Ellen DeGeneres Addresses Everyone Hating on Her for Watching a Football Game with George W. Bush

Ellen DeGeneres hears your criticism of her attending a Dallas Cowboys game alongside former president George W. Bush, but she isn't here for it.

The talk show host addressed the weekend controversy on her show with a pretty simple message for all those critical of her spending time with a Republican who has very different views on so many political and social issues than her: "When I say 'be kind to one another,' I don't mean only the people that think the same way that you do. I mean be kind to everyone, doesn't matter."

Ellen came under fire on social media after the television cameras panned to her enjoying the game from box seats. She was seated next to her wife Portia de Rossi on one side and the former president and first lady Laura Bush on the other. And, the gall of this, both her and George appeared to be smiling in the footage captured.

"A lot of people were mad and they did what people do when they're mad: they tweet," Ellen said. But she didn't single out any of those tweets, instead choosing to share one that reads, "Ellen and George Bush together makes me have faith in America again."

"Exactly!" Ellen intoned. "Here's the thing. I'm friends with George Bush. In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share the same beliefs that I have. We're all different and I think that we've forgotten that that's okay that we're all different."

She also broke down how she came to find herself sharing a box seat with the president, and it was simply because she was invited by Charlotte Jones, the daughter of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

"When we were invited, I was aware that I was going to be surrounded by people with very different opinions and beliefs," Ellen said. "And I'm not talking about politics. I was rooting for the Packers and get this, everybody in the Cowboys suite was rooting for the Cowboys. So I had to hide my cheese hat in Portia's purse."

She cracked jokes throughout her monologue about the incident and unexpected fallout, but like some of the best standups, Ellen was saying something very important throughout. We seem to have lost the idea that we are all one nation, and we are allowed to disagree and still coexist with mutual respect and love.

"Just because I don't agree with someone on everything, doesn't mean that I'm not gonna be friends with them," Ellen implored.

After all, it's through friendship and mutual respect that we can have healthy conversations about our differences and maybe, just maybe, through those kinds of dialogues, actually affect change.

The current model of putting everyone who disagrees with you into an enemy camp and only communicating with them by shouting at them certainly isn't doing much good. It's hard to hear in an echo chamber and it's even harder to listen when you're yelling.

So that person who saw the pairing of Ellen and George sharing a laugh as restoring her faith in America, that's because they can see and appreciate the value of being able to interact with and communicate with people who share different views. Only through communication and compromise can anything of real value get accomplished.

And if Ellen has anything to say about it, that will be "people who are already playing Christmas music."

"I mean seriously, there's no excuse for that," she argued, before quickly adding, "But I'm kind to them!"

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