The Nation
Marxist-Leninist poet William Greider beholds the shantytowns
inhabited by the stalwarts of Masturbate Now and the activists of
Defecate for the World, and he envisions a new generation of Flower
Power with Hippies being replaced by the casual rapists and
muggers. Oh beauty and sweetness, midst feculence and hot
air:
Out in the streets, meanwhile, the contrast with the brain-dead
politics is exhilarating. In Occupy Wall Street, we are witnessing
a rare event—the birth of a social movement. Ordinary people are
engaging in sustained grassroots protest against the political
order and against citizens’ exclusion from the decision-making that
governs their lives. They seek to rearrange the distribution of
power, and they are doing so by injecting a creative, often playful
vitality that has been missing in our decayed democracy. The
protesters have slipped around the soul-deadening, high-gloss
marketing of mass-communication culture. Instead, they insist that
politics starts with citizens talking to one another and
listening—agreeing and disagreeing with mutual respect. [We all
have seen how much mutual respect the Occupiers have for
disagreement—Ed.] The open-door, nonhierarchical membership
commits people to engage in what historian Lawrence Goodwyn calls
“democratic conversation.”
The Occupy protesters are acting like citizens, believing they
have the power to change things. Their ambition reflects a core
mystery of American democracy—the fact that humble people can
acquire power when they convince themselves they can. Warmhearted
and broadminded, these citizens audaciously claim to speak for the
99 percent.…
(December 12, 2011)
New York Review of Books
The sad state into which the Hon. George McGovern has fallen,
as witnessed by forty cranks at Zuccotti Park:
Both the weather and the living conditions of Zuccotti Park have
grown harsher. On October 29, the occupiers endured their first
snowstorm. There was much anxiety—heating generators had been
deemed a fire hazard and confiscated by the fire department the day
before—and the park had the look of an arctic encampment…. The
General Assembly, usually a sprawling affair, had no more than
forty shivering participants shouting into the freezing rain. A
bedraggled man who had arrived that day from Hawaii announced his
candidacy for president and asked for the movement’s
blessing.
(November 10, 2011)
The Progressive
Some deranged editorialist at The Prog looks out on the capital
of a country that in 2010 turned a Democratic majority at the House
of Representatives for a Republican majority of 242 and sees
Pyongyang, North Korea. Imagine his derangement when the 2012
elections come round:
If you live in Washington, D.C., for any time at all, the rigged
nature of our system becomes blatantly obvious. So dominant is the
power of money, so subservient are politicians to the corporations
and the wealthy that finance them, so unresponsive is the
supposedly democratic system to the needs of the people that there
can be no denying the class bias of our government.
(November 2011)
The New Republic
An excitable reporter for TNR begins a frightening
exposé of Mitt Romney’s volcanic temper that ends with the tacit
question hanging in the chill air: “Can we trust this madman near
the nuclear trigger?”
It was an odd and unexpected moment when, on October 18 at the
CNN debate in Las Vegas, the normally even-keeled Mitt Romney
suddenly lost his cool. Challenged by Rick Perry about once having
employed illegal immigrants as lawn workers, Romney initially
answered with a chuckle and strained smile; but, when Perry kept
interrupting his attempt at a reply, Romney’s temperature shot
skyward. “Anderson?” he called to the moderator, and, when no help
arrived, he turned on Perry, his voice rising to a shout and his
eyes flashing with anger. “Would you please wait?” he barked at
Perry…[Yes, barked—Ed.]
(December 15, 2011)
Huffington Post
A profoundly disappointed Miss Julianne Moore tenders another
cri de coeur, regarding the pulchritudinous Sarah Palin:
Actress Julianne Moore does her due diligence in researching the
characters she portrays on screen—and when it come to playing Sarah
Palin, there was no exception.
At an event last week, the 51-year-old actress told the New
York Daily News she “read every single thing” she could about
the former Alaska governor and “watched every interview” in order
to prepare for her role as Palin in next year’s HBO mini-series,
“Game Change.”
All that information must have been eye-opening for Moore,
right? Not so much.
When asked if she had developed a newfound respect for Palin
after all her research, the actress raised an eyebrow and sighed
deeply. “No,” she told the paper quietly.
(December 13, 2011)
In These Times
Thus begins another soporific editorial meeting at In
These Times, a leading magazine of the left’s New Emptiness
movement:
I am sitting in a peace pipe circle of about a dozen people led
by a half-Seminole, half-white medicine man named James Mooney.
Another man, Jeffrey Bronfman, is shaking black pipe ash into my
cupped hands and praying over it as others sit contemplatively,
staring at a painted bull skull in the middle of the circle. Mooney
blows smoke into the air, and it hovers for a few seconds before
floating into the New Mexico desert.
(January 2012)
New York Times
After several months’ absence from appearing in this
illustrious department, Miss Maureen Dowd is back from
institutional confinement yet she remains her girlish
self:
I was intrigued to learn that the president and I have the same
favorite new TV series: Showtime’s spectacular “Homeland,” set
right here in the capital.
The season finale is tonight, and finales of addictive shows can
be tricky and disappointing. However it ends, though, they should
dispense with the Best-Actors-in-a-Drama contest and just ship the
Emmys to Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.
“Homeland” is about an American Marine coming back from Iraq to
a welter of problems, a subject with special resonance for the
president and America this past week. A bipolar C.I.A. agent warns
her skeptical bosses that the Marine, held in Iraq as a P.O.W. for
eight years and now returning as a hero, could be a
terrorist.
(December 18, 2011)
From the Archives
Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past
(February 1992)
Parade
From the distinguished James Michener, the case for
slavery:
The best money I have spent in my life was not that used to make
me either happier or more comfortable, but the taxes I have paid to
the various governments under which I have lived. In general,
governments have spent their share of my money more wisely and with
better results than I have spent my own funds, and one aspect of my
life about which I am most ashamed is that I spent most of a decade
living in three states that had no state income tax—Texas, Florida,
and Alaska—and the deficiencies that the first two suffered because
of that lack were evident daily. I like states like New York,
Massachusetts, and California, which do tax and spend their income
wisely.
(November 24, 1991)
Newhall Signal & Saugus Enterprise
Still more evidence for the end of history:
Public Notice
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
…The application of Deborah Anne Ziegler for change of name(s)
having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application
that Deborah Anne Ziegler has filed an application proposing that
the name(s) be changed to Euphrasia Lavette Alzena Guri Scientia
Ventura Ikuru Alvera Ganbatte Gelasia Curvilinearjky….
(August 9, 1991)
