I noticed that King avoided answering this question in the previous post. I know it may sound like I am just grasping for gossip, but I think it's important because it speaks to McCain's character. King was kind enough to bend over and allow McCain to have hs way with him. But did McCain have the common decency to at least give poor King the old reach around?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Its not really that complicated. It happens to be true that a black candidate has a huge structural advantage in a SC Democratic primary -- especially one with 2 major white candiates to split the white vote. Therefore Obama winning there is not a sign of momentum, its just Obama picking the low-hanging fruit.

BTW: both Obama and Hillary are triangulating pussies who don't excite me at all.

I'm no racist at all. I'm a liberal Democrat who worked for Jesse Jackson, so this comment is not about me being a racist.

Obama is the new Colin Powell -- a well-spoken, light-skinned black who receives adulation far disproportionate to what he actually deserves based on his record and his positions.

I frankly don't like the way Obama talks about Republicans. I don't have a Broderesque bone in my body so it really, really turns me off. Obama is basically a gentile Joe Lieberman without the ridiculous foreign policy.

Whether its Hillary or Barack, they had fucking-A better win the general or else it will be time for a movement whose rationale will be unquestionable.

Hillary is a compromised triangulator who ended up on the wrong side of genocide. Sorry sportsfans but I haven't drunk the BaracKoolaid yet either and he strikes me as an unaccomplished pussy who either doesn't underdstand the nature of contemporary politics or is simply unwilling to go on offense against Republican extremism.

If either one of these flawed candidates manages to lose to John McCain -- and especially if they end up taking a beating on Iraq or tax cuts -- then I for one will have an aneurysm.

A story like this wouldn't run in the NYT about Bill Clinton?

Is Limbaugh, like, being ironic?

Whatever else may have been true about him, Buckley was a major pusher of policies that are contrary to the common good. He was a bad man who did bad things.

Wilson was obviously being hyperbolic but you're taking him completely literally, which is retarded (but not literally!).

His point is to let kids interact in a sincere self-motivated way with nature rather than having some over-ambitious yuppie mom buying them Baby Darwin CD's so they can be more competitive in the elite grade school admissions contest.

De Groot's whole approach seems seriously flawed. He blames the hippies for what they didn't achieve but he makes at least 2 huge errors in doing so:

1) He lowballs the positive effects of the 60's. Several posters have already covered this ground, which includes major progress on racial and sexual relations (i.e. women's and gay rights). That in and of itself makes the 60's the most progressive decade in the 20th century.

Other benefits include the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, greatly increased skepticism about war, and the best popular music ever recorded. There is much more besides but what decade accomplished more?* The difference between the 50's and 60's is like night and day and far greater than the difference between, say, the 80's and the 90's.

2) It is very difficult if not impossible to untangle the highly complex web of causal influences that affect the evolution of culture. This makes it easy to say that the hippies are responsible for everything bad that happened and get no credit for all the good. What a crock. De Groot's standard of success is both difficult and unfair to apply. A much more fair standard is what were the hippies trying to accomplish? When you look at the accomplishments described in 1) its obvious that the hippies were on the right side of all of those issues.

But you know who wasn't on the right side of those issues? Republicans. They are the ones responsible for most of what has happened that was bad since the 60's, not the hippies for goddsakes.

De Groot is just another in a long line of contrarian wankers who are usually celebrated in Slate, not Salon. The 60's are like democracy -- the only thing worse than the 60's is every other deacde since and most decades before.

I was a kid in the 60's but I got enough of a taste to know that what followed represents a decline. back in the early 80's there was a bumpersticker that said it all: "Born 20 Years Too Late"

*just to anticipate a lame objection which several commenters have made: nothing in culture is sui generis, everything has precursors, but the achievements in the 60's were in stark contrast to what went before.

De Groot's thesis and the comments of several posters remind me of a debate I had with a punk about the relative merits of classic rock vs. punk rock. He explained to me that people like him rejected classic rock and became punks because the hippies tried to save the world but failed.

Gosh De Groot. Sorry the hippies failed to save the world! Unlike all those other generations of teenagers who had far greater success at doing so!

Its all those damn dirty hippies' fault.