In Order to Form a More Perfect Union

Somehow a benign discussion about my nephew's hair turned into a speech that could have easily taken its place at the podium on The Mall last summer with Glenn Beck.

Mom is just flabbergasted that people get away with saying the things that they say to each other, and on TV! The disrespect! The foul language! The topics! We need to take a stand. Stop accepting it!

I am sorry. Did I miss the part where my mother became a nun?

She detoured down a rat hole with The View in her cross hairs. Something about Joy Behar insulting someone she respected on TV and what a disgrace that is.

I vaguely recall hearing some right wing ranting on Facebook about the same thing...from some people I'd guessed were in my mother's political and chronological age camp. I really didn't pay it any attention. People are mad at Joy Behar for making a crack at someone else's expense? The last time I checked she was a comedienne. Isn't that kind of her job?

In an attempt to de-escalate, I said, however ill-advised it may have been to have done so, "Mom, it's a stupid TV talk show. Who cares what anyone says at 11 o'clock in the morning when no one is home to hear it?"

"Oh," she says. "So you are accepting it too." The challenging tone in her voice was frightening.

I took on the tone I use when I intend to talk over someone until they've decided they need to shut up because all of their carefully constructed arguments are not being heard.

"Mom who cares what a comedienne on day time television says so only the little old ladies and the pre-schoolers can hear it? It is a talk show, not an election debate! It's The View! It's supposed to be thought provoking conversation among a bunch of women who have - imagine that! - wildly different points of view. On politics and religion and movies and fashion and all kinds of things you may or may not actually give a hang about. Do you care what Joy Behar thinks? Do you even watch The View?"

Of course she doesn't.

My mother may be the only person to get truly rattled by something someone else said they heard.

Or didn't hear. She is also completely incensed that something about Ozzie Osborne aired and surprise, surprise, Gomer, he dropped the F-bomb.

Not that you heard it. It was bleeped out. But you knew what he was saying.

Yes, and I know that all the major league baseball players are adjusting their crotches when I am not looking, too. Knowing it is happening doesn't count as crossing the line of public decency. The FCC would certainly object if it did, long before my mother could.

So it is odd, that my opinionated mother, my mother with a pressure cooker of a head bursting with 1,000 points of view, and my mother with the colorful language, and self-righteous outspokenness about all things, thinks there should be a limit on our First Amendment Rights.

But not really.

What she really means to say is that other people's First Amendment Rights need to be infringed upon. She couldn't possibly mean her own. You can't criticize a sitting president for instance, unless of course it is a sitting President she'd like not to be sitting there anymore. Like our current one. Then he's open season. But criticize Glenn Beck and someone is going to lose an eye.

Mark my words, if this country ever does get to a point where we are curtailing any of our freedoms of speech, my mother will be the first to be arrested, and will be grousing indignantly all the way to the pokey.