Hey Guys,

I obviously took the summer off from blogging, but my abstinence was a worthwhile sacrifice since it meant lots of time to work on my book. I attended a writing conference and am currently sending out queries for publication, woo hoo! Here are a few things I might have written about this summer if I had had the time.

The Olympics- What an amazing phenomenon. I stand in such admiration of respectful, diversity-honoring competition. On the other hand the fact that anyone said one ill-word about Gaby Douglas and her hair made me want to hurl!

Chick-Fil-A-Gate- I agree with every normal person on this issue. The CEO had a right to answer his question honesly, however I am questioning how many homosexuals got saved through the loving-kindness of Christians bravely demonstrating their faith by loudly and proudly committing to eating more chicken sandwichs.

Legitimate Rape- Can we all agree to never use these words together.

The Texas Republican Platform AKA (They said what?!?!) for more of my thoughts on this issue, please check out my guest post on www.shaneblackshear.com . Shane and I are old friends who sometimes agree and sometimes disagree on spiritual and political issues, AND we really respect each others thoughts and opinions. I highly recommend checking out his work and if you ever need a speaker for an event he's your guy.

Starting next month I will be back to ranting more regularly. Much love,
Kerri

(One Reason) Why Gay Marriage is Ok by Me...

I just saw that Bristol Palin spoke out against the President's decison to support gay marriage because as she understands it children tend to do better in a two-parent, mother/father household. I agree that kids tend to do much better with 2 parents to guide them, and though her lifestyle choices make it such that at this point in time she is unable to provide that for her son, I am phenomenally glad that the government has not taken away her right to parent him just because someone like me might think that he would be better cared for in a two-parent family. It is the influx of quotes such as hers that prompted me to write the following:

(One Reason) Why Gay Marriage is Ok by Me…

This week President Barack Obama publicly affirmed his support for gay marriage, the first sitting president ever to have done so. My brother quickly texted to inquire about my thoughts on the issue, but I am more interested in what everyone else is thinking. For example, as I sat in a coffee shop in my small Texas town this morning, I overheard a group of Christian women discussing the issue. The final word from one flustered lady when pressed about her unfavorable analysis of the President’s view was this “Well, I just don’t want someone as a president who doesn’t share my values.”  I then read an article written by Coach Ron Brown from University of Nebraska on a related issue who said, “I won't embrace a legal policy that supports a lifestyle that God calls sin."  I find this language fascinating mostly since there are so many diverse things we are called to value as Christians and so very many things that God calls sin—most of which we tolerate and even condone with public policies.

Divorce, for example, is something that Jesus was pretty clear about. I suspect some would indicate that divorce is something that happens once and can therefore not be legitimately classified as a lifestyle. I would disagree on the grounds that most traditional Christian wedding vows go to great pains in order to name all the conditions under which one must choose to remain married, better, worse, rich, poor, sickness, health --and all of these seasons cycle time and again until DEATH does part the two covenant makers. One must regularly revisit his or her commitment to that covenant; so, just as most Christians that I know would consider marriage to be a lifestyle, I would consider separation and/or divorce to be a lifestyle as well, in that one chooses over and over again to remain apart from an individual to whom they once pledged unflinching unity. (This is not even to mention the number of Christians who make repeat-divorces a lifestyle)

Divorce makes me sad. I think it often hurts men, women and children throughout our country and I believe there is a spiritual cost for breaking a vow made before God. Interestingly enough, I have exactly zero Christian friends who are trying to undo the policies that make divorce legal. Some of my Christian brothers and sisters would even say that they have benefitted from such a policy themselves. Do I think it should be illegal? No, I do not. I have no expectation that the laws of Texas or of the United States of America will be able to do the work of a pastor or priest and so at times individuals have to be allowed the civic freedom to make such decisions by their own spiritual consciences and at their own spiritual risk.

Similarly, I seem to remember the Bible talking about the sexual relationship as a pleasure reserved for marriage and yet I would venture to say that though I have many sweet friends who have practiced abstinence before and faithfulness after marriage, I have as many Christian friends who have engaged in a regular lifestyle of pre and/or extramarital sex for weeks, years, and decades . Pastors and families have frowned and shook heads over these personal indiscretions but, in my lifetime I haven’t seen any of them promoting legislative action that would make such consensual choices punishable by law.

You know what else God calls sin and is really gross? Greed. That one is hard to get away from in the Bible. God is always telling the Israelites to take care of the alien, stranger, orphan and widowed rather than hoarding for themselves. And, remember how Jesus lost it when those peddlers were using something as sacred as a Temple for money-making schemes?  He (Jesus) also told the rich young ruler to sell all his things to the poor. As a social worker, I think that was an awesome directive. I really believe most Christians should be more generous and quite frankly it makes me a little nauseated when I meet a follower of Christ whose entire life’s work seems to center around making money and storing up more and more barns for themselves here on this earth. I think it is perverse, inexcusable and plain confusing that some believers (myself included at times) can be so unapologetically self-serving once they have encountered the sacrificial love of Christ. Nevertheless, I don’t believe it should be illegal to purchase goods and services in excess. I keep thinking someone somewhere said something about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.  Who was that Guy?

I think that the problem that some Christians have had with gay-marriage is that it is foreign to many of us and creates a sort of squeamishness in our guts that we would like to be able to identify as good old fashioned righteous indignation. I guess, I just don’t buy that because there is no consistency in such a stance. If we really refused to vote for individuals who did not represent our own values like the lady in the coffee shop suggested or refused to support policies for lifestyles that God calls sin as Coach Brown claimed, then the entire Christian community would be practicing unequivocal voter abstinence (or at least wearing the True Love Doesn’t Vote regalia and pretending to abstain for posterity’s sake.)  Instead, I think that we have made a whole host of sins socially acceptable and encouraged (gluttony, pride and hatred to name a few) while reserving the right to be disgusted by those behaviors that are most alien or otherwise frightening to us.  This is a problem. And if we believe that any one party or political figure is accurately and comprehensively representing the values of Christ, I want to suggest that we might just have been hoodwinked somewhere along the way-- and that is a problem too.

What we say about Trayvon...

I watched a movie one time in which spores released from certain plants provoked masses of people to end their own lives. The imagery was haunting, but intriguing. Hundreds of people would each jump off of their respective buildings, others would simply step out in front of traffic or find the nearest , sharpest object to do the job--and the eeriest part was that there were no passionate explanations, no suicide notes, no screams for help from individuals who thought better of it at the last second.  There was only a quiet but desperate compulsion to give in to the inevitable. I sat transfixed.

I myself am not prone to hopelessness. Maybe when I was a child in a house of adults who were all so much smarter and stronger than I was. Maybe in middle school when life really did seem cruel with little potential for improvement.   But as an adult, as a rule, I am by the standard of many, obnoxiously hopeful. I feel in control of my own fate, even, at times, to the point of ignorance and irreverence. But in the last two weeks I have been reacquainted with a younger and more fragile self.  I have felt like one of those helpless people in that film who were so disoriented by the poison in the air around them that salvation, here in this world seemed  an impossibility.  

The case of Trayvon Martin has been my morning prayer and my evening contemplation for weeks now. The story seems to be growing in complexity. But it is the simplicity and simplemindedness on the periphery of the case that has me undone. What we say about Trayvon and how we say it is important because he is important but his experience also reflects and has come to symbolize the experience of an entire community of Americans.  There are conflicting reports about some of the events that transpired on the night that the Martin family lost their son and brother but here are some things that are undisputed.

A kid not yet old enough to legally vote, join the military or drink beer went to the store to get some skittles and a tea. He was wearing a hoody and blue jeans. He was chatting on the phone with a girl from his school as he walked back from the store when he was noticed by a neighborhood watch leader, an adult. The boy noticed the man and told the girl that he was being followed. This watchman called the police to report the “suspicious” kid and began to follow him. The 911 dispatcher informed him that he needn’t do that and that police were on the way. When police arrived on the scene the boy was dead and the shooter had some blood on his face and the back of his head. Witnesses had conflicting reports of what they saw and heard. The man claimed that he shot the boy in self-defense and he was never arrested.

Oh yeah and the young boy was black. 

And people started talking about it through the lens of race and then everyone started saying things—venemous things that created in me a kind of woozy despondence.

            First, a black mother wrote an open letter explaining the heartbreaking necessity of teaching her kids that people will not always judge them by the content of their character—and in fact that in some ways they are going to have to be better behaved than some other people in order to get the same benefits (like the benefit of not being described as “suspicious” and the benefit of not getting shot in the street  and the benefit of law enforcement giving a damn about it if you have been shot in the street.) It was a heart-wrenching letter. I related to it.

And then I read the comments. People were enraged that she was making this a “racial” issue, playing the “race card” and teaching her sons to be bigoted in their belief that white and light people are going to be racist against the .  I read these complaints and I thought, “these commenters don’t get it.”  They don’t know what it is like to try and raise children of color who are trusting and optimistic alongside the backdrop of a story like the Trayvon Martin case. But, I thought to myself, who cares? These are just the thoughts of the uneducated but vocal minority.

Then I watched as Geraldo Rivera, a journalist, tried to make a scapegoat of a hoody—implying that the real criminal in this case was neither the shooter, nor the justice system but the (relatively common) fashion choice of a teenage boy and I thought about my nephews and my brothers and my cousins and what I might feel and do if one of them had had their life taken from them before they even had a chance to experience the other side of adolescence. And then if after that the culpability for the crime committed was placed on the victim who might have been my sweet little Chaz or or his cherubic cousin,  Carlton because they had neglected on that day , as a sort of peace offering for bringing their dark skin into the community, to wear an ascot or thick rimmed glasses or  a copy of their background check ironed on to a T-shirt—and had instead chosen a sweater that might keep their ears warm should the need arise.  If someone had implied that my son by virtue of his clothing was a provocateur in his own murder—I don’t know what I would do, but I know that if that someone was Mr. Rivera, he would be smart to keep his distance, lest I feel threatened and in need of standing my ground.

And finally President Obama took a moment to speak to the parents of Trayvon. In a rare, break from the more typical and intentional transracial speeches that he gives he made a point to connect to the Martin family and to remind the nation that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon. Those of us who look like Trayvon and our good friends of various shades, we know what he meant.  He meant that this tragedy might not have occurred if Trayvon had looked a little more like a Biden and a little less like an Obama. We can’t know for sure , of course. But, we do know that black children are more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive and psychotic disorders than children of other races, and we do know that black boys and men are disproportionately and more severely punished in the educational and criminal Justice systems compared with their non-black counterparts who have been accused of the exact same crimes. And we know that there are a disproportionate number of black men on the receiving end of police brutality. So, when Former Speaker of the house and Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called the president’s words to the family disgraceful and appalling saying that the President tried to make this a racial issue, I thought:

Spores. Confused.. Nausea.  Disoriented. Toxins. Losing will to fight.

Because if the uninformed blog commenter doesn’t get it

And the journalist who happens to be a person of color doesn’t get it

And if a presidential candidate doesn’t get it,

 or even worse if he gets it but pretends not to get it for political showmanship –

Then I sit here despairing. 

But maybe you will help me.

Please Pray for the family of Trayvon Martin and for the Black Community in America who must face vicarious trauma each time stories like this unfold and we hear conversations that present and at times promote distrust, hostility and aggression of people who look like us and in this case like our brothers, fathers, nephews and sons.

Pray for George Zimmerman, because no matter what is proven or disproven in the weeks to come, we know that George Zimmerman took a life and that does not occur without psychological, emotional and spiritual consequences.

And pray for our nation that we might be brave enough to hear one another’s stories, acknowledge the existence and effects of racism and fight against any such evil that threatens to take our lives or our hope.

Grammy Gripes

I am not a feminist in the climb the corporate ladder, sexual Revolution, keep my own last name kind of way.  But I do have this little quirk where I hate it when a man feloniously assaults a women in public at the pre-party for an event and then 3 years later without explanation or any well-documented come-to-Jesus is invited to return to said event as its darling.

I am hoping against hope that somehow I am in a long dream and that I do not actually live in a world and country where Chris Brown is paraded around the Grammy stage rhythmically gyrating to not only the music but also to the delighted squeals of young girls in the audience who according to one tweeter “would let Chris B beat her anytime.”

Not Okay People.

And I can hear the pathetic responses right now,

1.       Everyone Deserves a Second Chance

2.       There are lots of immoral people that perform at the Grammys

3.       The Grammys is about Music not personal life.

Allow me to briefly address these mid-eye roll and exasperated sigh.

Immoral Performers a Dime a Dozen

Yeah, there probably are.  I mean the Grammys is basically a drugs, sex and rock-n-roll factory and somehow I am cool with stoned, non-virgin, irreverent provocateurs taking the stage.  Because despite our best efforts to be equally scandalized by every individual offense committed, there is for each of a hierarchy of sin.  As a hippy-dippy artsy type I am comparatively less concerned about an artist tokin’ it up in his or her own home before creating his or her next masterpiece or having sex with her or his live-in on a regular basis.  Would I discourage them from these things if we were good pals? Probably, but we could still be pretty good pals either way.  For me, those behaviors are really nothing at all like beating a woman to a pulp and leaving her for dead. That would be harder for me to “be cool with” in a personal relationship and I think it ought to have been much harder for CBS to be cool with on Sunday night.

Second Chances

I am pro- second chances. Who among us has not spoken out of turn, given into our baser desires and at times made the prodigal son look like the “good one”?  I am stepping completely away from the stone much less being the first to throw it. I am a Christian. I am a Social Worker. I oppose the death penalty. Second Chance is my middle name.  But again, isn’t it a little elementary to equate this level of prominence on the most important night in music with a simple second chance? A second chance is allowing Chris Brown to sit in the audience in the back somewhere. A second chance is agreeing to let him give a humble speech should he win in one of his categories.  This was not a second chance, this was the Chris Brown Banquet of Honor held for all the world to see. 

The Grammys are Professional not Personal

I think it is personal and that is the problem, because as a woman, I take this extremely personally. This reminds me of a few years back when Michael Vick was going to be released from prison and welcomed with open-arms into the NFL. Vick had been convicted of running dog-fights and the animal cruelty that comes along with the gig.  Obviously animal lovers were outraged that he would be let back into the NFL even after having served his time. But many shrugged it off saying, “ it was ONLY some dogs”.  And here we are again at a juncture when a man has nearly killed another human being, bruised her, bloodied her,  humiliated and dehumanized her and it is as if I can here the producers saying, “it was only a woman.”

Not cool Grammy Officiants, you have just made what my dad calls the “S” List and “I don’t mean super.”

Linda Joy Myers Memoir Vignette Prize

Not Your Average Butler

As a child at Southwest Elementary School, I had the profound good fortune of having Ms. Leila Butler as my music teacher. I do apologize if this is offensive, but I will admit to my bias that every child in America deserves to have a big, pillowy, terrifying black woman for a music teacher.  If you want to be all glass-half-full about it, I think that one good thing slavery did for African Americans was to give us enough transgenerational, spiritual wounds to create good music. Passionate undulating heart-songs seem to launch from chocolaty throats, scurrying through the air and piercing the listener’s soul with an acuity that allows him to experience, if only for a moment, the pain and the pleasure of the warrior-warbler crying out. That’s why it is hard to find a person who doesn’t enjoy a black gospel concert—my WASPy friends, my atheist friends, my friends from other countries, they all seem to agree that there is something about this genre of music that we so aptly call soul.

Ms. Butler had soul and sass and class and if looks could kill—well, class size at Southwest Elementary may have become exceedingly more manageable thanks to her expressive interactions with disrespectful little boys and girls.  I think most of my Black History Education happened in that little, out of the way, music portable under Ms. Butler’s queen-like reign. She would have us re-enact Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat for a white traveler in Alabama. For what seemed like weeks, we would walk into her classroom and set up two long rows of chairs to approximate a greyhound bus and then vie for acting roles. Three or four of us would be the White passengers in the front, another 3 or 4 kids would be the black passengers in the back and 3 others would fulfill the roles of bus-driver, entitled-seat-demanding white person and tired, old Rosa herself. I don’t know if Ms. Butler turned in these lessons plans to the administration or whether or not they would have been approved if she had, but I am so thankful that I was there participating in the Butlerian congregation. Reenacting this scene over and over again-- using our own  little toothless mouths and voices to make someone give up their seat and then using those same little bodies to  rise up against this evil was a sort of Eucharistic experience—holy in the way education really ought to be.

Ms. Butler also taught us about Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and his peaceful protests. It was she who told me, for the first time, that in the not-so distant history, black people and white people had to use different facilities, water fountains, entrances and all manner of resources. But it was when she said that people who were different races could not be friends and absolutely could not marry, that I experienced one of those life changing moments in which the new knowledge that you have acquired cannot be unknown and must therefore be addressed or ignored.  Ignoring is not a strength of mine.

I started telling everyone I knew, (mostly mixed-race family members) about this crazy injustice from years past. When speaking the words was no longer therapeutic enough I wrote a paper about Dr. King and how,were it not for his efforts, I would not just be oppressed but in all likelihood, as a biracial child of a black mother and white father, I would not even exist. In an unfortunate string of events, my older siblings found my literary reflections on MLK and I entered our living room just in time to see them laughing at and presumably making fun of my hard work. This presumption filled me with equal portions of debilitating pain and homicidal rage. I screamed at them and ran out of the room crying. One of them, I think it was my oldest brother Shawn, came after me and explained that they were not laughing at my ability or sentiments, but instead were chuckling at their own ignorance—the fact that their baby sister knew more about Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights than they did.  This, of course, appealed to the narcissistic and tyrannical tendencies that characterized my early years and calmed me down enough to be useful again. To me, Dr. King and Rosa Parks were not just interesting pieces of classroom trivia. These stories were fiercely personal, emotional, meaningful and sobering.

Each day in music class during this Black History Unit we would sing a rendition of Martin Luther King’s  I have a dream speech that went like this:

I have a dream, that we could all love one another,

I have a dream that we could be sisters and brothers,

I have a dream that when the sun shines down on the world

That there’d be peace on earth in every place, for every one of every race.

And every time we sang this song, tears poured from my dark brown eyes. I cried as though my tears might somehow make those dreams of his come true. They were amen tears.

Amen to love.

Amen to family.

Amen to light covering and warming us.

Amen and amen and amen to systems that promote peace for each of us.

Those were the prayers of my fresh, young, soul in that little portable in my little town in the south. Music opens us up and brings us into agreement with the truth. We sing it out to one another and hear it sung back to us, and that is why Ms. Butler did more than teach Hot Cross Buns on the flute-a-phone (although she did that too.)  With her fold out chairs, homemade scripts and songs of justice, Ms. B might have been one of the first influences that led me into Social Work. Sometimes when I am worried about the world, I put myself in someone else’s shoes like we did on that imaginary bus. Sometimes, I write and op-ed like I was inspired to do when I first learned about segregation. More often than not, though, I sing that song that we sang back then and I am thankful for the woman who taught it to me.

Tardy Thoughts on Penn State

I*** One huge tragic flaw that I have as a writer is that I never remember the urgency associated with getting thoughts out there as they pertain to current events. I realize everyone has probably moved on to the next big scandal that I am at this very moment failing to realize I should be writing about, but as far as I am concerned, it is never too late to think about ways to fix what is broken in society. Thus my thoughts on Penn State are below:

 I read an article a few months ago about memory—specifically how it is becoming less valuable in the technological age. Why would I commit anything to memory when the answers to all of life questions are readily at my fingertips? 

Memorize my spouse’s phone number? That’s my phone’s job.

Remember my appointments? Calendar’s Job.

Scripture memorization?  No need, I have the Bible App.

In a sense, when we relinquish these sorts of mundane controls in our lives we affirm that we cannot be bothered to think for ourselves. But I would suggest that when we remove ourselves from these processes it is not merely an intellectual detachment but an emotional one as well.  This might be sacrilege to a technology worshipping generation, but I believe there is a correlation between these micro-detachments in our individual lives and a similar group detachment which occurs when we often and absent-mindedly relinquish moral reasoning to institutions and policies. The rationale is that those outside forces: human resources, the board, the legislators will think about issues more comprehensively than an individual would and will thus know more and know better.

I believe that is some of what we have been hearing about over the past few weeks with regard to the tragedy unfolding at Penn State University. Pennsylvania has laws about reporting child abuse and one assumes that the University has reporting policies and procedures as well.  These policies are meant to be a help—to make things more clear, efficient and systematized.  So why does it seem that these systems so demonstrably failed to protect the children within their care?

They failed because institutions and laws though not inherently evil do not have souls. They create bare minimum or lobbied responses to complicated and complex issues, and  just as we have allowed machines to do our remembering for us we are allowing policies to do our reasoning for us. I have overheard and solicited a great deal of response to the happenings at Penn State and as always what surprises me most is the number of people who are self-righteously assured that this sort of thing could never have happened on their watches. They could be right. But I suppose, I just don’t see that way of thinking as particularly helpful in times like these.

What if we were to assume that every alarming story that we see in the news is from Jonathan and we are each David. We are "the man" in the story and rather than wasted energy used to judge we must find ourselves in the tale and determine how we got there! Maybe we are not the coach who allegedly perpetuated this abuse, but for a moment can we see ourselves as the graduate assistant, the janitor, the friend and colleague?  If we want to see change, we must let down our defenses and assume that we might have, could have, and would have behaved in similar ways.

I know for certain that at times I have let the State of Texas make a decision for me when my gut, my education or Jesus Christ would have been a better consultant.  But in those instances I have wanted to take the smallest amount of action that would get me in the least amount of trouble and allow me to think the shortest amount of time about something that made me uncomfortable. I don’t think I am the only one.

That said, I do not mean to belittle the mistakes, failures and evil that surrounds this case. To the contrary it makes me so sick that I desire to engage to the fullest extent possible to be proactive in disallowing stories like this to continue to exist.  These are a few ways I think we can be a part of the solution:

1.       We must acknowledge and embrace power and responsibility. Spiderman’s Uncle was right about it and so was Jesus: To whom much is given, much is expected. This does not just mean money. It means age, influence, strength, talents, abilities, education and preferential treatment based on race, gender, socioeconomic status or anything else. Because we live in such a powerful and resourced country many of us are blinded to our own power but we all have some. We have to own it rather than ignore it and use it rather than abuse it.

2.       We must develop and embrace empathy and collectivism. I am sorry if that offends any patriotic sensibilities but I am hard-pressed to find scripture that supports a “just do what is best for you” mentality. Instead, I read, “share all your belongings”, and “always put other before yourself”. We do an especially poor job of encouraging selfless behaviors from men and instead promote gender-specific vision, ambition and drive as the overarching characteristics a man should strive to obtain. None of those qualities are horrible but left unsupplemented by other characteristics that are traditionally regarded as feminine, we raise a whole segment of the population to be primarily self-serving.

3.       We must demonstrate courage to go beyond or against what is simply required. It makes me sad when my friends no longer care to memorize my phone number but it makes me livid when my fellow citizens no longer care to think for themselves.  No one can do my thinking and feeling for me and if I let them do so because I am scared, uncertain or lazy I put myself and others at risk, because I have personal experiences and professional ethics and spiritual guidance that institutions do not have. We need programs and policies and procedures. They are good protections for a species who left to our own devices will often choose poorly. But more than any of those other things we need people--people who break the mold, display valor, rock the boat and are fervent not in the absence of but despite their own fears and fragility.  

Really?!*# Ann Coulter Addition

        One of my favorite all-time SNL skits occurs on Weekend Update and is performed by the lovely Seth Meyers and the great Amy Poehler.  It is called REALLY?!*# with Seth and Amy.  The sketch is essentially the two comedians expressing dumbfoundedness at some recent public indiscretion. This indiscretion is usually so overt and profound, that it is hard to imagine how its absurdity could ever escape the mind of its perpetuator.  And with full acknowledgement that I might be commiting comedy blasphemy , I have one such sketch that I took a crack at writing myself.  But first you'll need a little context, so go here.

Really?!*#, Ann Coulter?

You are going to-- in the same conversation take offense at the idea that some find your party affiliation to be a little on the bigoted-side and then non-ironically use the term “our blacks”.

Really?!*#

You didn’t think that maybe a possessive pronoun in this instance might take the audience back to a time in our history when black people were literally your ancestor’s possessions? Really?!*#

I mean Really Ann Coulter, you expect me to believe that an intelligent, successful woman such as yourself could presume to do a race-based (minorities only) comparative analysis of the performance of politicians and that that would be a totally un-racist thing to do?!? Really?!*#

Because Really Ms. Coulter, I think you are bright enough (even despite the blond hair and female genitalia) to know when you are purportedly giving a compliment to an oppressed group but concurrently othering them with your exclusionary subtext—just like I did earlier in this paragraph.

See I’m one of them better blacks like you talked about, Really!

 Only I would be ashamed to support a candidate who takes pride in your support Ann Coulter,

Really!

This has been Really?!*# from www.mixed-company.blogspot.com . My apologies to Mr. Meyer and Ms. Poehler for any bastardization of their comic genius.