Once upon a time, your political beliefs were your business. Maybe you debated over a few beers or engaged in heated repartee at the family dinner table, but unless you wanted folks to know your views, they didn’t. Once Facebook & Twitter entered our lives, that changed. At least it changed in mine.

Folks following me in social media know I support our president and vice president and have since 2007, the same year I joined Facebook. For me, Obama trumped Clinton from the start, a choice that ticked off more than a few feminist friends. So I’ve got this big mouth that mostly, I’m not afraid to use.

Here’s why:

I’m a writer. At age eleven, I earned my first ‘clip’ by voicing my opinion about a community issue that the editor of Chicago Sun Times Sound Off column thought worthy of print. I don’t write ‘to write’ though I’ve made a modest living writing for dollars. But the words closest to me-that wake me up in the middle of the night and demand I write them down – come from deep down. Call it my muse, my passion, my  viewpoint, I’ve always turned to the written word when needing to know more about something that troubles or perplexes me.

I’m an opinionated woman and an opinionated writer. For 16 years, I wrote for a very conservative daily newspaper in Orange County, California. My society column often highlighted nonprofits that included Planned Parenthood and AIDS awareness/research, nonprofits that weren’t the favored causes of my Conservative readers. In all that time, my editors never told me to give less ink to these causes, not once. I used to say, ‘My readers know I’m not one of them but they read me anyway.’ I like to believe it’s because I offered a balanced and reasoned view.

I don’t claim to know everything. I never suggest that our president is a perfect Ghandi-like fellow above reproach. He’s just the best we have right now and right now, we need the best to lead us through these terrible times that for many were fabulous before it all came crashing down. Someone had to pay for this mess. For the last four years, the radical right fringe believe it should be President Obama.

I do believe my politics may negatively impact my business and that’s okay. With each passing year, I appreciate how quickly my time is passing and for this reason alone, I don’t want to spend  it with folks who believe our president is a socialist and/or foreign born. I have no interest in knowing anyone who believes their religious beliefs trump my rights over my body. I don’t want to discuss business with people who consider non-white people not as good. And I have no interest in knowing anyone who thinks their personal lifestyle is the one and only lifestyle to live.

I have no beef with Conservatives or Republicans. Over the years, I’ve called plenty GOP folks ‘friends’ and today still do. I do have a beef with their party’s fringed right. Whether they succeed in moving their marginalized agenda into our mainstream or not, I will always have a beef with these fringed folks.

Back when many of us were doing so much better than we are today, the need to rumble over politics just wasn’t there. But that all changed on 9/11 when the towers fell.  The cataclysmic losses suffered from the attacks and wars that followed got worse when Wall Street fell. The culprit this time, greed.

Some people have to blame someone and President Obama is it. I was told once ‘For very finger you point, three point back at you.‘  I did not want to hear these words at that time though instantly, I knew they were true.

So until that time when Barack Obama no longer is president, me and my big mouth and whatever writing skill I have will continue to support his administration and report information that helps me better understand these terribly divisive times we now live in. 

In the writing business, we call it voice.