As I sat napping on my porch overlooking Fountain Street as it pours into New Haven, my wife came by to adjust the blanket over my knees. She stopped to “gently shake my shoulder and wake me up and tell me I was right”.

No, I haven’t written any brilliant article about the prospects of Britney Spears doing an “insightful portrayal of Nora Helmer in Ibsen's "A Doll's House."” If I were writing that line, I might have suggested Britney, Lindsey and Paris in a modern adaptation of Checkov’s “Three Sisters”. But I digress.

What I am referring to this morning is Colin McEnroe’s brilliant column this week in the Hartford Courant, As Free Speech Fades, My Piles Grow.

Colin’s describes the Doninger case as “a douche bag in a coal mine or a canary in a douche bag” and relates it to the Senate passing an amendment to condemn MoveOn for “letting the catchy and snarky become the enemy of the good” in their advertisement illustrating the flaws of Gen. Petreaus.

Kim told me, “Look honey, your not completely off your rocker, even Colin is saying the same sort of things you wrote in your blog.” Here, I’m referring to my blog post, Responses to incivility, where I compared Avery’s case not only to the Senate’s latest amendment, but also to the tasering of the student in Florida.

Feeling fully actualized now that a noted personality has said something similar to what I’ve been blogging, and having been given an opportunity to indulge in a little self aggrandizement, let me MoveOn to the phrase that caught me attention. (I’ve already repeated it twice) “letting the catchy and snarky become the enemy of the good”.

It reflects part of the reason I’m spending more time napping on my porch overlooking Fountain Street and less time engaged in some of the hand-to-hand verbal combat in the political blogs. There are some great masters of catchiness and snarkiness in the political blogosphere. Yet I also worry that many of the let their catchiness and snarkiness get in the way moving their causes forward.

So, I will keep doing things like putting pictures of my ‘Team Avery’ shirt up on Wordless Wednesday to get all the stay at home moms and homeschoolers to stop for a moment and wonder what is going on with our schools. I know the homeschoolers particularly appreciate that.

One online friend has taken this even further. He named Avery Hero for a Day, and then went on to set up Team Avery on CafePress as another part of the fundraising to help cover the cost of the appeal. Please, buy a shirt, donate, and join us at Poets and Writers For Avery in Litchfield on October 14th.

Yes, the whole case is a bit of “a douche bag in a coal mine or a canary in a douche bag”, but to borrow from Pastor Niemoller, “First they came for the gamers, and I did not speak out because I was not a gamer. Then they came for the Bloggers and I did not speak out
because I was not a Blogger…”

I hope I didn’t just let the catchy and snarky become the enemy of the good. I hope you join the good fight to resuscitate the canary in the douche bag.