Sunday, October 30, 2011

Gun-toting liberals and other hybrids

The old left-right dichotomy has out-lived its usefulness.

Yet the stereotypes live on. Gays are liberal. NRA types vote Republican. Liberals love gun control. Hunters are rednecks. Potheads are liberals. Muslims are terrorists. Jews are rich. Rich people vote Republican. Artists love gun control. And on and on.

It's the outliers who've blurred the borders. Jorg Haider was one of Austria's most famous gay men for many years. Also leader of an extremist right wing party. Drug-taking right-wing homosexual. Died in a car crash. Going twice the speed limit with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. How do you categorize a man like that? Gay redneck?

Richard Hatfield. Premier of New Brunswick for almost twenty years. One of the most right-wing provinces in Canada. Spent more time in Manhattan gay haunts than in the premier's office. Once told an interviewer that just because he was premier of New Brunswick didn't mean he had to live there. He's the other guy responsible for the Bricklin automobile. Those salt-of the-earth New Brunswick voters elected him again and again.

The back-country pot-heads around here all own guns. Not because they're up to something nefarious, but because there's bears and coyotes about.  Does that make them liberals or conservatives? I suppose it means they're people.

Left? Right? Who cares. People are people.

Everybody's queer in their own way.

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