Bush and as Joe said in the video, some conservatives thought it was a bad day for America. In reponse to this, Scarborough said "We're Americans. If you can't look at the sea of 2 million people waving American flags and not thank God that you're an American regardless of your political affiliation, there's something wrong with ya."
I thought about this as I considered the constant stream of hate-speech from some conservatives and claims that anyone who wanted to fix our health care system or improve our economy by spending money where needed (we have a great disinvestment problem) was in some way not American. That's when I remembered my talk with good ol' Joe Scarborough.
Conservatives should take a note from Scarborough and remember that while we may disagree on what to do to make America better, we're all interested and committed to improving our country. At least I hope we are. I'm certainly happy Scarborough checked the all-too-ridiculous rant of MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan (from "The Closing Bell") a few days ago, when he asked Ratigan if he's done a few lines (of cocaine) before appearing on "Morning Joe". Ratigan's under the impression that capitalism's under attack, when the fact is America's always had a mixed economy. The sooner folks like Ratigan get that, the better he and others will understand what's happened to our system, but that's another blog post.
Right now, I'm worried that there are two types of conservatives and the one's who aren't like Joe are more in number. We have a few conservatives who are even-tempered and thoughtful like Scarborough, and a lot who are hateful and unintelligent, like Glen Beck. I call the Beck-types "couch potato" conservatives who watch TV, listen to Rush, quote his lines, don't read a lick, never even heard of William F. Buckley, or for that matter can't deal with the fact that much of their brand of conservative behavior (I will not call it thought) is really a cover for a new brand of racism.
In fact, in my experience couch-potato conservatives don't understand economics well enough to talk about what a conservative approach should be separate from parroting tax credits as a term again and again and again, and not knowing why they work or don't work in some cases. But ask them about immigration or affirmative action and they can talk for days. Totally disinterested in rigorous thought they are, and right now, they're doing all they can to wreck this country. I hope they realize one day what Joe Scarborough said to me on January 20th 2009: "We're all Americans", and I would add, we've all got to join together as one and fix the economy of the USA.
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