Former SNL scatterbrain Victoria Jackson's anti-gay comments regarding a male-to-male kiss on the TV show Glee prompted the usual intolerant attacks from the tolerance crowd. Great news for me because it gives me an excuse to explore a rather obvious (to me anyway) deficiency in American Society circa 2011: Most people in our society don't have a clue what tolerance means.
There's is this enduring perception that all you have to do to be tolerant is establish yourself to the left of center on the political ideology scale. At this point you can be as intolerant of those on the right as you please and oddly enough this will only serve to buttress your tolerance bona fides. Tolerance means to endure, to put up with. Within the definition is the implication that there is a certain amount of discomfort involved. If you're not feeling any discomfort, you aren't tolerant, you're sympathetic. I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care for Victoria Jackson, I'm not a Christian, a gay man caught the bouquet at my wedding and my wife and I later attended his wedding, which was officiated by a lesbian Rabbi. But I'm also a registered Libertarian who almost exclusively votes Republican for fiscal reasons. I don't have a problem with the gay kiss or with Victoria Jackson's comments. I do have a problem with our collective inability to call things by their right and proper names. Intolerance of intolerance does not equal tolerance. It might be righteous, but if that's the case then own it! Why hide? It's imperative to the evolution of a healthy society that it's citizens learn to cut through the layers of propaganda that are the sole product of all political movements. We, at the very least, have to learn to accept our actions and the motivations behind them without relying on Orwellian Newspeak to round off the rough edges. The noxious cloud of cognitive dissonance created by people's inability to be honest with themselves will tear down a society faster than an army of Victoria Jacksons.
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