Washington Post
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other innocents are
shot by a mentally deranged barbarian who believes in mind control
and this is what appears in the Post news story-not commentary,
news story:
Her 2010 Republican opponent, 29-year-old former Marine Sgt.
Jesse Kelly, held campaign events under the slogan “Help remove
Gabrielle Giffords from office” and invited his supporters to
“shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
(January 9, 2011)
New York Times
Precious thoughts from Aurelie Sheehan, “director of the
creative writing program at the University of Arizona,” apparently
perpetrated with the encouragement of the editors of the
imbecilic Times:
I spent early Saturday morning writing a short story set in
Tucson. I’ve lived here for a decade, but it’s only recently that
I’ve felt I can claim the place as a subject. The impetus for
writing about it hasn’t been love so much as anxiety, a sense that
it’s in danger somehow-on many fronts.
That feeling of danger hit hard when I slouched out of my office
to get another cup of coffee and my husband, mid-chat, looked up
from his computer to tell me Representative Gabrielle Giffords had
been shot, as had several other people. At a Safeway, of all
places.
We stared at the local news Web site, trying to understand this
new reality. A headline for an earlier article describing a lesser
calamity still dominated the page: “BB Gun Killed 80 Bats Found
Under East-Side Bridge, G & F Concludes,” with a picture of a
frail bat clinging to an embankment. To the right of this, the
stark words of a breaking news bulletin: Gabrielle Giffords, 40,
shot point-blank in the head.
Our 11-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom. She was
wrapped in her fuzzy blanket, ready to listen to Taylor Swift or
play Fruit Ninja on her iPod. Instead she listened to her mother
tell of the shooting of our congresswoman and, as the news came in,
the killing of her aide, a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl (who,
like our daughter, had served on her student council) and three
elderly citizens. She watched her mother cry….
It’s been a tough couple of years here since the presidential
election, and our friendships with some Republicans have grown
strained. In the wake of this attack, I don’t know if we will be
able to talk to each other more now, if we will reach out across
the political divide, or if the sides will become further
entrenched, if this is the harbinger of more divisiveness.
(January 10, 2011)
Huffington Post
The son of Robert Kennedy offers observations of a
socio/historical nature before returning to the bottle:
Jack’s death forced a national bout of self-examination. In
1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and
violence with an historic landslide in the presidential election
between LBJ and Goldwater. For a while, the advocates of right-wing
extremism receded from the public forum. Now they have returned
with a vengeance-to the broadcast media and to prominent positions
in the political landscape.
Gabrielle Giffords lies in a hospital room fighting for her
life, and a precious nine-year-old girl is dead along with five
others. Let’s pray for them and for our country and hope this
tragedy prompts another round of examination of conscience.
(January 11, 2011)
In These Times
Up in the treetops of Congo, some demented writer for In
These Times has perceived the future, and it is filled with “A
Kinder, Gentler, Bisexual Great Ape”:
When Dominique Morel arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo
in 1997, she had no background in animal protection. Nor had she
heard of bonobos, one of the two great ape species most closely
related to humans. But after her first visit to the bonobo
sanctuary founded by the Congolese nonprofit Amis de Bonobos du
Congo (ABC), Morel fell in love with the peaceful matriarchal
creatures. Although they share 98.7 percent of the humans’ DNA,
bonobos have created a society-unlike that of chimps and
people-without violence, in which sex is a form of mediation.
(February 2011)
The Progressive
Proof of the disgusting stuff foisted on the youths of
Podunk with the full cooperation of government bureaucrats at the
USDA, many of whom are obese and some of whom smoke cigarettes and
an occasional cigar:
My kids’ school is awash in fresh fruits and vegetables this
year. We’re lucky. The school is just one of a handful in our
community that received a federal Fresh Fruits and Vegetable grant.
These are available through the USDA for schools with mainly
low-income students. We spend Sunday mornings buying produce at the
local farmers’ market, a few blocks from our school. On Monday
nights, parents get together at a church across the street from the
school to wash and chop the produce. Then we load it in the school
fridge so the fourth and fifth graders can pass it out three
mornings a week.
As labor intensive as this whole process is, it is intensely
rewarding. Watching the kids gobble up watermelon on the playground
or try cherry tomatoes for the first time in class-and hearing them
say, “Cool, green beans!”-it is a big lift.
(November 2010)
The Nation
Young Eric Alterman inadvertently comes across a national
disgrace, yet leaves unsaid still another disgrace; these poor
people are really fat:
Think about it. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush talked
incessantly about fiscal responsibility and lost no opportunity to
denounce deficit spending, but these principles flew out the window
when it came time to raise taxes on the rich. The new bunch are
[sic] even worse. Incoming House Ways and Means chair Dave Camp
recently told George Will that one of the biggest problems with our
tax system is that too few poor people pay income tax.
(January 24, 2011)
New Republic
The somnambulistic John B. Judis offers up The Death of
Conservatism thesis, circa 2009, renewed with Botox and a nose job,
and hesto presto suddenly the 2010 elections never happened and
Barack Obama is FDR rather than a community organizer without a
community:
The Republicans’ identification of socialism with spending, and
their pledge to cut the budget and fight increases in the debt
ceiling, could imperil the country’s recovery-or even precipitate,
as happened in 1937 and 1938, a double-dip recession. And
Republican determination to cut spending on green technology and
infrastructure threatens America’s future beyond this immediate
business cycle. Put that together with a likely revival of the kind
of neo-isolationism that characterized the Republicans of the
1990s, and you have a recipe for U.S. decline.
In the end, the Republicans will probably exhaust whatever
mandate they think they procured from the 2010 elections. The
country as a whole doesn’t support counterrevolution, and, when it
finally sees it in action, it will almost certainly repudiate the
GOP at the polls. Whether that happens sooner or later depends on
the political skills of Obama and the Democrats. In the meantime,
the current Republican Party-a party that would make Clinton
Rossiter shudder in his grave-can still do considerable damage.
(February 3, 2011)
Washington Post
A gentleman with the macho name of Hank Stuever reviews a
documentary on the life of General Robert E. Lee, commander in
chief of the Confederate army, and gives himself over to the New
Heroism-history as seen by nobody in particular:
As the anniversaries of this skirmish and that battle trundle
through, I’m more eager to know of the domestic details of the
1860s, nuggets of everyday life on the periphery of the Civil War.
In the 21st century, we are more emotionally and academically
equipped to revisit the war era through the eyes of blacks, Native
Americans and women. We are more able to have conversations about
culture, fashion, food, song-all the things that exist on the
margin.
(January 2, 2011)
