Great blog over at the Huffington Post:
With the midterms just over two months away, we are inundated with daily media reports on the election, most of them predicting doom for the Democrats. But what jumps out at me is how telling so many of the proposals and actions from Republican officeholders and candidates are, since they reveal that they are acting on behalf of a small group of right-wing extremists, not in the best interests of the American people.
To be clear, I’m all for political debate. I think for democracy to work, there has to be a free exchange of ideas, with the best solution to a problem winning the day. But in the current American political environment, we are missing two key elements necessary for our democracy to work. First, thanks to the dissolution of the mass media and the rise of a right-wing propaganda machine (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), there is no longer an accepted common set of facts on which to base a debate. Instead, the right wing has decided to use lies and fear-mongering (everything from inventing death panels to questioning the ideological and religious beliefs of the president, including where he was born, to stoking fear of Islam) as a strategic method to win elections. As a result, we have a situation where, according to a recent Newsweek poll, 52 percent of Republicans think President Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world,” and nearly a quarter think he is, in fact, a Muslim. Second, regarding the tea party-dominated Republican Party, in most cases, their proposals and tactics are not chosen with the best interests of the majority of Americans in mind, but are instead cynical attempts to win elections.
True Prep
This one is mainly for my College friends. The Washington and Lee, Sweet Briar, RMWC, Mary Baldwin, UVA and other Virginia Colleges gang.
The rest of you, please bear with us…
If it’s any help…my partner says he would probably have hated me in College, but we’ve managed to reach a stylistic middle ground and last almost 14 years…
Lisa Birnbach was one of the authors of “The Official Preppy Handbook” back in the late 1970’s- early 1980’s. I won’t say it was our handbook because that implies we didn’t know it all before hand. It just happened to reflect our lives at the time. Her new book, “True Prep”, comes out on September 7th. It’s about Preps at Middle Age. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy from Amazon.com.
I’m already scared….How many cliches can I be at one time? I’m already seen as a middle aged Guppy and now I realize I’m still a middle aged Preppie. From what I have read of this book so far, I’m totally still a prep. Just because I have at least a half dozen pair of Cole Haan Loafers and my weekend wardrobe is totally J Crew. Everything else is Brooks Brothers or Ralph Lauren. It hurts to face the truth….
You can take the boy out of W&L, but you can’t take the W&L out of the boy…
Here is the video that defines our generation’s new place in Society:
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