NEW YORK--I am a political prisoner seeking asylum.
I am here at the Talkers Magazine New Media Seminar during the final moments of the health care debate and I am surrounded by people who would just as soon call President Barack Obama a communist or a socialist or a Muslim -- or worse, a liberal.
I am in a building in midtown Manhattan where people of goodwill rage against their own machine. I am in a time warp but the time is right now, this moment, when conservatives are not only angry about government but so is everybody else, where those on the right have abandoned kinder and gentler for the ubiquitous kindling of fear.
I am a liberal talk show host at a conference of talkers where Lou Dobbs, late of CNN, almost seems like he is far left, a conference where Sean Hannity is the main honoree in an industry with only 90 radio stations programming progressive (nee liberal) talk of any kind, compared to more than 500 stations who veer so far right that they need a new passing lane.
I am in a world where Lou Dobbs says health care reform "will not do a single thing" Obama promised -- even though the very next day reform passes the House that eliminates bans on coverage of pre-existing conditions. Lou Dobbs, bless him, talks of "empirical reality" as if he owns it, and there's no one from Emporia to tell him any different.
See what I mean? I'm a liberal talk show host who has fallen headfirst through the looking glass into an industry that made buckets of money on the broad backside of Rush Limbaugh, where talk show hosts prey on the fear and loathing of our citizenry.
"When anyone asks you to quiet the tone, to be more civil," says Lou Dobbs, "I would urge you ... to focus like a laser on the facts ... The point is preserving a great free nation and people."
Lou Dobbs was giving the First Amendment address to Talkers in a world I don't even pretend to understand, where tyranny and anarchy morph into the same thing, where National Socialism is socialist and not fascist, where guns and ammo are bought in bulk so as to blow what's left of the law sky-high. Kill me now: I am in a world where secession and nullification are near-and-present options.
When the conference is over, when I come up for air on the sidewalks of New York, a truly amazing thing happens. I walk into the wonderfully familiar air of midtown and notice that the sky is not falling. The Union still stands. You never know in New York but walking by Grand Central Station nobody seems much afraid of anything. For all you know, even the crazies -- well into the day's monologue -- might be talking on their cell phones to their next of kin.
The very next day, a Sunday, health care reform passes the House of Representatives and changes the game when it comes to pre-existing conditions. I am in a world where despite everything I've heard to the contrary at the Talkers convention, my side won. Lou Dobbs lied but nobody died because something really is right with the world where Congressman Bart Stupak -- the of the anti-abortion Stupak Amendment -- gives the decisive speech in support of the bill in the halls of Congress. Somebody calls him a "baby-killer" on the floor of the House but even babies know that's not true.
Call me crazy, but I like this country the way it is. I'm a liberal talk show host. I'm not packing. I'm not afraid of a thing.