N P Childs wrote:
> This was just posted to my Yale Class of '75 listserv:
>
>>
>>> I just returned from the Annual Meeting of the American Political
>>> Science Association meeting. Among various panels and addresses,
>>> David Brooks, the conservative commentator, attacked Bush for an
>>> hour, calling him the worst president in his lifetime.
>>
>
> Does this mean that dipstick Brooks is a political scientist? Time to
> retroactively change majors to something more socially acceptable
> like, say, sheep pimping.
Well....as much as I loathe Brooks -- though he was acidly right about the bobos -- I think his ditching the Bush boat is a good sign. The guy has always been good at figuring out which ass to kiss. So if he thinks Bush's shit is starting to stink, I'll take it to indicate a shift in the zeitgeist.
Also, this is an anecdote but telling nevertheless. I was getting a pedicure today in a black neighborhood in Oakland. All the customers were black and all the workers Vietnamese. In the middle of her manicure, one lady started talking about NO, essentially recounting the sequence of events, recounting the "official" crappy response, and punctuating her speech every five minutes by saying "You know what the lesson is? You know what we're learning from this? There's only two kinds of people in this country, the haves and the have nots." Then she went on to fulminate about how "they" were going to steal all the money from social security and medicare. Because there's only two kinds of people in this country.....All the other ladies were nodding their heads in agreement. The Vietnamese workers were commenting on the sides in Vietnamese, heads down. It wasn't alltogether clear whether they agreed or disagreed.
I've been going to this nail shop for three years now and this is the first time I've heard people talk about anything except family and the first time I've heard people talking to someone they didn't know. It was quite striking. Course, I piped in and backed up everything she said, but there wasn't much point really. She was right on the money.
Joanna