Ranting Extremists

Where are the reasonable people? It seems that everywhere I look lately there are raving lunatics, frothing at the mouth and scaring the crap out of me. They are members of the Left, the Right, the religious, the secular. The outlook is so depressing.

1. There's been a long history of action guys being rightwing, often with a strong ties to NRA (think Charlton Heston). Perhaps it should be no surprise that some of them also believe that all children should be educated as Christians.
   
2. Formerly sane and rational leaders have also drifted to more polar extremes, as former president Jimmy Carter's book illustrates. While the book is a flawed piece of propaganda (to say the least), I still don't hold with people vilifying the man and his life's work. Read the analysis and decide for yourself.
   
3. An LA garage band (The Bastard Fairies) put out a video to promote the band, causing Wendy Murphy to exibit some of the most bizarre rantings we've seen (even for Fox). She was appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show. Now bill, a long-time card-carrying lunatic, has just accused me (on his show Radio Factor) of endangering America's future:

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life—the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

A new social problem: Prince, Boy George, and David Bowie (not to mention today's metrosexual) brought us sexual ambiguity, but it took Ehud Olmert to bring us nuclear ambiguity. Oi.

Fear Factor in reverse: You know that you love to watch contestants eat those bugs and banana slugs. Well, having an upper respiratory-tract infection is sort of like a Fear Factor challenge, only backwards. You get to cough up slugs. This is not something that will endear you to those around you, as it is about as attractive as listening to a cat hork up a hairball, but it might be an effective way to ward off the unwanted advances of the office masher. Reminds me of a travel writer who, on his first exposure to banana slugs during a visit to the Pacific Northwest, described them as "living mucus."