Up My Own Ass

I had planned on writing something silly today. Maybe something about the Swedish bestiality ring that they just busted. Perhaps something cute about the former American Idol contestant who killed herself in front of Paula Abdul’s house. Or how the “secret” in Victoria’s Secret is apparently formaldehyde.

But  I decided it was high time this soldier wrote about a little something called bias.

Subcategory: media bias.

Sub-Subcategory: liberal media bias.

I’m looking at you, Katie Couric.

I was once one of the folks who thought the idea of “liberal media bias” was a bunch of hooey, as much a figment of these silly goose conservatives’ imagination as unicorns and Santa Claus. And the LMB words thrown around a little too freely. It was their “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

Shut up! Stop whining!

In fact, in 2006 I even wrote something for a Web site attacking sexy, bearded Christian L Brent Bozell and his conservative media watchdog organization the Media Research Center. Boy, did I give ole vag beard the business! This article appeared on a site, of course, staffed by liberals, one of whom stopped being my online friend after our heated debates about Don Imus.

I was later delighted when a reader commented on my review of a Bernard Goldberg book on a different Web site, calling me a “nasty stuck up lib.”

“God bless you, sir, madam, or he/she,” I exclaimed.

The nasty part was certainly true, particularly in another book review I wrote of Laura Ingraham’s Power to the People last December. This is where my story truly begins. The editor of the site I was writing this for loved it. No changes needed. Just a paragraph describing who the hell Ingraham is.

But this was far from a serious review. I literally skimmed the book for about an hour at a Barnes & Noble one day, writing down the issues on which I wanted to attack Ingraham. I basically just attacked her for being a conservative. Even made a couple of cancer jokes!

A liberal friend of mine also loved it and thought it was quite funny. Nonsense attacking conservatives, I learned, was humorous. And I was becoming really good at it.

The next thing I wrote for this site was an attack on something completely different: atheism. I was going after the rise of atheism, authors Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, all those tools. I used the same silly, sometimes vicious, but nonsensical, style with which I wrote the Ingraham piece.

This was a completely different experience. I had to do two rewrites, fact check, make citations. Everything I didn’t have to do for the liberal-friendly Laura Ingraham attack. All of the sudden it was “Let’s be serious. You can’t write that.” I sent it to my liberal friend and he even told me, “It doesn’t work.”

Finally, my editor threw his hands up. He couldn’t use it. Wouldn’t publish it.

I said fuck it and started shopping the piece elsewhere while beginning work on another piece about how the film The Neverending Story was made by and for pedophiles. Also nonsensical, by the way, but they published it.

Within a week my atheism story was accepted by a whole nother *Web site. No, “Oh, maybe you should explain this.” It was taken as it was.

Interesting, I thought, how my two similarly written pieces received such different reactions from my liberal buds.

Fast forward about a year, and now I get this comment about a small thing I wrote here about Bill Maher’s movie. Not my best work, admittedly. But tell me there isn’t a little liberal anti-Christian bias in this person’s hatred for my piece. I just wrote a three-part thing on celebs I had crushed on (1, 2, 3), for Pete’s sake!

My libby friend said something to me about how the conservative point of view always seems serious. Ergo, it can’t be funny.

What horseshit, I said. Atheists can make fun of believers all they want, but “Whoever” forbid the believers have a go at the atheists. No humor can be drawn from a belief in a higher power. He’s telling me I’m not funny enough, perhaps no one’s funny enough, to attack the precious, highly-intellectual atheists. Well, fuck them. Oh, I hope there’s a hell. Please let there be a hell.

So I’ve learned from being in the writing community that there is indeed a bias. Attack the church, like I have, on their beliefs about homosexuality and you are spot on and hilarious. But take the point of view of that same church against non-believers and you suck.

Hence I was a victim of liberal media bias. A victim of the modern age, poor, poor girl! And I was called a “devout Xtian!” Like a superhero! I don’t know if the ‘X’ is supposed to be the Cross (in which case, I’d be an ‘Xian’) or if he or she is X-ing him or herself like Manson.

*Fuck! My atheism story is very important to this and the stupid Web site that published it apparently did some house cleaning. Fuckers! If this MySpace blog link doesn’t work I’ll have to kill myself.