On Sunday, I joined a number of these 40-somethings to watch the Browns-Bengals game. At one point, the telecast went to a commercial break which was an appeal for charitable relief contributions for the many victims of Typhoon Haiyan. One of the biggest, most powerful, most damaging storms the world has ever seen, Haiyan tore through the Philippine Islands over a week ago. Over 4 million people have been displaced, with the death toll at 4000 and counting.
I love my little friends. They're good people, family people. I enjoy their company. We have so much in common, with the lone exception being that most of them are acute conservatives. So the moment the Haiyan relief ad ended, one of my young buddies piped up loudly with his opinion that those fuckin' Filipinos sure had their nerve asking us for money. After all, how much did they send us after Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Katrina or whatever?
Whatever for sure, dude. The comment was so off-base, so tone-deaf and so uncalled-for even his fellow young conservatives were silent. And never mind that disaster relief doesn't work that way and that, compared to the U.S., the Philippine government barely has two nickels to rub together.
Being the wise old fart in this gathering, I played deaf and said nothing. But I wondered to myself, when I was 40, was I that big of a douchebag?
(Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. "No, not then, Buster, but you sure as hell are now!" Touche, my friends. Touche.)
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