\u201cLet no man pull you so low as to hate him,\u201d \u2013 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)<\/p>\n
I had decided against penning a sendoff to Bob Bolus, who died last week at 83. Public reaction to his passing changed my mind.<\/p>\n
Rather than give Bob\u2019s death the attention he so insatiably craved in life, I felt it sufficient to share Times-Tribune Staff Writer Jim Lockwood\u2019s excellent news obituary<\/a> on antisocial media with a short personal blurb:<\/p>\n \u201cI butted heads with Bob for the better part of 30 years. I hated the hateful things he said \u2014 some of which he believed and some he said for attention \u2014 but I never hated him. May he be at peace.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a strained but genuine gesture of grace extended to a longtime ideological adversary and the loved ones he left behind. As widely despised as Bob was, many close to him loved him just as much.<\/p>\n Most read my gesture for what it was, but some judged it as unwarranted and\/or insincere because I didn\u2019t hate or love on Bob enough to suit their personal tastes. I expected that. It comes with the territory, but some of the feedback was so resentful and\/or disingenuous I felt compelled to clap back.<\/p>\n Some scolded me for \u201chumanizing\u201d Bob, as if that\u2019s necessary when referring to a human being. Others took issue with me saying I \u201chated\u201d the hateful things Bob said, insinuating that I hated Bob, not the ugly invective that was his trademark.<\/p>\n For the record, Bob was, in fact, a human being. I did hate the hateful things he said, which I expressed to his snarling face countless times. He loved that I hated the hateful things he said, and understood that I didn\u2019t hate him.<\/p>\n Bob didn\u2019t hate me, either. He hated most of what I had to say, but reveled in anything I wrote about him, the meaner<\/a> and funnier<\/a> the better. We had many civil, even jovial private conversations over the years. I don\u2019t regret that, and won\u2019t apologize for it.<\/p>\n What Bob hated most about me is that I pitied him in the same way I did Archie Bunker, the grouchy, dimwitted loudmouth who became America\u2019s best-known bigot on the 1970s TV sitcom \u201cAll in the Family.\u201d\u00a0 Like Bunker, Bob was the product of an antiquated upbringing and a relic of an age when people were placed in boxes based on race, sex, religion, politics, economic status, sexual orientation and gender identity.<\/p>\n Any time minorities dared step outside their assigned boxes or expressed their humanity in nonconformist ways, bigots like Bob and Bunker read it as a threat and responded with the infantile intolerance they were taught as children.<\/p>\n Bunker mellowed with age and experience. Bob did not. I called Bob \u201cCro-MAGA Man,\u201d because he was MAGA decades before Trump descended his gold-plated escalator and got busy burning down the world. Like millions of other old, angry white men who pined for a time when America was \u201cGreat\u201d because they came first, Bob idolized Trump. To the Bobs of the world, Trump is the political Messiah who freed them to be who they are \u2013 perpetually aggrieved, obnoxious and afraid of any challenge to their personal preferences and prejudices.<\/p>\n I hate every hateful thing Trump does and says, but I don\u2019t hate him. I refuse to give him that, because it would only hurt me. Hate is Trump\u2019s political lifeblood. To paraphrase Twain, if you took the malice out of him, he\u2019d disappear.<\/p>\n Like Trump, Bob was an ignorant, arrogant bigot, a bully who punched down every chance he got and picked on the most vulnerable people in our community for daring to be who they are. He was also a successful businessman who employed thousands and a philanthropist who fed vulnerable people at his annual Christmas dinner.<\/p>\n Neither side of Bob\u2019s conflicted character justifies or disqualifies the other. Bob was who he was, and never pretended to be anyone else. In the wake of his death, many commenters insisted on all or nothing \u2014 just like Bob did.<\/p>\n In a column published last June, I condemned Bob \u2014 then a \u201ccandidate\u201d for Scranton mayor \u2014 for a particularly hateful, homophobic rant he spewed at a Scranton City Council meeting at the start of Pride Month. Bob was triggered by a transgender woman who dared to correctly point out that as a convicted felon, he was ineligible to serve as mayor in the impossible event that he was elected.<\/p>\n Bob repeatedly misgendered the young woman, called her \u201csweetheart\u201d and slandered the Pride flag as an \u201caffront\u201d to military veterans as if scores of LGBTQ+ patriots hadn\u2019t laid down their lives for this nation and the ideals it\u2019s constitutionally and morally bound to uphold and guarantee for all Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cRespect is earned, not demanded,\u201d Bob barked, with no apparent sense of irony. \u201cThey (LGBTQ+) didn\u2019t earn the respect they demand.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Jessica Rothchild, the first openly gay member of council, was in her second term. She won the seat due in no small part to Bob\u2019s hateful public crusade<\/a> to \u201ckeep da gays offa consil.\u201d<\/p>\n