We pretty much all have stories about banging heads with Facebook "Friends" who spout Toxic Conservative Memes. At least those who aren't wise enough to avoid Facebook all together. Here's mine. I just Unfriended a guy on my list whom I've known since college and it felt good to get it off my chest.
Lemme tell you about it over the jump.
I'm going to call him Pooh-Bah. He's a Gilbert and Sullivan fan -- one of the things we have in common and one of the things I've always liked about him. He was a member of the campus Science Fiction Club at the University where I went to college, and like most of the members of that club he was a dyed-in-the-wool Heinlein Libertarian. In many ways, he's a decent enough fellow; a little bit pompous and full of himself sometimes, but then I have my own character flaws and I can make allowances.
In his Facebook posts, he tends to re-post a lot of libertarian graphics about how EEE-Vil and how STOOO-pid Gun Control Advocates and Liberals in general are. Sometimes they get me mad, but I don't respond to them, because they are re-posts of someone else's Facebook posts. I wouldn't be arguing with him, I'd be arguing with a hundred friends and friends-of-friends of the original poster. And life is too short for that.
"Why don't you just Un-friend him?" my wife would ask. And I'd think about it. But because we used to be pretty good friends and he can talk fairly intelligently about Harry Potter and Light Victorian Opera, I cut him a lot of slack.
Today he posted a graphic that did more than just annoy me. Today I finally had enough.
The graphic he posted showed a couple of sexy women dressed in sexy gym clothes and contoring themselves in provocative poses. The caption was something along the lines of "You must understand, girls, if you dress like this when you go to the gym, don't get offended when us guys objectify you."
And it just prodded me a little too far.
This is what I wrote to him; the names have been altered to protect the guilty:
Pooh-bah, let me tell you a story.
I used to take our family to visit our friend Dragonmom every Memorial Day for a weekend barbecue she and her husband throw every year for their furry friends. A couple years ago, Dragonmom's husband made some nasty taunts to our daughter Gamera about how much cleavage she was showing. I suspect he was just bitter because he wasn't getting anything from his wife, but the guy tends to be a jerk under the best of conditions.
Now Gamera was an emotionally vulnerable teen at the time and his caustic remarks really hurt her, and she was very upset by them. Had I known about it when it happened, I would have said something to the guy about it; but Gamera kept it to herself until we got home. My wife Lute was furious and we have not been to visit Dragonmom ever since -- despite the fact that the two of them are good friends -- because Lute refuses to set foot in the house as long as the jerk is there.
Now had you been there, you could have calmly and with your Infinite Superior Intelligence explained to Gamera how she had only herself to blame for dressing comfortably on a summer day, that she should not have been offended, and that the guy was the one who was really being hurt here. I would have liked to see that. Lute would have smashed your teeth in.
Pooh-bah, there is much we disagree on. I haven't said much in the past when you've said that All Liberals -- like me -- are dippy Cloud-Cuckoolanders incapable of comprehending intelligent thought; or that all people who feel -- like me -- that some measures of gun control are reasonable and even desirable are Enemies of Liberty who in a Rational Society would the first up against the wall.
I don't mind when you insult me and my views, because I know it's nothing personal against me.
But here you are insulting my daughter, my wife and even my youngest daughter who will someday grow up to have boobs.
Enough is enough. Good-bye, Pooh-bah.
And I just hit the "Unfriend" button. Don't know if he'll reply. Don't particularly care.