Please Stop Talking With Your Mouth Open

I yelled at my car radio today.  I yelled right in its face.  I even went to honk my horn until logic kicked in and I realized that doing so was even less effective than screaming at it.

Nothing in this world makes me want to tear off my skin, pick up a shovel, and beat the tar out of someone quite like blatant displays of ignorance.   Far worse is the crime when it’s done in mass media.

Local radio  is the worst.

If someone wants to post some undeveloped, overly confident thought through a media outlet online, that post is subject to a great deal of public criticism.  I have the ability to repost it with mockery attached, comment on it, or to even contact the writer and give them a piece of my mind.

If someone wants to state something similarly moronic on television, it’s heard around the world and not only will it damage the network’s ratings and credibility (Fox News, anyone?), but it will also be fodder for late night television hosts for weeks to come.

However.  If a local radio show gets some hot shot in the seat who thinks they understand the way the world and people work and wants to use the microphone as a soapbox for his personal (and might I say infantile) opinion, it is just not as easy as I would prefer to hold that moron accountable for the uneducated poo he spews all over society.

My peeve of the moment is with a local radio station, which featured a talk show host who was discussing the concept of the right to life.  His argument was essentially that those who dwell in the world solely with the purpose of extinguishing others should not be awarded the right to life.  And though I think there are a few misguided principles imbedded within that perspective, I respect where he was coming from.

Until he kept talking and I realized the context in which he was speaking: The Christian / Muslim debate.

Ugh I hate the Christian / Muslim debate.  I shouldn’t say hate.  Hate is a strong word.  I strongly dislike the Christian / Muslim debate because it’s usually being had by some extremist Christian who doesn’t actually have any concept of Islam.

This was the case inside the intangible world of my car radio.

Unfortunately, this gentleman was questioning the basic right of life in the case of Muslims based on the fact that all Muslims want to kill us.  They want to kill us all until we’re dead and eat our babies and bomb our playgrounds and things.

And try as I might, all the screaming I could do was not enough to make him stop spewing his uneducated poo all over the radio.  People could actually hear what he was saying. People heard him!  Heaven forbid he actually might have swayed someone to his perspective.  The idea of that really keeps me up at night.   Somewhere out there is someone who isn’t very bright and is very easily swayed by entities that are seemingly well-informed and reputable.  And somewhere out there, that person might have just turned his ignorant little heart against any practicing Muslim he meets in the future.

Muslims who set out in their lives solely to kill Christians are a lot like, I don’t know – “Christians” who try to sell magical vials of holy water in infomercials.   Just because a portion of a population with a labeled identity do a certain thing does not mean it informs the identity of the group as a whole.   To make a sweeping statement as violent as the concept of not having a right to life and apply it to the entire population within that belief system is a sort of ignorance that really just gets up my butt, makes nest, and keeps me in a downright foul mood.

So I screamed at my car radio.  Because there was no dislike button, no comment section, no reposting, and no ability to publicly mock  him.    And since I was unable to call in and give him a piece of my mind (because after all, I’m driving), I felt helpless to save easily-swayed minds from his moronic grasp.

So here’s to you, idiotic radio shot host: may you be blessed to have an experience with a peaceful, practicing Muslim (shouldn’t be hard since they make up 1/5 of the world population) who makes you feel like a complete imbecile for your poo spewing.

And when you do, please air a narrative of your enlightenment. ♣

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, media, musings, postaday2011