The holidays are underrated. For ex-suburban liberal wackos like me, eating, getting presents and being with family — two of which every other good American is fixated upon starting 12:01 a.m. Nov. 1 — are just the icing on the real cake-y joy of the holidays, slightly better than having to take out my parents’ trash again.
The real point of going home for a whole freaking month is not to enjoy the family, especially if you’re a young, slightly socialistic pundit-in-Pampers. The real point of the holidays, these days anyway, is discussing (read: warring over) politics with the right-minded nestminders that raised me.
You see, no matter how “educational” we imagine life on this expensive cliff to be, going back to those chalky Republican cul-de-sacs, where Bush bumper stickers are still as popular as lifted Suburbans, makes one realize just how isolated from reality our academic life is. No matter how many “Communism and Social Policy” or “Art in the Era of American Imperialism” classes I’ve sat through, somehow the first National Rifle Association sticker I see on the drive home gets my blood rushing so hard I have to chuck my organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee in its recycled cup right at the offending Excursion.
Call littering hypocritical if you want. But remember: This is the holidays.
Besides, the real angst doesn’t kick in until I get north of L.A. Descending into the murky humidor of the Central Valley might be the shits for some, but where else can you find either Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh on every English A.M. radio band? I love Bakersfield — passing by on each trip home, I realize I’ve been missing some vital advice on how to survive in the treacherous world of tricksters, traitors and teachers. (Tell me, Rush: How can I deal with an “arrogant, blasphemous, stupid, arrogant liberal?” Of course: Call them stupid. Those idiotic egoists hate being called stupid even more than they hate America.)
But radical radio detours are child’s play compared to the kind of TV you can find in houses with cable, I remember upon arrival. Rush can spit fire by playground rules, but his impact craters are infinitely smaller than the ones blown by my Fox News favorites Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. I started becoming periodically obsessed with “The O’Reilly Factor” back when Bush was bad enough but we didn’t have the grim cloud of war hanging over our hot political heads. Back then it was comedy. After almost four years of leftist indoctrination (a social science degree), watching his smug spiel feels like spying a blood-soaked villain chop off the limbs of a shrieking, still-breathing victim — and I love horror movies.
Watching Fox News only on holidays at home turns the Propaganda Channel into a sick fetish, and I absolutely love it — possibly because some, uh, other people in the place take it seriously. I, at first, refused to believe this, thinking they just pretended to believe for my enjoyment. But then I found myself having to logically deconstruct the euphemisms of their anchors to a skeptical audience. (“You don’t really think everything in the New York Times is a lie, do you, Mom?”)
Now, jousting over politics with my super-conservative parents is an established tradition for which we both anticipate and prepare. I remember the brutal details of the four propositions Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to sneak past us; they save the newspaper article (not from the NYT) about the San Diego artist who gives “illegal immigrants” sturdy shoes with maps to help them cross the border. You need to fuel the fire with something (especially when Christmas music replaces the dimwit din of Fox), and we burn pretty hot in the era of Valerie Plame, secret prisons, gay marriage and Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.
Before I turned into such a fair, rational thinker, our battles used to get bloody. We’d have to separate ourselves for the rest of the day after discussing Clinton’s cock or Bush’s drug/vacation habits. Nowadays we keep it to just a checkup, a chance to make sure that each other’s vitals are working okay.
“You still for that warmongering, whiffle-ball-brained president we got?”
“Sure are, kid. You still a homo-loving, tree-hugging Marxist?”
To which I nod, smile and sigh. You just can’t get this kind of entertainment in college.
