I am outraged! Are you not outraged? By Mark Morford

[madokie]

You surely are, yes? Outraged, that is? Seething and churning and burning up inside, deeply upset about that thing that just happened and which you did not want to occur in that particular way even though it totally did? Damn right.

Here's the good news: You are not alone. Nearly all good Americans are outraged about something. This is what makes us good Americans. This is how we know we're alive, what defines us versus them. Ill-conceived outrage is our heritage, our birthright, our grand legacy as a superpriviledged first-world culture. Goddamn this miserable world, and have you seen my text-messaging bill? Outrageous!

To be sure, outrage comes in many forms, flavors and degrees of serration. But the truly modern American kind can only be found by employing a certain wonderful, proprietary matrix, a formula of fury and frustration we as a country live by like some sort of mantra, tattooed onto our little red, white and blue bones.

It goes like this: the more ridiculous, tiny, arcane or completely irrational the object of your outrage is, the more you know you have attained ultimate freedom. You are living the real American Dream, hereby defined as being endlessly upset and miserable about totally meaningless bulls--t for no valid reason whatsoever because you have everything you could ever want or need in this life, ever. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/20/notes102010.DTL&nl=fix)

[geckosfeet]

1. Good column - fits to a,,, tea.

Read more: I am outraged! Are you not outraged?

It all adds up to one conclusion: We are so wildly, stupidly free, it's rather hilarious. And savagely ironic. Because you can also say it culminates in perhaps the ultimate expression of Outrage USA, the single place where all such screeching congeals in a shrill, silly little group, signifying nothing.

It's called the Tea Party, that gaggle of terrified, white, middle-aged men whose actual slogan is "mad as hell." What are they mad about, exactly? They have no idea. What do they want to do to change it? No clue. From whence does their timorous fear and dread come? They can't quite say. Perfect.

Read more: I am outraged! Are you not outraged?

[Wednesdays]

2. I had to laugh because my wife was completely outraged yesterday

She was completely livid over a news story from Britain about a cat left in a trash bin.

Now, I'm hardly in favor of animal cruelty and neglect, but really, there should be some perspective...