My Grandpa used to tell me, “Point the finger at someone else and you have three pointed right back at you.”

The response to each New Year’s State of the Union (SOTU) address typically serves as an exercise in finger pointing. This year, we were treated to the ‘official’ Republican response, by party “Savior” Senator Marco Rubio, and the additional rebuttal by Tea Party Republican Senator Rand Paul.

En masse, Main Street Women’s pre-election Manifesto for Tolerance was a call to end the vitriolic state of the union. So far, their magic wands have produced little impact – the SOTU exemplified that.

After listening to everyday women across the U.S., I realized I’d gone darned far down the intolerance path myself. (You know. I confessed to having flashes of ramming my car into others because of the viewpoints their bumper stickers express, e.g. “Women for Aiken.”)

My own intolerance growth stems in part from how, like most of Americans, my narrow, personalized news sources present one perspective – the one most like mine. The ‘new-news’ challenge is beginning to tame my internal intolerance monster.

Vowing for eight weeks to watch, listen to or read one news source each week, for challenge week two I focused on Rubio’s SOTU response address. Instead of tweeting and talking about Rubio’s SOTU response Big Gulp incident, which  felt too much like the Hippos & Pinheads name-calling I wrote about at last week (courtesy of Bill O’Reilly and Rex Reed), I used the following practices to tame my very American, intolerance monster.

Four Intolerance Taming Practices

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. – Maya Angelou

1. Find one thing to love.

The State of the Union address is always a reminder of how unique America is. For much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant societies, where a tiny minority always stayed on top, and no one else even had a chance. [i]

In his SOTU response opening, Rubio named one of my biggest concerns out here on Main Street. U.S. wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands.

As of 2010, the top 1% of households owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). [ii]

My intolerance meter ticked upward from Rubio’s opening words. That’s when I started looking for something to love about him.

My impression? Rubio seemed authentic when he talked about his family. I noticed how his tone changed slightly and his eyes seemed to brighten briefly. Now, that’s a place to start! That’s one thing I can love about him.

I seized and held that positive thought, which helped my ears and heart stay open while he spoke (and downed some Polar Springs).

2. Separate the message from the messenger.

A little like when Moms and Dads tell their kids, “I love you but I don’t love your behavior right now,” separating out the message from the messenger helps.

Always the case, the SOTU response is a purposely created opportunity to distinguish between the parties, a chance to question (bash?) the other guy. This time was no different. Nor was it different in the sense that the President’s address gave him a pulpit for talking about his agenda, which I may or may not agree will benefit this nation.

Rubio is a likeable messenger, even if I didn’t much care for his message. I’ll be open to what Rubio says in the future even if I disagreed with his SOTU response and his party’s approach to leading our nation.

3. Notice blinders and rip them off.

When I finished school, I owed over 100,000 dollars in student loans, a debt I paid off just a few months ago. Today, many graduates face massive student debt.

My intolerance monster clawed when I heard this because I’m acutely jealous. If, like me, you bought into the American education dream and now share in our one trillion, yes “T” for trillion dollars, of student loan debt, did you cringe when you heard this?

Rubio, 41, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida in 1993 and received his law degree from the University of Miami in 1996. According to his latest income disclosure form filed in 2010, Rubio had debts of between $100,001 to $250,000 when he was elected to Congress.

In December 2012, Rubio said, “That’s a debt I just paid off just last year with the proceeds of my book ‘An American Son,’ the perfect holiday gift and available on Amazon for only $11.99.” [iii]

Having recently seen Les Misérables , I remembered Hugo’s line, “Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.” I hope Rubio remembers that his seat in Congress (that comes with Cadillac plan health insurance for life) and his book are not replicable by most of us with student loan debts. Nonetheless, noticing how much his statement  rankled me gave me a chance to conscientiously rip off that (jealousy) blinder.

A baby tolerance step, but a step.

4. Use a (tolerance) tweezers.

This dream – of a better life for their children – it’s the hope of parents everywhere.

Rubio’s dream statement is something I could tweeze out as a common vision. I can’t imagine anyone who’d disagree. Even if I found most of Rubio’s comments banal, I visualized a tolerance tweezers and used it to pluck out hairs of accord.

Today, it seems Congress could use some tweezers. Congress is failing us by not fulfilling even the most fundamental governing responsibility:  passing a budget.

Let’s pull out our tolerance tweezers, from Main Street to DC, and get plucking to find a basis for compromise. Let’s take action based on even the tiniest hairs of agreement.

Democracy  Requires Tolerance (& Activism)

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve . –George Bernard Shaw

How deserving are we of the Congress we’ve got? I know that when I started the new-news challenge my level of intolerance for politicians and government was high. And, so was my intolerance for Mainstreeters who have starkly different perspectives that they’re reinforcing by their choice of news sources.

I’ve been finger pointing.

By breaking out of my news sources’ rut, I’m at least shaking up my status quo. I am beginning to listen to what others think, not agree, but listen and find something I can appreciate in them as people and in their perspectives.

The challenge has also made me want to dig deeper — something that democracy demands of us — and when I hear or read things that strike me as inauthentic or even downright untrue, I’m taking an extra step and finding other sources.

How about you? Got tolerance?