By now everyone has heard of or seen the Danny Devito clip from “The View“. If you haven’t, then watch:

Danny had gone out the night before with George Clooney and had one too many limoncellos.

It was funny to watch this clip. He was acting crazy and Barbara Walters was clearly uncomfortable. Funny.

Then I had to go and ruin it by watching this clip from “The O’Reilly Factor“. O’Reilly talked about DeVito’s “hatred” for the President. Typical O’Reilly blabber. But then one of his guests went that extra mile and equated DeVito’s appearance on the show to attending a Klan meeting.

Yes, as in the KKK.

Seriously? Seriously. Watch for yourself:

It’s shock TV, it’s stupid, but it works. I just hope people watching caught the full implication of what was said. It’s disgusting.

Yes, DeVito was blabbering about the President. It’s his right to do so. Yes, Rosie was agreeable. She’s one of the hosts. It’s just plain fact that O’Reilly and his guests love building up the notion of anti-patriotic liberalism and how it will destroy America. The fact they do it by comparing white conservatives who dress in sheets and have secret meetings about how to rid the world of blacks, gays, and jews to a live airing of a national daytime TV show just BLOWS MY MIND.

The situation reminded me of something I read the other day. It was part of an essay by George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984. Now, I have my qualms with Orwell and his political ideas. But I’ve learned to never disqualify everything someone says because of one thing you didn’t like.

In Orwell’s “Why I Write”, he says:

Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is a bridge between the future and the past.

I do believe being liberal and being progressive minded is being patriotic. It’s being brave enough to admit the world around you is changing. It’s being bold enough to find ways to bridge your past and your future and not prevent them from meeting. It’s being brass enough to meet those challenges head on instead of blaming someone or some group for causing them.

If there was a useful Conservative movement in our country I believe it’s dead. It killed itself. Well, the fear that it tried to instill in everyone - of terrorism, of Iraq, of gays, of the wrath of Christ, etc, etc - killed it. When you spend all of your energy trying to get people to be afraid so you can come to their rescue, people catch on. Especially when you continue to make them fearful after you’re in office.

One can only hope 2007 will be less fear and more hope.