Ted’s Watching Us : Now What? A response

For the life of me, I can’t understand the ‘Do it for Teddy’ and the -gag- ‘Teddycare’ phenomenae.

Chip Berlet of Political Research writes at Huffington:

"Ted is watching us through the eyes of every child who is hungry or cold. He is watching us through the eyes of every undocumented immigrant forced to work long hours in unspeakable conditions for inadequate wages."

That’s kinda creepy.

When a follower of Jesus asked to put off following God until he went and buried his father, Jesus reportedly told him to ‘let the dead bury the dead.’ In other words – if I may – do what’s right now. What has your dead father got to do with it? That Jesus, he was nothing if not militant.

Berlet’s suggestion that it’s ‘time to raise hell’ is a good one. We’ve been saying all along that not just we but people, ordinary non-activist type people, must demand health care reform or it won’t happen. Teddy or no Teddy.

But what sort of hell?

We need to raise hell in the time-honored progressive tradition of standing up, pushing back, and being militant. Not mean spirited, but joyous and not afraid of causing a ruckus.

A nicer, civilized hell.

He urges us to “Be loud. Be Raucous. Be militant. But be civil.”

Well yes, but don’t forget creative, clever and maybe even funny. A smart and humourous hell. That would be a real improvement over the standard tedious and repetitious hell that we’re all too familiar with.

I remember commentators on MSNBC asking, when talking about the bailed out Wall Street bonuses, “where are the screaming mobs with torches and pitchforks?”

Perhaps that course of action was preempted by actual townhall mobs with actual modern weapons screaming “hell no!” and getting our representatives all upset at having to deal with this open can of worms called health care for everyone.

This is Obama’s can of campaigned-on worms and Kennedy’s “life’s work” of worms after his many near-death experiences. Now Obama won’t lead and Kennedy’s dead.

So after a fashion, I agree with Berlet; we need some militancy people. Now that Jesus, he was militant. Malcom, he was militant. MLK, kinda militant.

Teddy? Well, look, it’s up to us for militancy.