Roland Cheek's Blog - Posts Tagged "tolerance"

There's a bunch of intolerance going around these days and one hardly needs a guide dog to track where it's heading. With pure cussedness on the uprise and courtesy and tolerance on the downswing, sloguneering with overtones of bigotry has become cottage industry. At least most of our intolerance isn't racial or religious. Neither is it class warfare.

Instead, ours is environmental and it's fanned by the same type of fanatics that applied the torch to tinder since time began. "Motorized snow humpers," they're called by one side. "Tree hugging vandals," is one of the more tasteful retaliations. Vandalism has occurred, and more than one observer has told me in all seriousness that they fear someone is going to be killed.

My late great editor, Bob Elman, was a keen observer who passed along many insightful messages. The following was penned after he'd heard some upright citizen from his locale proclaim that he's "certainly not a bigot--far from it--but facts are facts and you can't deny them people are not our equals; give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile."

"Them people," according to Bob, "are whatever group the proclaimer is most ignorant of--racial, religious, ethnic, political, cultural, whatever--and you can bet there's someone in the target group who's spouting the same crap about the proclaimer's group."

Here's Bob's poem:
On Logic and Tolerance In Community Relations.
When the toad was about to sell his place,

He raillied his neighbors face to face

and explained his views with regard to race

"Damn right I don't like frogs,

They're clumsy and slimy and vicious.

They defecate in our swamps and bogs

And call water bugs delicious.

Show me a frog and I'll show you a slob.

Would you want your sister to date one?

Just look at their kids, a gelatinous blob!

I'd rather die than date one.

But there's two sides to this story:
At the country club where the frog was respected

he told his friends what could be expected

if toads were not scrupulously rejected:

if toads were not scrupulously rejected:

Damn right I don't like toads,

They're lazy and dirty and crude.

They defecate all over the roads

And they eat uncivilized food.

Their skin is warty and dry as death,

Their ignorant croaks can't be understood,

And their tongues--well, talk about dragon's breath!

They move in and ruin the neighborhood.

Bob added this a the end:
"My bit of doggerel doesn't amount to any profound insight, but it was fun to do, and I enjoy sharing these trifles with you. A chuckle is mightier than a scream of rage, and it's good to have friends