What a Wife
I was watching my new favourite show the other night, The Agenda, and lo and behold, who was there on a panel discussing marriage but Michael Coren.
Which made me wonder, but not hard enough to change the channel, who was hosting HIS show while he was a guest panelist on The Agenda.
I'm not much of a tv watcher and when I'm alone I would never think to turn it on. I don't turn anything on. (Insert Sexless Sooey joke here.) I just sit in the dark and stare. You should try it. It's like all those new age things without the books and lotions. Just sitting there. Staring.
But I'll watch what someone else is watching and often that's The Agenda. I used to stay after work and watch Coren, but now I watch The Agenda. (I quit happy hour and then Coren changed his timeslot anyway so the one dovetailed quite nicely with the other.) It's amazing how much I prefer informative to punditry. In fact, whenever guests try to introduce partisanship on The Agenda I feel a knot form in my stomach, "No!No!No! Don't make it all about you and your stupid opinions! Just the facts, please! Pleazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!"
On a side note and speaking of tv induced stomach knots, there is a show I sometimes watch on the decorating channel that's about people renting or buying a space they want to renovate and run a business out of and the whole show is this mad dash to opening day and honestly, if you didn't know it would have a happy ending, there is no way you could watch that show without getting cramps.
Anyway, they were discussing marriage and there was big ol' Michael Coren on The Agenda, as I say, which was a lot like the time I saw a little insert of Don Cherry on the cover of Chatelaine on account of there was a whole interview with him inside - about gardening. Or maybe it was more like seeing the guy on the corner who shouts obscenities at passersby all day - at the opera one evening.
Although... I suppose it'd be pretty unlikely for me to be at the opera one evening, either...
The most interesting thing, though, about Michael Coren on The Agenda was the silence. He really didn't say much. And I know why. Because his views are so garishly plaid that he would have come across as quite insane on a show that is essentially neutral chic. (Hilariously, on his own show, he is often the voice of reason - his guests are that... polkadotted.)
I'm sick of opinionated, I guess. All that bombast. It's why I can't watch Question Period. It's a stupid waste of time. I know it's political theatre, but I just don't care, anymore. My thing is civil rights, I guess, and as long as we have lawyers who haven't all gone over to the terrorist-behind-every-bush side - I'm gonna go with that and my various spell casting potions.
But even though Michael Coren wasn't saying much, the other guests were saying lots, and one of them even equated marriage with having someone to cover your back. Now, I've been married and we were very bonded, but when trouble hit - it wasn't with the rest of the world. It was with the two people who'd barricaded themselves in their house against it - complete with three kids and a dog.
I don't believe marriage is a good thing for society. I really don't. I think it was a thing, is a thing. I wouldn't qualify it as good.
I'd be more inclined to qualify it as bad, in fact. That's because I don't believe "you and me" against "the world" is sane. I think it's quite mad. And yet, that's how marriage is still sold. It's a lot of the reason why people previously not allowed to marry, want to be allowed to marry now. And who can blame them? The media is constantly alerting us as to what a dangerous world we live in and how we need to protect ourselves however we can, that we need to have someone in our corner, that we need to elect a government to protect us, that we should view the rest of the world as - TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR FREEDOMS!
Meanwhile, most marriages I've been around would indicate to me that the trouble comes from within, not without. The world isn't out to get you - your partner is. And not even necessarily with intent. It's just a vague, "well, if I'm not having any fun, I'll be damned if s/he is", that goes on for years. And years. And then more years. Because in spite of all the hand-wringing - separating/divorcing, even when you'd both be better off, is the hardest thing in the world to actually do. It's certainly the hardest thing I've ever done. And I would never have done it if I couldn't. So the Back to the Biblers have that right. I'd have stayed married and no one's life would have suffered the... the what... what is it that people other than the couple suffer? Inconvenience? Upset? Sadness?
Anger that now they feel that much more pressure to stay or go themselves because even those two Bickersons managed to do it?
I don't know. I'm just guessing. Because I can't imagine anyone who's ever actually been married, thinking it's better than not being married. I personally don't believe it is. I think it's a trick of lighting, in fact. Certainly for some people, being in control of their own lives comes naturally. Marriage is having your cake and eating it, too. And that's really... lucky. For those people. But without a doubt, they would be exceptions in my experience.
Most people, I believe, get married because they're afraid of being alone. They grab whoever is there at the time the fear hits and call it being married. Why we, as a society, pretend, go along with, promote that as the right way to live - for the good of us all - is beyond me.
But look at how we view the rest of the world as a society. We believe the media when it tells us the rest of the world is out to get us and then we elect politicians who claim they can protect us from it.
It's pretty insidious. Because when we see what that government then does to protect us, it's pretty clear who the real enemy is.
