Arrogant and Offensive

People ask me why do I listen to the Neal Boortz radio show if I disagree with him most of the time -- why don't I save my blood pressure. Well, it's simple -- he's a great source of ranty blogging fodder. And listening to him tonight, I was given prime ranting material.

Boortz can't stand Hillary Clinton. It's an obsession with him. He's not satisfied to merely disagree with her politics; he has to shower her with ad hominem attacks whenever the opportunity presents itself. And tonight, he crossed a line in his attacks on her.

He said that he "knows" that Hillary "hates marriage and children" and that her marriage to Bill "made a mockery" of the institution of marriage. I expected him to rag on her for remaining by Bill's side after the Lewinsky affair, as I've heard others do, but his reason was entirely different. Boortz stated categorically that the only reason she married him was to assist in creating her power base and that she had a child only so that she would look good to future female voters.

Boortz, a divorced and remarried man, opined that marriage is a "bulwark of society", blah, blah, blah, and that because (in his opinion), she did not marry Bill because she'd fallen in love with him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, that this was why she "made a mockery of marriage".

Boortz has stated that he believes that Hillary Clinton is "evil", thus he is apparently unable to see her as having any sort of human emotion.

Though I'm not a fan of marriage, I think his attacks on her marriage and motherhood are offensively arrogant to the extreme. He doesn't know the Clintons personally and could not have even the slightest idea of how they feel about one another and their daughter. If he doesn't like her as a presidential candidate and disagrees with her positions on the issues, fine. He's entitled to his opinion. But he should confine his remarks about her to how he disagrees with her and to leave her personal life alone as it's none of his business.

And for him to say that a marriage based on a political partnership, rather than on romantic love "makes a mockery out of marriage", betrays Boortz' ignorance of the history of marriage. Marrying to create an alliance, political or otherwise, had been done for centuries and up until the 18th century, was much more common than marrying for love. Before that time, marriage was traditionally seen as more of a practical than a romantic matter.

Even in the 20th and 21st centuries, it's not uncommon for a man to marry the boss' daughter in hopes of one day inheriting a business or moving up more quickly in a company. I suppose what's getting Boortz' goat in this instance, is that the shoe is on the other foot with a woman supposedly marrying for a reason more commonly ascribed to men.

People marry for all sorts of reasons, not just Valentine's Day-type romantic love; there's not only one "right" reason to do so. And I'm sure most people get married for more than just one reason alone. If the Clintons are happy with their marriage, then who is he to criticize it? It's none of his business why they chose to get married and have a child, or why they choose to remain married.

Boortz talked about other rant-worthy topics in this broadcast as well, but I'll leave that for another post.

Thoughts?