Please don't make me watch it.

Okay, I'll try to get a Freaky Friday up a little later, but first I feel like there's something I need to talk about, here.

I was flipping through channels last night when I came across the History Channel. They're already ramping up their 9/11 coverage, and as my stomach sank and my heart got sick, all I could think of before I changed the channel was, "please don't make me watch it."

This time every year on TV, it's the same thing: Hours and hours and hours of planes flying into buildings. Of buildings crashing to the ground. Of a thick, choking layer of dust permeating everything. Of thousands of people streaming across the bridges, desperately trying to get away from the city.

I've been watching those images in early September for nine years now, and I just don't think I can do it anymore. It's not like I'm going to forget. That day is seared into my memory; it's not going anywhere.

And while I certainly understand that these programs have a value, especially for people who were too young to remember that day, I just don't want to relive it anymore.

Here's the scary thing: This country's becoming less tolerant, not more. We're becoming more close-minded, not more enveloping. With the Limbaughs on the radio and that nutjob down in Gainesville who wants to burn the Korans and the Iraqis who are marching in protest, it's like everybody's going off the rails all at once. And I just want to tell them, "You know what? Go ahead and SAY what you want. BURN those Korans. MARCH that march. Do what you feel you need to do to express yourself, as long as it's not physically hurting anybody else. Go for it. That's the damn POINT. It's called freedom of expression."

All you have to do is watch some of the the video from that Glenn Beck rally to know that there are an awful lot of people out there who believe that anybody who doesn't look, talk and think just like they do should be taken out and shot. By that criteria, I'd be dead right now.

Just let me live my life, okay? And you can live yours.

And please don't make me watch those planes again.