Who is she?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Zbigniev Brzezinski’s daughter on the Joe Scarborough morning show that replaced Don Imus after he got tossed.

Everyone in the MSM TV news biz is connected to someone connected; fortunately she’s both competent and independent. Therefore, she won’t last.

(Sorry MJS if this is jumping the queue but I saw this live and was so very impressed, actual live thinking and doing, can’t restrain myself in praise.)

i knew TV was bad, but that’s…wow. they are so derisive, so flippant towards her. that’s shocking.

/bunches fingers/

i won’t write what i’m thinking except to say how much i long for the revolution.

Who do we contact to send her some love?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

So disgusting it was hard to watch, the clips are bad enough but live Scarborough just wouldn’t get off her back, snipe and demean endlessly. He’s such a horse’s ass and apparently easily threatened by a competent woman. Poor little rude puppy.

Only watched the show a few times, gave it a chance but just more of the same old same old, can’t stand Joe BlowDry so that’s that.

Regarding revolution, (only kinda off thread) read somewhere that between the accumulation of wealth in the Boomer generation and the greater longevity of women vs men, at some point - say 20-25 years on - the majority of the wealth in this country will be in women’s hands.

That’s a revolution for a patriarchal society, although without the satisfying BOOM noises. Hopefully you’ll be wise with your new power.

She’s playing a role, too.

For a blog that is so critical of NPR, we shouldn’t be suckers for any show produced by Willie Geist.

CD, I meant to comment on the piece you did on Tuesday about an NPR reporter talking about what she was seeing where she is in Iraq. That was Anne Garrels who has done as good reporting from Iraq as anyone. I agree that this particular report was not as clear as usual, particularly about Sadr, but between Mika B and Annie G there is no question who is contributing more real journalism to the causes we hold dear.

Let me have my heroines Leah, even with feet of clay. Mika’s in the biz and to succeed she’ll have to compromise. Here’s a Guardian interview where she admits “It became like a piece of theatre.” Still, she’s better than most.

Give no quarter like Amy Goodman (blessings be upon her) and you end up on Pacifica Radio with me and five other listeners. Everybody has to make choices, I’ll give decent people some slack as long as net net they’re doing good work.

leah: all i know is what i heard. which i admitted, wasn’t the whole report. but the “al sadr is thinking…” without any goddamn supporting evidence just cinched my panties. i accept that the reporter in question may normally produce superior work, i wouldn’t know as NPR has been dead to me for some time.

BIO: actually, there have been many occasions in history when “women control the money.” if you want an in your face example of how women with money doesn’t equal matriarchy, look to japan. for centuries now, men don’t “dirty” themselves with money and women put out a hand the very minute the man comes home with the paycheck. i wouldn’t call japanese society and culture “matriarchal.” forgive me for being blunt, but i don’t think we’ll see a lot of the progressive change we need until the boomers are dead. male and female.

being both female and a boomer, that makes me feel so much better.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

I saw this clip for the first time this a.m. (my curiously apolitical son sent it to me) and thought it made for modestly interesting theater. I think the men reacted honestly: with condescension, fright, disbelief and a desire to control Mika physically. I don’t know anything about her except what I learned here, with her lineage being of some note.

I stopped listening to NPR after the Borg swallowed it whole. I haven’t listened to Democracy Now in awhile, though I appreciated their work tremendously (and sent money to the L.A. station [KPFK] that broadcasts it).

I fear the lesson of Paddy Chayevsky’s Network: that the popular mood can always be trumped by those controlling the airwaves, etc. I believe a majority of Americans react positively to progressive messages when delivered by competent and engaging speakers (Keith Olberman could own a couple of time slots with very little change in his core content) but the marketplace does not determine what songs the piper plays—we are controlled by old, white trolls who sniff each other’s balls in dark caverns—underground cities made of gold and diamonds, all glittering above subterranean pools of irridescent oil and swimming in brackish rainbows as layered clouds of flammable gas roll by. Or maybe I dreamed it.

++++

Perhaps you’d like to revise and extend your remarks?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Closing worker’s centers in Herndon, VA, RealID stuff in the states.

We want to watch out for this. This is what’s bubbling up from the lizard brains, and it’s going to come into virulent flower by 2008, I would think.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

CD sucks the air out of not just the room but an entire generation.

No need to apologize for being blunt, part of your immense charm. I’ll be dead when your predicted progressive achievements occur so you win that argument, I’ll stick to current events for debating our conflicts.

Regards the control of wealth it’s more than paycheck money and running the household, also includes the control of property, the power to make investment decisions, and the ability to go out and get a job that earns the money handed over to the wife, all means of controlling wealth not given to most Japanese women. And I was addressing wealth control in the context of American patriarchy which is quite distinct from that of Japan. Other than that….

my generation (and at my age, technically i’m “intragenreational”) sucks even worse than yours. i can say that. i mean it. we will fail worse than you have, and it will be those that come after us who remake society according to progressive values. you and me: we both failed. but it doesn’t change the facts.

all the corrente boomers rock. i really do mean that. the people in that age group, who read/contribute/act/agitate, are the best. to me, they are also heroes and examples. but again, that doesn’t change the hard reality of demographics.

in every generation, power comes but a few times. it comes during the youthful phase, when a large number of the young decide to have a Cultural Revolution or a Civil Rights moment or an October Revolution. it comes again at the peak of life, which isn’t exactly “the end,” but rather when all the hard work and effort finally become something that can be translated into political, economic and social capital. which for american boomers, is “right now.”

it’s not a moral or controversial statement to say: right now, in america, the boomers have the power. Hillary. Edwards (barely). Kerry. Bush. Obama (sort of), McCain (elder end). Pelosi. even Reid. folks who are in the prime of their political, social and economic lives. those people who pay more taxes, have more influence at work, who determine the marketing model that dominates, who are the target audience for politicians and corporations. who have the most money, as a group. that’s you, boomer.

i fully expect “my” generation to fail to accomplish anything. i’m in the “between” demographic; my nephew and cousins are not. it is to them that i look, for the kind of energy for change that our society will need if it is to succeed as a “first world” power. but at the same time, i know boomer “leadership” is going to fail to change anything.
blah blah blah, getting older means getting more risk averse, whatever theory you want to insert.

i’m sorry if this makes me unpopular. all i’m really trying to say is: the group that determines american policy is past is prime. that includes some of you, mostly it does not. but the mores and values of the group in charge were formed by all of you, in your time, in the same way that i know that my input has as an effect in the group that will rule someday in my name.

i don’t blame those who were different, i merely ascribe consequence to the majority that dictated its creation. boomers, like it or not, are in charge of the USA, and thus, for practical purposes, the world. boomer culture, literature, values, political heritage- from that lens of all of these aspects must the rest of the world try to affect change. i don’t deny that, any more than i deny white racism is more powerful than black racism.

again, i apologize if my opinions are offensive to some. i don’t mean to be ageist, i just mean to point out who is actually in power. which throughout history, has rarely been the young or new.

No one is more disappointed than I and my aged contemporaries that things are still a mess. Somehow we thought that running around naked and stoned was going to make it all be better and while we were focused on getting high and getting laid the theocrats and the bigots got together and made a run on power. What is up with that?

Still, the very bad people have fallen short and made a huge amount of mess and the evidence is everywhere and most people now are angry about it, and the times they are a’changin’ once again. I do think you’re off on the timeline a little, and I’ll argue that there will be real, substantive change in the progressive direction in the near future. We’re seeing it rapidly now at the local and state level, where Democrats (mostly progressive) are gaining elected offices rapidly, where attitudes regarding equality and safeguards for GLTB are shifting remarkably and same-sex marriage/union is an open topic for discussion (and in my estimation is about where black civil rights were in around 1960, so very close now to meaningful legal gains) and on and on with a whole host of topics. This won’t be a workers paradise in my lifetime, for sure, but I don’t agree that we’ll have to wait for today’s gradeschoolers to sort everything out.

But on the bright side, since your expectations for us are so low maybe we should just focus on something straightforward like legalizing MJ as our legacy issue.

No apologies required for expressing your honest opinion, neither want nor expect anything less. :-)

It presupposes that I am giving up.
It presupposes that I am going to sit back and let you give up.

What I want to hear is that, God damn it all to fucking hell, what is right is what is right and what is wrong is what is wrong and those of us in this country who know the difference are not going to just let this go.

Civility my ass.
FIGHT.

The concept of “baby boomers” is an invention of social scientists in need of thesis topics. To imagine that everybody born in (last I checked) the period 1945-1960 somehow constituted a unified group, with common experiences and common interests is just plain silly.

Yes there was a large population bubble during that time. That time also came at the end of a two-decade-long period of lower than usual population growth due to the Depression and World War II. But mostly it was invented to sell shit to enhance the commercial shift from a producer society to a consumer one.

We are not obliged to treat it as if it is real. In fact we are obliged to do exactly the opposite. This discussion proves this point as well as anything.

Fer chrissakes, when a person was born is right up there with where they were born, or where they live now, or what their blood type is, as being low-significance indicators of what they believe, what they stand for, what they will put up with, up with what they will not put, and what they will fight and die for. About all it is good for is a general indication of what TV shows and music they remember with particular fondness because they associate it with their youth. Feh.

Demographics can tell us things in very general terms, but they are trailing indicators, not leading ones.

suppose that means I will have to go ahead and take next-to-youngest to her GLTB-Straight Alliance rally on Sunday after all. Damn. So close to total surrender. And you have no idea how difficult it is to keep a straight (ahem) face with the femboy member who can never get his mascara on properly.

No rendirse, eh?