Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Tonight, I see that the Heathers are guffawing amongst themselves because a man they dislike, one Jeff Goldstein, has admitted to being on anti-anxiety medication. Failed smear artist Jane Hamsher is at it. Ankle-biter Lindsay Beyerstein is at it. The otherwise utterly obscure “Thesaurus Rex” is at it. And erstwhile Hitchens-stalker Duncan Black is at it.

It’s a gutless, base, loathesome thing to do. Who mocks the ill? Who mocks the mentally ill? Didn’t that go out of style around third grade, when it dawned on most that tripping the Downs Syndrome kid at recess wasn’t actually funny?

Well. Not in the left-blog elite, it seems. Not in the milieu that thinks it’s awesome to commission fake hit pieces, pass out personal contact info, pass out home contact info (no link to that one), publicize information about spouses of political enemies, poke fun at public figures’ private grief over a miscarriage, and — need I go on?

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I’ll be up-front and state that I have a personal interest here: many know, but some may not, that I was discharged from the Army in 1999 for a mental illness. Severe depression, in fact. It was an honorable discharge, but the circumstances still rankle after all this time. I blogged about it long ago, and though that site is gone, you can read about it here, here, here and here. Sadly, to this day, this — and the fact that I remain on a regimen of 25mg of Paxil CR per day, in part for anxiety, just like Goldstein — keeps me out of the National Guard. And believe me, there’s a 1LT in the northern California recruiting region who has spent the past six months very much wishing I would go away.