"Barbara O’Brien’s wide-ranging account of Zen history is conveyed with a master storyteller’s ability to keep the forest from getting lost in a myriad of trees. Wearing her scholarship lightly, she blends just the right amount of skepticism about her hagiographic sources with a deep appreciation for the Dharma." — Barry Magid, author of
Nothing Is Hidden and
Ending the Pursuit of Happiness Order here!
More like this please. I mean why should the media feel the need to pull their punches when the reich wing media arm goes all-out?
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Wow!, Talk about a “through the looking glass moment”.
He’s right, obviously. They are too stupid to have children.
Let’s see what some qualifications are:
Drivers license – I’m single and I”ve never been married. I have no children. But, what always struck me was that in order to get a drivers license, you had to study rules and laws, and practice on the road. You had to pass a series of tests. They make you earn a drivers license.
Marriage license – All you need for a marriage license is someone to go with you who’s breathing and can sign their name, and you yours – why this person has to be of the opposite sex is a mystery to me, I guess to make it toughter than just the one requirement, breathing. And bingo! You are legally married.
To have children – No tests. You don’t gotta sign nothin.’ There are two ways to have children: natural ways, and medically induced ways. The natural ones are more fun.
Ah, you say how about adoption? Well, that takes some effort. In most cases, there’s even more involved than a drivers license. The state doesn’t care that you don’t have any qualifications to raise your own childern. But, when raising someone elses, they get a little stringent. And I think that’s a good thing.
Wow, someone from the media slipping up and forgetting to remain in “food fight moderator” mode long enough to personally espouse some common sense. At least MSNBC has some plausible deniability and still might retain low IQ viewers with Monica feigning amazed shock with “John Horowitz showing no mercy…”
I was born and raised in a segregated south and have seen first hand the vicious competition between the last few rungs of the socioeconomic ladder not to be the last rung and it is quite simply an incredible phenomenon. One documentary I saw made all of that crystallize when a woman said “If we aren’t better than the niggers then who are we better than?”
So I’m convinced that this is primarily a class thing and when you look into it these class things always need some identifiable scapegoat. It’s not so much that Obama is black but that black are just there and a readily available scapegoat for their woes.
Urban media types have no clue. Their certainty that America is past all that only reveals the extent of this own disconnect. There are still millions upon millions who want no part of a “nigruh” (southernism/euphemism for nigger now that the word is no longer socially acceptable) gentleman counseling their pink lil’ chilluns which would make the coloreds seem better than they are.
How many rightees during political discussions countered with “But you do support OUR president” during the Bush reign?
This is not about their fear of socialism. They are just groping for other words that might play in the public realm and not allude to their own racism.
These types are so over the top that they’ll continue their current trajectory to the point that they will be marginalized then the media and lastly the Republicans will no longer give them credibility.
It’s good to know at least one Washington reporter is aware that there is a problem with cynical manipulators working with a herd of dumb-as-stump people. Sometimes I get the impression that the press corps(e) doesn’t even perceive that anymore.
It is thoroughly refreshing that Harwood said the common sense thing, instead of devolving into repeating the charges, or devolving into some kind of “game analysis” about what effect the controversy would have on Obama’s polling, or what he needed to do to respond, or something.
Imagine a society where we believed it was generally believed to be a good thing to not be stupid and to resist the attempts of con men to bamboozle us. Wouldn’t that be refreshing.
I’m confused – again. Who’s the fascist. My beliefs, social, economic and political, now put me in a class dubbed fascist by the right-wing. But now I find out that at least part of that right-wing is anti-intellectual (beware of an elite president delivering suspiciously intellectual messages to school children) so, since anti-intellectualism is an important characteristic of fascism, just exacty who’s the fascist?
felicity,
To avoid confusion, stay away from logic like the plague. That’s what they do. That’s how they can hold two views that are polar opposites in the same thick skull. You know – Obama’s a Fascist and a Socialist; or Communist/Fascist.
Of course, it should go without saying that it also helps if you don’t know the definition of anything you’re actually talking about. The less you know, the quicker you can become a leader in the movement. Just look at Sarah, the role model.
How refreshing. Wish we could experience more common sense like this.
“This is not about their fear of socialism. They are just groping for other words that might play in the public realm and not allude to their own racism.”
You got that right! Unfortunatley the diversity police have outlawed the word nigger and most find it unacceptable to wear the mask and robes in public these days. Its just a little more complicated to be a racist these days.
Today, I had an interesting encounter with a right-winger.
He had a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache on a stick with the motto, “I’ve changed!”
I saw some people from the other side of the road honk and give a thumb’s-up.
I turned around, rolled my window down and asked him a simple question.
“Define Fascism for me?”
The 35, or so, year-old male looked at me like a deer in the headlight’s. He eventually started, haltingly, with, “It’s when a small group of people…. blah, blah, blah… try to take over the, blah, blah, blah…”
I listened to him and said, “You have no idea what it means. You might want to check the dictionary before you call someone a fascist.”
Then I blew it. I came off a a Liberal asshole. I said, “I bet you couldn’t spell IQ, if I spotted you the letter “I!”
I should have tried to talk to him, but, I had the feeling that I would be better off talking to a 10 year-old if the only channel the kid watched was FOX!
This nonsense has gotten out of control. Our local newspaper actually had this story as a headline today. I went to the website at the paper and read the comments on it. It was appalling. I was horrified to read the vitriolic, ignorant, racist garbage. It’s my own community and it’s like the people are insane.
We have always been called “knee-jerk” liberals. I think the rightwing fringe has taken that title and run with it. If it says “Obama”, they hate it, period. I don’t think they even stop to hear what he says anymore. They go at it with both barrels.
I had such high hopes when Obama was elected, and I refuse to surrender to the madness, but to be honest, I’m heartsick. I feel like we are running in quicksand and we just keep sinking.
This seemed relevant in light of this blog post. Someone much more skillful than I, when keeping their cool, remaining factual, and engaging a few tea-bagger types manages to soothe the savage beast.
Notice the woman who initially seemed irate and how she seems to strain to take it all in. As her unpracticed gears start to turn she calms down a little. This is what a town hall should be like — getting those types to look around at other reasoned perspectives and understand that those who don’t believe what they’ve been told aren’t necessarily evil, crazy or ignorant. For that one woman I suspect that she’d never bitten off so many healthcare facts or reasoned discourse as this. But she was in mixed civil company and found it hard to disrupt, unlike the town hall meetings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNs7Zpqo98&feature=player_embedded
Wow. That was refreshing but way too brief… like having a Dixie Cup of cold lemonade handed to you halfway across Death Valley.
I just returned from visiting my brother’s family in Kansas City. My sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher in public school, and she is enraged about the wingnut reaction to Obama’s speech. She went off on a long rant that almost ended in tears, and I just sat on their sofa, petting their new beagle and nodding. There was a digression about some foul-mouthed old man who called her school’s front office, and cursed them out for lowering their flag to half-staff for “that motherbleeping liberal, Ted Kennedy.” I had to say that I was surprised they only got one call like that. Then my brother started in on the general awfulness and destructiveness of the Right. When he was done, I said, “Yikes, man. Remember how you used to make fun of me for getting so mad during the Reagan years?”
I think if my brother could get in the car, drive to that tony neighborhood in Dallas, nod politely to the Secret Service dudes (because who’s going to stop a chunky 50-year-old white guy in Izod and Dockers?), ring the doorbell and then punch George W. Bush in the face, it’d be worth getting wrestled to the ground and arrested. Of course, he’d only stop being mad for about 24 hours or so. The echoes of bad-Bushery will last through his grandchildren’s time… if they even have one; and as a very hard-working father and husband, he’s acutely aware of it.
Perhaps I should’ve rejiggered my family’s TV remote so it’s stuck on all-MSNBC-all-the-time.