Letters to the Editor
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Papa or the whiz kid brother
Once again, Garrison is spot on.
McCain may be 71, but he has not learned a damn thing. The Vietnam war was a tragic mistake - a neo-colonial war to help the French keep their colony in Asia, which evolved into a civil war between the Vietnamese people. We lost 58,000, but we killed a million Vietnamese, many of them civilians. In a country of just (then) 17 million, that would be equal to close to 20 million Americans today. It was an insanity.
Move up 40 years, and McCain wants to stay in Iraq. Despite the fact that there was no link whatsoever to the 9/11 attack, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam was completely locked up under the US/UN No Fly Zone -- which cost US $1 billion per year, instead of the $8 billion that we are now paying every flipping month.
There is no fool like an old fool, and McCain is clearly that. Age does no equal wisdom.
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Cheer up! March need not be dreary!
This year you have two non-dreary days to celebrate (three, if you're into the Vernal Equinox celebration mode): St. Patrick's Day (there are some Irish-Americans in Minnesota, right?) and Easter (earliest possible time for the holiday to come; usually waits till April).
Put on your green hat, color some eggs and party hearty!
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Wow! Your dad was 6 when he had you?
More boomer denial in action. Garrison Keillor is 65. John McCain is 71.
He graduated from U of MN in 1966. Mr. Keillor was around 25 at the time of the birth of his first child. THAT child is now about 38 years old. So Barak Obama is comfortably in the range of being more likely his child's age than his kid brother's. Unless of course, one of his parents started a second family when you were in his mid twenties, which I guess isn't unheard of ;).
Sorry guys, but you are GRANDPARENT age now. McCain isn't daddy. He's your older brother. He served in Vietnam, not WWII. You can draw off of Social Security. Boomers aren't the parents! People in their 20's and 30's are usually the parents! How may early middle aged people, the parents of his daughter's peers, come up to him and say, "I grew up listening to your show!"? Oof!
Is it the drugs you guys did back then?
To quote Mick Jagger,"What a drag it is getting old..." No one wants to get old, but this is just getting embarrassing.
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@rosenkavalier
Hilary is "the mom" as was pointed out in another thread this week (sorry, can't remember which one). And that crystallized my aversion to her style.
She does come across that way, and since she's exactly my age, I subliminally found it condescending. Now I know why - I don't need a candidate who's Dad or Mom or even whiz-kid brother. I need an more-or-less equal participant in this world of ours.
FWIW, I'm an early boomer and a woman.
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What we leave for our children
The paragraph about your daughter and why we should remember what we leave behind for our children was worth the price of admission. We have come so close to allowing a mean and hateful country to arise. But we can reverse that. And we can leave for our children -- and my five granddaughters as well -- that country where knowledge, hard work, public spirit, and generosity will be worthy ends. Thank you.
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Oh, brother, DurianJoe.
Looking for racism where there isn’t any goes against progress.
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GK just trying to wield his pointer
but doesn't realize it's more flaccid than tumescent.
And btw, you're SUPPOSED to go 30 mph down residential streets. In my neck of the woods they all try to do 50 or 60, still trying to prove they can wield their pointers as well as the next poor dumb schmuck.
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whiz kid brother
I read "Whiz kid brother" as "whiz" and "kid brother," as his reference to "Papa" is also a familial term. If he means to say "whiz kid" and "Brother" then I see it more as a dated term of endearment, like the 1970s "Brother from another planet," rather than an inappropriate race remark.
It is a bit odd if it's the latter.
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Forgive Us For Having Survived
We who are boomers or, as in my case (and that of Keillor) are members of the even older Silent Generation (boomers were all born between 1946 and 1964, which means Obama actually could be a boomer's younger brother)have been through a lot of crap, much of it of our own making. As the least competent generations perhaps in history (given our access to education, technology and more freedom than any before us) we have made some of the least competent choices. Some of us. A lot of us. So we'll never live down having lived as long as we have up til now, I guess, which is our fault for having raised a generation of self-absorbed idiots who now treat us exactly as we deserve to be treated for having indulged them throughout their formative years and beyond. Some of them.
None of this matters, however, because it all involves the past, and when boomers are sick of the past, when they (and we Silent ones also) suddenly realize Jiddah Krishnamurti was making sense when he told us everything we do is flawed because it is based upon what has already happened and therefore will change nothing, we suddenly became a little smarter, maybe almost as wise as our offspring, maybe wise enough to recognize that one of those "self-absorbed idiots" may actually have the vision to lead us all out of the ditch and back on the road forward, into the future rather than the past. Like the Skinny Guy for instance.
It's not for nothing we are attracted to people like Obama (and yes, there are lots of them, but there is so little room at the top!); it is because in our reflecting on our own lives up til now we are able to see exactly where we screwed up, and all we ask is what Gens X, Y and Jones are all asking right now: something that is not their father's Oldsmobile, or even ours. In fact, the don't make the Olds anymore, so learn to read that writing on the wall! It's the past! It leads nowhere except to the current jumping off point. As the late James Dillet Freeman wrote in his moving poem "Deeps", "Where the last journey ended, Let the next begin!"
The last journey is finally reaching an end. Let the next begin. And you'll pardon us old farts if we stagger along with you. We've lived our whole lives waiting for this moment.