On Being Heard

Once upon a time, an NYU student, incensed with Justice Scalia's view on sodomy laws and gay rights, attempted to turn the tables on the judge and show him just how embarassing it is to ahve your private life dragged out into the public eye and asked him if he sodomizes his wife. And I deemed him my hero. And I said I would buy him a beer. And now that I'm dating someone who goes to law school with him, I just may get the chance.
But this guy. Oh Lordy.
He stood up at one of those Bush press events where they pass the mic around... you know the events - the ones where obviously pre-selected people stand up and say things like "I don't have a question, I just wanted to say that you're the best president ever and just looking at your image on TV cured my rickets and I'm relatively sure that your foreign policy has single-handedly brought sunshine and rainbows to the children of the world."
Well, you see, Harry Taylor made it past the screeners. And apparently Harry wasn't about to claim that the photo of W on his den wall at home weeps tears of blood:

"I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself. You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf."

Harry: when A* moves to North Carolina, and I visit her (ahem), I'm looking you up in the phone book. And I'm coming over. And I'm bringing you a bottle of the most expensive scotch I can find. And a great cigar. And my firstborn child.
Would you have the balls to stand up and say that to W? Not just because it's ballsy to begin with because he's the president, but because, honestly, this administration deals with criticism about as well as the Church of Scientology.
I don't know that I would have the wrinklies to stand up and say it outside the comfortable anonymity of the internet. But Harry did. He rung the fucking bell. And as they tell us in law school: you can not unring that shit.
Harry wasn't a pundit. He is not, that I know, peddling a book, pushing a charity, or Bono.
He's just a guy. Who has apparently really had enough.
So Harry, where ever you are, you have my undying respect. You were true, to the point, eloquent, and above all, braver than most of us dare dream. You had a chance most of us will never get. And you took it.