I mentioned this very briefly back in 2008 but I need to revisit because it's still bothering me. I lost a really good friend in August of '08 -- not because he died, but because he became a right-wing nutjob.
I met Andy (he's a couple years older than me) at ABC in the early '80s. He was a lifelong moderate-to-liberal Dem; the only Democrat from a family of wealthy Republicans. I can still remember him arguing with his stockbroker parents, who thought Reagan was the greatest thing since sliced bread. We'd stayed in touch after he quit ABC in '85, we both lived in Queens and saw a lot of movies together. And after I moved out here we still communicated, first by phone and later by email. In 2007 when I was in NYC on vacay, we had lunch and he casually mentioned that "I've stopped reading the NY Times and cancelled my subscriptions to Time and Newsweek because they're all biased". Uh, OK... and where are you getting your news from now? "The NY Post and The Weekly Standard." I was rather gobsmacked. "Oh, of course", I said, "because, y'know, Bill Kristol and Rupert Murdoch -- they're not biased AT ALL!" And I changed the subject. I didn't want to argue politics with someone I'd been friends with for 25 years while I was on vacation.
I studiously avoided the subject of politics with Andy for the next year or so, and in August of '08 he emailed, all excited because he'd posted a comment on Michelle Malkin's blog (!), and she'd liked it so much she put it in the "Comment of the Day" box at the top of the page. He was fairly creaming his jeans over this. Turns out that was the day that Obama announced Biden as his running mate; the hideous Ms. Malkin had spent the day saying nasty things about Biden and inviting others to do likewise. I sat there, staring at the computer screen. WTF had happened to this guy? I decided I could no longer pretend that it didn't matter. I wrote back, saying "Jeezus, man, you used to make FUN of people like Malkin. If you're gonna hang out with conservatives, couldn't you at least pick some SMART ones?"
I never heard from him again.
I check his Facebook page every 6 months or so, just to see if he's alive. Yesterday when I looked there, he had links to Sarah Palin (!), a group called "Let's Stop Blaming Bush For What Obama Does" (!!) and his profile pic is an Eagle-in-front-of-the-Flag thing that even Stephen Colbert would consider over-the-top. The Andy that I used to know was sweet, caring, funny and smart -- too smart to be swallowing the sort of nonsense Malkin and Palin churn out. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
