Liberals Need Not Apply

The other day I was looking at an ad for a radio position in the West. The ad emphasized that a conservative host was an essential requirement. This prompted me to write them an e-mail.

I emphasized that I was not applying for the job,but that I thought it was sad that being a liberal disqualified me. No matter how smart I was, no matter how qualified, no matter how highly recommended, how I voted left me out of the equation.

What has happened to us? What has happened to this country? Barry Goldwater can be friends with John Kennedy, but a liberal can't take questions from a conservative caller without the perception of not being a patriot. William F. Buckley can think of George McGovern as a the nicest person he ever met, but I can't express my opinion without being labeled a traitor.

We have poisoned ourselves. We have allowed vitriolic commentators to make a lot of money by convincing people that being different means being not just wrong, but bad.

Is it really important that Obama asked for mustard on a burger? Is that all we have to say? Is it really important that a vacuous pageant contestant might lose her crown because she showed a little breast and thinks Jesus hates gays?

Am I really less of an American than you because I opposed the war in Iraq? Is Sean Hannity right, am I a spineless coward (an appellation he used on the protesters at the U.N.)?

Are the radio guys on the right really right all the time? Is Obama really that horrible? Am I the enemy?

If so, then we are lost. We are not the America that my mother sat in steerage for eight days to reach ninety years ago.

It is the country of the uncaring, the rigid, the partisan, the bigot, the plutocrat.

It is not America. It is the Disunited States ,ruled by few, enjoyed by none, populated by the ignorant and scared, preached to by the insecure and obtuse. A tragic confederacy.