Once Upon A Time…

By William L. Garvin
In a time when fiction is presented as fact and truth is irrelevant, this is a verbatim transcript of an actual conversation that never occurred.

Ms. Hissy Fitt: Run for your lives! Run for your lives! Woe is me and woe is us!
Independent Thinker: Hold up just a minute…what’s the panic? What’s going on?

Ms.Fitt: It’s the Tea Party and their marauding hordes…they’re everywhere. They’re out there raping plundering, and pillaging American thought…they’re worse than Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun or Rachel Maddow!
IT: Calm down just a minute. I know that the latest Rasmussen poll showed that 71% of the public thinks that Congress should listen to the Tea Party ideas but is that a reason for hysteria?

Ms.Fitt: That’s exactly what I mean. They’re winning, there’s no stopping them. Run for your life!
IT: I’m too old to run so slow down and tell me what’s so scary about controlling federal spending, balancing the budget, lowering the debt, and supporting the Constitution?
Ms.Fitt: Welllllll…that I kinda agree with.
IT: And what about limited government and growing the private sector economy?

Ms.Fitt: Oh, I suppose that part’s okay too; it’s just that they seem to be multiplying. Last year I was told that they were irrelevant, they were insignificant, and that they would just fade away. It’s not happening.
IT: Who told you that?
Ms.Fitt: Oh, lots of my friends, my newspaper, MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The really bad thing is that they are all racists and bigots!
IT: You know they support Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Nikki Haley, Susana Martinez, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, and Allen West who are all women and minorities and many other minority candidates as well. They also hold Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams in high esteem. Those brilliant economists also happen to be minorities.

Ms.Fitt: Well what about their rallies and all that violence and those terrible signs?
IT: Funny you should ask. First of all, there has never been any violence. Secondly, they pick up their trash unlike many leftist demonstrations where they seem to enjoy the trashing. Thirdly, you should read the study done by Emily Elkins of UCLA. She painstakingly photographed every sign at the huge 9/12 rally in Washington, D.C.
Ms.Fitt: So she proved they were racists, right?
IT: Quite the opposite. She found that “Over 50 percent were about limited government and lower spending, and only about 6 percent were controversial in nature," She also said that “controversial” didn’t mean “racist.” "If it was related to outsider politics, an ‘us versus them' message, anything about Islam, or the mosque in New York, anything that could be construed as controversial then I included it." There was nothing like the protest signs in Tucson that had Governor Brewer dressed in a Nazi uniform with the caption “Hitler’s Daughter” or the one that read “Yes, We Klan”. And don’t forget the Hollywood crowd that hung Sarah Palin in effigy.

Ms.Fitt: Well, you were making some sense until you had to go and bring up THAT woman!
IT: I take it you don’t like her either?
Ms.Fitt: Of course not. My friends don’t like her so I don’t like her either. She helped kill that congresswoman in Arizona by loading his gun with hate speech. I read it in the paper here.
IT: Well we all continue to pray for Congresswoman Giffords’ recovery but you really need to stop taking those violent metaphors literally. And when you watch Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and Saturday Night Live, try to remember they are all trying to be comedians. Have you ever listened to her speeches, read her books, read her Facebook posts, or actually reviewed her records of political accomplishments?

Ms.Fitt: No but she thinks there are death panels out there. We need health care reform.
IT: Yes, we do but you can’t add some thirty million people to the roles and have the costs remain the same (let along go down) without rationing medical care and deciding what you will pay for and what you won’t. It’s that simple.
Ms.Fitt: Plus she and that Tea Party are responsible for global warming, starvation in Darfur, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, Milli Vanilli, hyperinflation, UFO’s, and the decline of the Roman Empire.
IT: Considering they’ve only been on the national scene for two years, just think what they will be able to accomplish by 2012!