Frog Soup

I think I’m tolerant. Mostly. I mean, I get kinda frustrated when I go through the McDonalds drive through for a medium coffee and routinely get the wrong change, but only because I’m pretty sure there’s a screen that recommends how many pennies, quarters, and ones to give back from a five when my coffee costs a buck-twenty-six. I’ve even tried to make it easy, digging in my change cup for a quarter and a penny to hand with a five-dollar bill. But my success ratio is dismal. I got $3.81 back today. Not $4.00, $3.81. I assume the difference was a tip. I couldn’t muster the energy to attempt to explain it to the cashier.

But I’m tolerant. I’m also blessed by being able to make change from anything less than a million dollars in my head. And I understand entry-level employment. They’re mostly kids that are trying, swimming upstream against a weak (if not failed) public education system. They’ll get it. Eventually. If not, they can always ask Siri.

But I’m feeling less tolerant over the past several months. I’m not old. I mean, not Clint Eastwood Grand Torino old. I was a kid in the 70’s. Someone’s gotta tell me how things changed so much so fast since then.

Last year I started to lose interest in the NFL. I used to be that guy. An NFL screen-screamer. I’m convinced my kids expanded their vocabularies, learning socially inappropriate usage of compounded nouns and verbs typically reserved for the battlefield and arguments with your spouse after discovering (too late) one square of tissue left on a toilet paper roll.

It got to me. A shift in respect. An absence of rule-following… and enforcement. And what appears to be thuggery for thuggery’s sake. Not passion. Not intensity. Just potentially career-ending violence for the sake of gladiatorial spectacle. Leg stomping. Continuous helmet-to-helmet spearing. And ridiculous chorus line displays of apparently choreographed showboating that used to draw the yellow-flagged ire of the men in stripes. Not anymore. We’re tolerant. Televised sports have become a snapshot of our respectless, selectively-ruled society.

However, I have been watching the Olympics. What am I saying… I’ve been watching figure skating, bobsled, and downhill skiing. After a couple of nights of Olympic coverage, I’m convinced I have adult ADD. I get fidgety after ten minutes of watching. The bobsled competition is cool and all but it’s really only Hot Wheels for big people. If they want to make it exciting and competitive, they should use toboggans and put some oak trees on the hill like when we were kids. Yeah, OK, they’re steering (a little). But they’re not dodging trees by dragging a foot and synchronized leaning. It’s all just sprinting, hangin’ on for the ride, and fat-gravity physics. Ditto for downhill. Replace the gates with trees, like when we were in high school skiing Little Switzerland ski hill in Slinger, Wisconsin with half-empty wine skins.

And then there’s the seemingly most popular event for all Olympics, figure skating. I can’t skate but appreciate the talent and physical prowess of athletes that have the ability to float, jump, and spin across frozen concrete with no apparent fear of catastrophic head injury. But the curmudgeon in me can’t help but notice the sport’s high representation by homosexuals. (I say that clinically, not in an “intolerant” derogatory way. Just an observation.) And they’re not just gay, but over-the-top flamboyant out-there, in-your-face gay, evidenced by the apparent standard bearer for skaters and gay rights for this Olympic games, Johnny Weir. The guy goes beyond flamboyance, sashaying into what can only be perceived as profound mental illness. (Shit. That sounded intolerant.)

Johnny’s exaggerated wardrobe appears to be costumes rejected by Tim Burton for the Mad Hatter’s tea party. You just know there are imams all over the world using figure skating as their “lesson-of-the-day.” Watching the big screen in disgust (and maybe a little curiosity) in the mosque basement, aiming their laser pointers at Johnny’s lip-glitter and updo, saying, “THEEEES IZZZZ WHY!” in a drop-the-mic moment of validation.

Why the elvish Middle Earth outfits and exaggerated femininity? Is it necessary? Does it somehow reinforce his sexuality and life-choices or is he intentionally carrying American in-your-face homosexuality to the international stage in an effort to gain world recognition and tolerance? You know, like pushing really hard to get a C in Social Studies by shooting for an A.

Former skate champion Scott Hamilton is gay but is still a guy. I mean, not a hockey player but still a guy. I have never seen him in outlandish costumes, hairdos and makeup. So what’s the difference? Is there a greater tolerance for craziness or suddenly the need for craziness to push the boundaries of the intolerable?

I’ve always said that love and respect are earned. Neither is automatic. So why shouldn’t tolerance be earned as well. Why should there be the expectation that I must accept everything that is forcibly dictated by a fraction of society? I’m not saying that my way’s right, but it’s not not right. I’m starting to believe that Americans are the proverbial frog in the pot, being slowly boiled – desensitized – so we don’t realize the water around us is getting dangerously hot.

At the risk of being labeled homophobic and intolerant I have to pinch my lips because anything I say could be perceived as insensitive. “Oh, they’re not hurting you. Mind your own business.” I’ll repeat what I’ve said a thousand times; I don’t care who’s sleeping with whom (or what) and don’t care how people live their lives as long as they’re lawful contributing members of society. That being said however, by selecting Johnny Weir as the American Olympic spokesman for every skating telecast makes him THE face of the American skating program and America. And isn’t that in a very real way type-casting, if not blatantly setting the country’s perception of skaters and the world’s perception of Americans? Would you choose him to be your salesman… sorry… “salesperson?” Wouldn’t Johnny and the fishnet stocking legions be better served earning tolerance rather than turning up the flame on the frog-boil?

This is just one in a series of societal head-butts that makes me kinda resent being the voiceless main ingredient in frog soup.