#FreeChrisLoesch Twitter Husband Defends his Political Media Wife and Gets Suspended

I am not a political person.  I do not debate politics here on my blog, or in real life.  I’m like a drunk on life’s highway; sometimes I will drift a little left, sometimes I drift a little right.  So far I haven’t driven it off a cliff.  There are probably 15% of Americans who are true die hard Republicans, and 15% who are true die hard Democrats, leaving a solid 70% to fall somewhere between the two extremes.

This year is an election year and well politics are pretty damned hard to avoid.  Especially  when they show up in your Twitter stream.

Dana Loesch is the Conservative’s Pin Up Girl.  She was a big name in the Tea Party, until the Tea Party jumped the shark, then Dana jumped ship.  She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s making a name for herself on the National level, she had balls bigger than some guys I know.

And she’s a hometown girl made good.  Dana is from St. Louis, has her own radio show here.  It’s really hard not to love a girl who provides us with sound bites such as “I’m sure I could beat off a brains hungry zombie”

I follow Dana on Twitter because at night she retweets all the hate tweets she gets during the day.  It would be entertaining if it wasn’t so vile and full of hatred and vitriol. Dana, being Dana, and having a platform to speak her mind, understandably becomes a target for those who oppose her point of view. It comes with being in the public eye.

But when someone on Twitter says well….

well, that’s crossing the line.  Her husband Chris agreed. And stepped up to defend his wife, on Twitter.

Within hours, Chris’ Twitter account had been repeatedly marked as spam, and his account was suspended.   Dana obviously, tweeted about it, and for most of the night, Dana’s fans and followers Tweeted, and retweeted their outrage at the progressives and at Twitter, using the hashtag #FreeChrisLoesch.  Before I went to bed, #FreeChrisLoesch was trending worldwide.  This morning, Chris’ Twitter account had been reinstated, and Dana thanked her fans and supporters.  Shortly thereafter, Chris’s account was once again reported as spam repeatedly, and subsequently suspended.  Even with Twitter aware of the circumstance, and reinstating Chris’ account, it still managed to be suspended three times in 75 minutes this morning.  Once again, Dana and her fans took to the Twitter and started flooding Twitter streams with the hashtag #FreeChrisLoesch.  It made it so far as to be trending nationwide.

My last post was about bullying, and what my daughter has been going through this entire year.  Bullying doesn’t stop with a diploma.

As of air time for The Dana Show, (12:00 CST) @ChrisLoesch was back on Twitter.  As I sit here writing this it is 2:14, so his account has been active for over two hours without any further suspensions.

What the world doesn't need now. Or in the future. Or ever.

Once again there is internet drama. Once again I am drawn to it. OK, I’m not drawn to it. I made the choice to jump in. And by jump in I mean, I made the choice to read a blog post that referenced the blog post that caused the controversy. So, then, so that I could be informed, (and because I love a good train wreck) I went and read the controversial blog post written by Gretchen over at Jill’s blog Scary Mommy.

I was at work when I started reading it. Two paragraphs into it my head is ready to explode. So, I print it out and sit on it. I go back several times over the course of the afternoon, and each time my head is ready to explode. I wrote notes in the margin. I highlighted sentences. I read paragraphs out loud to co-workers.

And my head exploded.

I sent an email to my sister’s best guy/girlfriend who is my token gay man in my life, just to get his perspective on it. He had seen my link to it on my personal Facebook page, and was leaving a comment for me. He, clearly had a different perspective than I did.

His head didn’t explode. Well, at least it didn’t appear to have exploded, as the comment he left was clear, consice and well thought out, and relavent and well… much better than anything I was spouting off all afternoon. But he works in media.. he’s good at finding the right words.

I’m good at exploding heads.

And shooting off my mouth.

Mostly without thinking.

So, I sat on it a while longer. Like an entire 36 more hours. (mainly because I took the girls to a circus last night and didn’t have time to sit down and re-read it and think about it any more.)

My sister’s guy/girlfriend made a point on my personal Facebook page. “Being gay isn’t a matter of who you have sex with. The conversation needs to get out of the bedroom, and people need to realize that being gay is about who you love.”

I originally thought I’d just copy and paste Gretchen’s blog post here, and write my comments with it. But I know from past experience, when people do that they tend to nit pick to death every. single. detail. And that just sounds childish, catty, and petty. And I want to make a few valid points here. (I know, thought I’d try a change of pace.)

At first glance, it comes across that Gretchen has issues with her son’s fourth grade teacher who is ‘an open lesbian’ (Gretchen’s words). That’s where I started to get catty/petty. (well, actually it was about three paragraphs earlier, but that’s beside the point.) What exactly is “an open lesbian”? One who is out of the closet? (and jumping-elmo-on-a-pogo-stick can’t we find a better phrase than that?) Does she admit to being in love with another woman? The reason she’s concerned “came from a fear that the issue of her sexuality (the teacher’s), if discussed openly, would pull the focus of the class away from education and place it somewhere else.” (My sister’s friend also made the point “If any teacher is talking about sex they dont’ belong in the classroom, however, so long as we continue to equate homosexuality with sex and not love, we will keep missing the point.”)

Um, excuse me. Can I just point out, that if *any* teacher’s sexuality (wether they love a man, a woman, or a bologna sandwich) should be discussed openly in any classroom, the focus of that conversation had better be turned directly to the board of education, because frankly, that topic of discussion is totally and completely inappropriate. Period. Done.

But I read deeper. the very next paragraph she says “I would prefere my son’s teacher be someone who shared my belief system. I would prefer she be a heterosexual. If I had my choice, I’d prefer she be a Christian heterosexual.” Um, ok, Arian race too? (too far? Out of line?) “Not because I am afraid of gay people (I’m not). NOT because I hate gay people (I don’t). I just want my son to be surrounded by adults who support and practice our family’s value system.” And apparently, while she claims to not be afraid of gay people, and she claims she doesn’t hate gay people, it’s implied that she does just sort of wish they would go away. Or keep their ‘dirty little secret’ to themselves.

And just because my mind doesn’t work like the normal person’s mind, and my thoughts tend to go down the dark and twisted path at times, my question is this. What does she know about her friends who do share her family’s value system? What does she know about their sexuality? What if they are furrys? Or like bondage? Or role playing? Or other posititions besides missionary? Or they enjoy the occassional threesome?

The very next paragraph contains the following sentence. “I worry about anytime my children have contact with people outside of our family.” Really? Isn’t that a bit extreme? They have contact with people outside her family everytime they go anywhere. School. The store. Church. (and believe me, growing up as a preacher’s daughter.. I *know* that not everyone in a church shares the same family values.) Are the kids allowed to go to friends’ houses? Are they allowed to have friends over? Are they allowed to have original thoughts? Are they allowed to question the marchal law family values they are being raised under?

One final quote from Gretchen. “It’s my job to shape my child into the person I think he or she should be.” Your job to shape your children into the people *you* think they should be? Not raise them to be the people they are going to become. Not, give them the tools to live happy, productive lives. Not, quide them to be open minded accepting well rounded educated people. No, her children are being raise to be the people she thinks they should be. Let me tell you, there are a whole lot of people out there in the world who are being nothing like the people their parents thought they should be. And they are happy, healthy, well rounded, highly educated productive members of society.

The impression I got from this little blog post by Gretchen, isn’t so much about her son’s teacher’s sexual orientation. This is much more about Gretchen’s need to control her children and the world around them. And while I truly understand the Mother Bear Syndrom, wanting to protect our children for all things evil in the world (evil being firmly tongue in cheek. Save the hate mail). But protecting them? Sufficates them, stunts their growth, emotionally. Welome to the world where uh, diversity reigns. If she wants to surround her children with people who share their family values and are like minded then well, she’s going to have to go start her own colony on her own little island. It’s just impossible to avoid diversity. And not allowing your children to be exposed to different people, different values, different opinions, different cultures, different lifestyles is just creating more close minded bigoted intollerant people which, last time I checked, the world didn’t need. We’ve got plenty thanks.

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The Point of View

For those of you who have read my blog for a while (when there was a blog to read, before wordpress decided to eat my entire history..bitch) you know that I’ve had my fair share of drama.  For those of you who are new here and only have the past month to go on… trust me when I say I’ve had my fair share of drama.  (Go to my previous blog if you want shining examples).  Having said that it’s not hard to believe that I am not one to start drama, and I try to avoid it if I can.  Oh, I’ll sit on the sidelines and watch a good internet drama/blogger cat fight, but get involved? Me?  Have we met?

So, today when there a wee bit of Twitter drama (at least it felt sorta dramatic to me) between me and another Twitterer, it took a lot to stand my ground and voice my opinion even though it was different than hers.

Let me share….

Thursday, President Obama was on The View.  It’s no secret that the ladies on The View (save Elizabeth) are liberals and big Obama supporters.  So, everyone knew going into today’s show it was going to be a huge lovefest.  I get that. That’s fine.  I guess I need to say that when it comes to politics I do not associate myself with either party, I fall somewhere in the middle (like probably 75% of Americans do).  I also can see both sides to any argument.

So, today, when I saw Kate tweeting about The View, it caught my eye.  She was the only one in my Twitter stream to tweet about it.   I started to notice a trend in her tweets, mainly, bashing Elizabeth.  Ok, fine.  I get that too.  She is odd man out on the panel.  She stands her ground and voices her opinions.  She may not be a rocket scientist, she may not have been a poli-sci major.  She’s a working mom with two kids, married to a football player, who got her start in television on a reality show.  She started out the average Jo.

But when I saw this tweet…

It rubbed me the wrong way.  I felt like she was saying “Ok Elizabeth, we know we have to tolerate you, but you just sit there and shut up and look cute like a pretty little simple-minded conservative should until you can go home and play Suzie Homemaker.”  Yes, I admit I was reading A LOT into that simple tweet.  But even taken at face value, coupled with the previous tweets along the line of Elizabeth just shut up, I got upset.  Why exactly should she shut up?  She has every right to ask questions, probably more, because *ahem* she’s on The View and on the same set with the POTUS.

So I asked…

I didn’t mean for it to come across as a personal attack.  I honestly didn’t think I worded it as a personal attack, but looking back, it’s possible that it came across otherwise. (See, there’s that seeing both sides of the argument thing. Told you I was good at it.)

Here’s what I got

Ok, maybe she did (I didn’t get to watch The View, I was at work) but even if she did sound like an idiot, does that mean she’s not allowed to speak or ask questions or participate in the interview thereby doing the very job they are paying her to do?  And isn’t it possible that there are Americans out there who have the very same questions/comments that Elizabeth was voicing?  And don’t they have the right to be heard as well?

I would have asked that question to anyone who was tweeting “Elizabeth Hush” tweets. I didn’t think I was even attacking or calling into question Katieb38’s opinion of Elizabeth, just asking why she felt E didn’t have the same rights to speak as the other hosts. But at that point I realized that this exchange of tweets was not going to be the exchange I thought it would. All of a sudden I felt on the defensive. OMG, I’ve offended someone, I’ve upset someone. She might stop following me….. But I wasn’t going to back down. Regardless of Elizabeth’s intelligence level, her income level, her education, her political point of view, her opinions, her gender, her sexual preference, her name, her job, regardless of everything…. She had the right, the privilege, to voice her opinion, to ask questions, to have a conversation with The President of the United States. She was the lone conservative up on that stage with him, and there are people in our country who I’m sure have the same or similar opinions as her. They have the right to have those opinions voiced.

And well, that was a swift kick in the pants. Seriously? Now because I’m asking questions of her, because I have a difference of opinion from hers, Katieb38 was telling me to hush too.

I never got an answer to that.

I will admit that it’s possible, that to Katieb38, this conversation had nothing to do with Elizabeth’s right to say anything. I’ll admit that it’s possible that Katieb38 and I hold some of the same beliefs and points of view, even political. It’s possible that Elizabeth did in fact sound like a bummbleing idiot today. But you know what, Whoppie was on air stone out of her mind last week and I didn’t see Katieb38 telling her to hush. It’s also possible she did and I missed it.

I will take a whole lot of responsibility for the possibilities out there, but the bottom line is this: Idiot or not, Elizabeth, hell anyone on that panel, had every right to open their mouths, ask questions and voice opinions. Period.

Was I wrong here? If I was out of line, I will apologize. I just don’t think I was…..