Are We All Hypocrites?

You "cannot harbor malice toward others and then cry foul when someone displays intolerance against you. Prejudice tolerated is intolerance encouraged." That's the point Harvey Fierstein makes in talking about the aftermath of the Imus termination by CBS Radio.

He encourages to speak out "against words and deeds of hate, but only if we are willing to rise up against them all, including your own."

We in the Annex have needed for a long time to look inward before we talk about how intolerant the rest of Key West is against us. We are not without our own sins here, yet we tend to act in a patronizing, ignorant and intolerant way when we talk about the how the City has treated the Annex and seemingly "favored" Bahama Village. We have sat in TAMPOA Board meetings and other meetings in the Annex and listened to conversations of intolerance from other spectators, who were not only intolerant but uninformed. Some of those same spectators have written comments on this blog. We have, for better or worse, declined to publish some of the more "hateful" and intemperate comments some of those same folks have tried to post here as the comments were, in our view, too far over the top without contributing anything more to the thread of the discussion underway. Suffice it to say, intolerance is alive and well in the Annex, and most of us are not even aware of it.

But just so we are even handed in making our point here, we don't want our City readers to think that all is well at their end of the spectrum either. Nor do we want anyone to think that we believe we are free from criticism by those who believe we are the same as those we are talking about here. In writing this post we know we are opening ourselves to the same kind of self-righteous finger-pointing by those whom we have been talking about.

However, our goal in this post is simple: at least we in the Annex should be aware of our own intolerance before we turn our sights on others. That is the first step in changing business as usual in this so called "Premier Community." We need to look around and listen around to become aware of our own prejudices and the fact that we are not really aware of the real world outside the fences of our little enclave. Otherwise there will be no end to our being disrespected.