TODAY I LOOKED UP the word bullying in the English As It Is Actually Used Dictionary:
Bullying, vbl. n. [bʊlɪɪŋ]: A word that by 2014 was being used by some adults to describe what all the adults were doing to all the other adults, everywhere.
On any day in any news source, there are articles about adult bullying, as well as commentaries and anecdotes and calls to put an end to it, wherever it happens, which according to some people is everywhere.
If you’ve not yet had the occasion to read Dr. James Dobson’s fantastic October 2008 “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” you’ll not be aware that
in mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city. They then demanded that Israel cede huge amounts of territory to the Palestinians, and after an anguished all-night Cabinet meeting, Israel’s prime minister agreed.
I deploy fantastic in its archaic sense, to indicate the fantasy-based right-wing Christian paranoia with which anyone who has followed Focus on the Family over its thirty-three-year career, as I have, will be familiar. No, that’s not quite accurate: I did stop paying attention, for a time. However, with the recent suicides of young gay men in the news, the dirty and dishonest work of a Dobson/Focus on the Family creation called “True Tolerance” has got my attention. Apparently, what we must not do in these days of anti-gay bullying is promote the idea that anti-gay bullying is wrong. Continue reading The Bigotry of Dr. Dobson
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 