Apparently business is so slow at the Department of Justice that it has decided to turn its attention away from trivial matters such as running guns to Mexico and focus on combating the effects of bullying.
Now before you liberals swell with righteous indignation, try for a moment for some of that sensitivity for which you are supposed to be famous.
You see, I was a Victim of Bullying.
I was short, skinny and wore glasses. I was bookish, awkward and my parents had even worse fashion sense than I did so I looked like a walking train wreck. And my father liked to give home haircuts and it should have been one of the last things he did with his spare time.
I was not good at sports, and so I got teased, and beaten up. I was called all sorts of horrible names, names that I cannot repeat here. I was dumped upside down in a trash can while half the school gathered around to laugh. I was called a f*g, slammed up against walls, hit, had things thrown at me, and on one memorable occasion I was punched in the throat in high school apparently because I was a “little white m***********”.
And all I was doing was trying to get to fifth period before the bell rang. What happened to my tormentors? Nothing. And according to Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West, I should be homeless, depressed and a menace to society:
"When kids who are the targets of bullies show up in school, not ready to learn because they’re too afraid...that’s not just a challenge for the victim or his or her family; that becomes an education challenge. And when those bullied children show up in doctor’s offices and clinics suffering from anxiety or depression or a whole host of other issues, that becomes a health care challenge. And when those bullied victims leave school and can’t find jobs because they don’t have the skills employers need because, as the research indicates, they’re more likely to miss, skip, or drop out of school, then that becomes a business community challenge.”
Apparently as Victim of Bullying, I didn’t get the memo that my life was supposed to be a Lifetime Movie of the Week. I grew up, went to college, got a job, was a firefighter, got married, joined the Masons, the Shriners, the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce.
I pay my taxes, donate to charities, went to Cambodia on an awareness mission to stop human trafficking, and my local Shrine club is raising money for the Shriners’ Hospitals for Children. I use my radio show to promote local groups trying to make a positive difference in the community. I am not an “education challenge” or a “healthcare challenge” or a “business challenge.” And thus I am not a convenient statistic for government overreach.
I say that not because I want everyone to know what a great personification of humanity I turned out to be, but to point out that I came of age in a time when one did not let one’s negative experiences in life determine one’s identity.
I did not grow up in an age in which I was the center of the universe and entitled to anything I did not earn. I never got a ribbon for showing up, and no one stopped the world to adjust my self esteem. I also did not Tweet or post on Facebook or YouTube every little aspect of my life as if I were the center of the world, and I didn’t have movies, video games or music telling me that there were no strictures on my behavior and that I could rob, loot and shoot at my leisure. Life, I learned, is an inherently unfair proposition and sometimes the bad guys win, but it doesn’t have to color one’s entire existence.
Now we have Valerie Jarrrett talking about being cyber-bullied on Twitter. Well Valerie, you are a public figure making yourself available in a public venue. As a talk show host in a tiny town in Utah, nasty comments have been posted about me.
Do stay up at night bemoaning the fact that I am a victim of cyber-bullying? No, I don’t. It comes with the territory and I know that people who spend hours online scrawling obnoxious messages are crude under-socialized Neanderthals who have deluded themselves into thinking that the world gives a rat’s fat fandango what they think about anything as they sweat for their 15 minutes of fame.
It’s a fact of life: If you stick your head up, someone is going to take a poke at you.
I know bullying is serious, no one should ever have to endure being called names, getting beaten up, or dumped into a trash can just because they don’t act, look or dress like the rest of the crowd. I know that because it happened to me.
We should strive for civility, courtesy, decency and basic human respect. But I also know that this is an election year, and if the DOJ was as concerned about people as it is trying to appear in said election year, it would have done something about the bullying at the polls in the 2008 election. It would have never let Fast and Furious turn into such a debacle. It would be concerned about human trafficking coming across the borders.
And maybe the Administration would have had something to say about a Chicago city government and Boston civic leader trying to intimidate a business owner whose views go against the perceived mainstream. And it would not tell another business owner that he has to violate his religious beliefs to stay in business. But it is easier to encourage still more people and more voters to consider themselves victims in need of federal intervention in a problem that should be dealt with locally, thereby setting the stage for federal involvement in any issue that it decides to label as “bullying.”
So speaking as a Victim of Bullying, I would like to request that this Administration do something constructive for a change, instead of finding yet another way to poke its proboscis into venues that are clearly outside its job description.