Do You Ever Fool Around (on yourself)?

Whenever I grow weary of the heartless laughter and fully-clothed opinions on the Fox News Channel, I begin to have evil thoughts. I don’t mean the stare-at-your-neighbor’s-wife-through-the-blinds type of evil or the set-the-cat-on-fire type of evil. I mean the turn-off-the-television kind of evil. This can be pernicious in its own way. It’s a form of passive aggression. It’s withdrawing to sulk. It’s like saying to the world, “I don’t love you anymore.” And, while I agree with the old song that “even lovers need a holiday,” it still feels wrong. Probably because it feels so damn good.

Everybody has those friends who try to make you care about Hummels or indoor football or fishing. It's like that. You love your friends, but, eventually, you find yourself trying to hide from them. That's how I feel about Fox News whenever they try to make me care about some dingleberry school principal who bans some kid from wearing rosary beads or bans some book that says Darwin was a scientist. How many things are truly worth knowing? What opinions are truly worth holding?

I actually own a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Why? Because I was once a kinder, gentler person. My friend Percy Scrohl told me that it had some important information in it. Where he got that idea, I'll never know. The book is, for the most part, unreadable. But I think I made Perce feel better when I wedged it between my dashboard and the windshield for a while. It was only $6.95. I still keep the book in full view in my study so that other friends don't get the idea that I need it or any conversation about it. I just say "it's unreadable" and we move on.

I never throw books away. The only kind of media I ever throw away is porn. Right now, outside my window, the county sanitation guys are taking about a dozen VHS pornos that some buddy gave me. I just don't care. You know? I don't throw away Playboys, though. First, they're not porn. And second, they sometimes make me think. I give them to other guys. All Democrats. My Republican friends won't touch them. Why not? I read them because I'm Republican. Because I'm conservative. Who the hell wants to read something you already agree with? Seriously! Why do people do that? I don't care if Limbaugh agrees with me. But there's something intrinsically entertaining about an opposing opinion.

This particular habit helps keep me from entering into holy wedlock with any opinion. I'm a rake and a libertine. It's a virtue. I cast off opinions that grow flat and sloppy. I cheat on my own beliefs by sitting for two hours on my porch with a traveling preacher who thinks that Jesus Christ is also Walter Kronkite. Then I give him a twenty-dollar bill. It feels good to cheat, to fool around. It's naughty.