There is a place for the Political Pundit

For those of you who know me, you know that I simply do not care for the "political pundit". I will be the first to say that we each have a civic duty to be informed and aware of our current political system and to be actively engaged in our communities, however, the current age of political pundits makes me absolutely crazy!! No one knows this about me more than Dad. I can't tell you how many times we've "disagreed" about listening to "the angry men" (as my 5 year old puts it) on talk radio. I have really fun memories of going shopping with Mom and the kids while Dad sits in the car in the parking lot with the radio on listening to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hanity. (One hot day at the Park City outlets, Dad was listening to the radio in the car and the battery died--that was an adventure!!) Anyway, I keep telling Dad that listening to political commentary just makes him angry and raises his blood pressure, but he insists.

Friday night I had a change of heart! I took the kids to visit Grandpa and found him downstairs watching TV, bent over in an incredible amount of pain. There wasn't anything that could take his mind off of his stomach pain. He couldn't eat any dinner and he struggled to take his medication for fear that he would simply vomit it up again. He was clearly so frustrated and almost helpless. The only thing that would help him forget about the pain was a very heated and cantankerous argument on Fox News about immigration reform. I could feel my own blood pressure rising and was even a little bit stressed out. Normally I would have made Dad change the channel, but I watched Dad focus on the TV and not on his pain and for the first time in my life, I was grateful for loud and somewhat obnoxious political commentators. That night I found out that there is a place for the Political Pundit--downstairs in my father's basement helping him focus on the "issues" and not on his pain.