love me daddy?

when i used to listen to howard stern (before he abandoned the middle class he claims to represent) i would often hear him take the various desperate behaviours of strippers, drunks and perverts and boil them all down to one mantra, "love me daddy."

i've been doing my own version of that lately. except mine is more like "explain it to me daddy." my dad is a ditto head and as much as i love him i can't figure him out. and where i used to feel that he was just misguided or crazy or experiencing some kind of early-onset alzheimer's, as this world gets crazier and more dangerous my internal "explain it to me daddy" has a more angry edge to it. you voted for this monster. you listen to this crap that they spoonfeed you. you are a smart, compassionate man. explain to me how you can reconcile the values that you taught me -- honesty, standing up for what you believe in, fairness, justice for all -- with the corruption, the dodging of responsibility for their actions, the inequities and inherent racism of their policies.

but i can't ask him these things. for a couple of reasons. first, we stopped talking about all politics years ago when he started sending me jokes about jesse jackson that i found to be kinda racist. my dad is not a racist. that i know. so when the email crowd he started hangin with started clouding his judgment i was devastated. so devastated that i couldn't even begin to bring it up to him... which brings me to the second reason i can't ask him about these things. i am so demoralized by his current choices. de-moral-ized. my dad taught me my morals. when he renegs on everything he taught me i feel eviscerated, gutted like a fish. he was my hero.

so, what do i do instead? well, since i'm an atheist, i can't exactly pray so i seek. i seek out his influences to try to better understand what the fuck is getting into his head.

last night i was channel surfing and came across a fox show hosted by geraldo rivera (yeah, i didn't even know he had a show - at least not on broadcast) and he was covering the outrage of the NSA data mining our phone calls. my dad used to work for the NSA so every time they break another law i keep wondering if this might be the straw that does it... (honestly i also wonder if my dad will approve of their policies when their illegal data mining wire tapping of lawful citizens leads to his daughter being locked up for being a dissenter/subversive/"unamerican" for protesting this war and the next war -- but i digress) so, geraldo is going off in his hyperbolic style about the intrusion and the illegality and i'm thinking "yeah, maybe this will be it! maybe daddy will see the light when even fox sees that this president is a criminal! who else could they possibly blame?"

and then geraldo closes with this: "With all due respect to our president -- who I do respect -- if congress doesn't stop this guy, General Hayden, then he'll soon be peeking into our bedrooms!" and then he kisses his two fingers and gives a peace out sign to the camera.

nevermind.