I lost a good friend last week, gone before his time.
A big, gregarious lug, he always made time for friends – a friend being everyone he met. Often not aware of his large size, he might accidentally push over a mountain or upset a substantial piece of furniture. Blessed with a hearty appetite, in later years he adjusted to his spreading middle, eating his Buffalo Chicken Dip without the chips or taking just ‘a taste’ of a cold beer.
Alas, most people still kept their distance.
In general, it’s just hard for a 135 pound Pit Bull to make friends.
Like many generalities, an aversion to Dexter might possibly be understandable (even when wrong). A very few Pit Bulls do not greet you with a sloppy kiss, lay across your lap to be petted or join you to in selecting a beer from a cooler.
Meanwhile, the ‘gotcha’ media and well-funded nebulous political cartels deal everyday in disingenuous generalities.
First example: once labeled a Democrat that label must always be affixed.
About seven weeks ago I sent a letter to the extremely local Oakville Call. My subject? The Valley Park levee and the Meramec River. The paper finally, last Thursday, published my letter. In print and on their website they felt compelled to note that I twice stood as a Democratic candidate for office, most recently three years ago.
Now, I could appreciate that italic note if I had criticized a Republican office holder or an action by a political body – even a school board. But a river levee seems pretty non-partisan.
And, the Oakville Call revels in a double standard. While I’m always identified as a Democrat when I send in a letter, I’ve read scores of letters from known Republican officeholders and candidates without the italics at the end. In the Call’s world to be a Democrat is to be a scourge on humanity, an enemy of the good people [read: Trumpettes].
Second example: all Democrats are the same. Trish Gunby stands in the special election next month to replace Jean Evans, a Manchester/Valley Park area Republican state representative who abandoned her seat – leaving her voters unrepresented for most of the last legislative session. Trish has knocked, so far, on 20,000+ doors. Visit www.trishgunby.com and you’ll find a card carrying Methodist who has worked with the police and local schools. She has two kids, one husband and a dog and has lived a quarter century in her district working on local issues. 
Yet, mailboxes in the 99th state representative district are getting filled with political hate mail, photoshopping her as the fifth member of ‘the squad’ with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.) and friends in Washington. She’s damned as a socialist for supporting such radical ideas as fair school funding.
Just as the Oakville Call will continue till I die to label me as a nasty Democrat, Trish is painted with a distorted brush to seize upon Trump’s propaganda against women of color in Congress.
Don’t worry, Dexter would forgive them their faults…Me, well, not so much.
Glenn Koenen