Letters to the Editor
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Sad
I don't get this article's tone at all. Does the thick sarcasm and the fixation on the UFO sighting hide a real admission that we ought to have the courage of our convictions and support Kuchinich? Or is it deployed in order to validate our cowardly preference for candidates who could keep their lunch money out of Nicolas Sarkozy's hands?
Either way, it's a sad testament to the state of affairs in the liberal/progressive/Democrat/whatever bloc. The ideals and positions we claim to admire just aren't cool, and so when the chips are down we don't back them, any more than we backed the poor kid with thick glasses who was getting the crap beaten out of him in the schoolyard. Sure, we want peace and justice, but not if it means standing beside a dude in a Phish shirt?
The most depressing thing is that Traister recognizes this, but can't even bring herself to raise her point without couching it in a bunch of smart-ass, distancing "humor". She seems to have caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and it bothered her, but in the end she sides with the cool crowd, chooses sneers over substance, nervous laughter over embarassing earnestness, and leaves the nerd to his thrashing.
This is why we always lose. The right isn't afraid to embrace its principles, but the left is not-so-secretly ashamed of its own. We don't need Ann Coulter to "emasculate" us -- we're quite good enough at that ourselves.