Smart Is Beautiful

CONTROLLING HUSBANDS 

Sometimes when I write a blog, I’ll send a quick email to all my friends with a link to it so they can read it and, hopefully, let me know their thoughts. I did so with my blog about Sarah Palin, sending it to both the Democrats and Republicans in my address book.Some of my responses were of the ”You Go Girl” nature, while some were more in line with polite rebuttal to my opinions. For example, my friend Shelley said she was planning to vote against her party (she’s always been a Democrat) especially BECAUSE she likes Sarah Palin so much. And I love that she took the time to thoughtfully lay out her reasons - some of which were very good - like the fact that the job of a governor is more on par with that of the Vice President than the job of a senator.She also started her email like this: “Oh Kelly, Let me start by saying I love you so much. Now, I think it is funny how everyone takes things differently. Sarah Palin’s speech was the deciding factor for me for who I will vote for.  I thought she was brilliant.”

On the other hand, I have a friend to whom I sent the blog link, whose husband replied with the above email, and let me say that I haven’t been this upset in years! I knew that they shared an email address and that my friend - let’s call her Michelle - isn’t super internet savvy, so I assumed that meant that anything I send to her is more than likely read by her husband first.Obviously, this doesn’t give our friendship a lot of privacy, so it’s usually on the phone where we do most of our communicating. Michelle and I are very different in several regards - she’s a conservative while I’m a liberal…she’s a UofL fan while I’m for UK…you know, the really important stuff!But we’re both Christians (we met at church), we’re both chubby and we’re both step-mothers. In fact, she introduced me to my husband. She and I have been through death, disease, distance and plenty of heartache. She’s the true blue, best -friend-till-the-end kind of person that is precious for the following reasons - they’re incredibly hard to find and, therefore, are more than worth fighting for.

Michelle’s HusbandKnowing that Michelle is conservative, I never forward the emails that would she would embarass her. I only send along the funny things we all receive, hoping to put a smile on her face. So I’m fairly certain that it was my political blog entry, and/or the “large and luscious” artwork (some of which is of nude women!) on my blog’s site, that he found offensive.Of course, he may have also visited the blog’s sister site, Kelligraphy, which outlines a novel I’m working on called “The Whore of Scrabylon,” so that could have offended him as well.At this point, I have no idea if Michelle is on board with this request or not. There’s a possibility she could have been so completely offended by what I wrote that she no longer wants to receive emails from me, but I seriously doubt it. When the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal happened, she and I spent hours discussing it…and we were on opposite sides of the fence. We’ve always enjoyed challenging one another’s minds in regard to politics and religion. Our friendship is so deep that we can broach these touchy subjects and simply agree to disagree when we have to.But reading an email from her husband, asking me not to email my friend, has made my brain nearly melt in my skull. If he is trying to shelter her from my “bad” liberal influence, then he’s up for one hell of a challenge. I believe that we, as human beings, are better served by spending time with people whose opinions differ from ours, if for no other reason than it makes us defend our own beliefs, which will ground us deeper in them or show us the error of our ways.

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