"Don't cry," said the old man. "We won't be hungry forever. We'll rebuild the cities. Listen, I didn't mean for you to cry, only to think."— Ray Bradbury, "To The Chicago Abyss"
Related Links:
1. "To The Chicago Abyss" by Ray Bradbury.
2. My eulogy of David Broder.
3. Rare, recently-discovered color photographs of the great San Francisco earthquake.
4. The Moral Underground: How Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.
Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)
You know you want it, so why not toddle on down to Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). Also too, the Podcast Donate Button Button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!
Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.
I thank you two. I've been listening weekly since last summer.
ReplyDeleteSense is addictive.
The importance of memory reminded me that I have, for months, been meaning to share my blog address (which I can't at this moment remember). I've been saving bits of "news" and whatnot at http://festertime.blogspot.com since '07 or so.
The short story "To the Chicago Abyss" by Ray Bradbury is available on this university website: http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006fall/anth/101/006/bradbury5.html
ReplyDeleteSci Fi? Yes, but its prose and a political statement as well.
For those times where I'm depressed or too fucking tired of being "that liberal old guy" who always has to speak out and offer rebuttal. I must throw in a quote/inspiration from same story, next page:
ReplyDelete"I shall protest the roving apeman tribes, the sheep-people munching the far fields prayed on by the feudal land-baron wolves who rarefy themselves in the few skyscraper summits and horde unremembered food."
"The only thing that has ever really changed a conservative mind... was Union Army bayonets."
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, and utterly true.
The Lost Centrist
ReplyDeleteOh History's muse, note the Departed Broder
who leaves this world with uncertain odor..
A Village scribe, the Dean of such;
A ready voice who spewed much
Of the Conventional Wisdom of the place
And managed to put a reasonable face
On war lust, pillage, and economic devastation
and always always told the nation
that Bipartisanship was the only answer
and leftist hippies a fearful cancer
to be shunned by all the Serious People...
And in his view, always equal
were the Jim Demints and the John Kerrys,
the sort of view that would always buries
Bernie Sanders, or Alan Grayson;
selling Bohner and Pence as good for the nation;
Treat them as statesmen, and put a face
of Reason on Karl Rove, Ace
Of Ratfuckers..And server of quail;
Such delights made Dean Broder fail
To note Rove's mendacity and deception.
Always ready for the Embassy reception,
Consumer of Cocktail weenies, Imbiber
of Convention Wisdom, for the WaPo subscriber.
Bury his Pulitizer with his reputation,
Find new 'real Americans' to display to the nation
Give his seat at Washington Week
To some Centrist Republican media freak
Like Brooks, and try to forget
the sponge-like columns that would regret
any Progressive show of strength or rightness;
the worship of power cloaked in Politeness:
Messages from Broderland, where Gingrich is smart,
Hillary shrill, and the whole art
of the columnist is saying both sides are the same
And never, never let on that the game
Of equivalence is false, and that Reality
Biased: and never never admit his fealty
to Movement conservatism and the mainstreaming
of Rightist talking points, and that seeming
centrism is just Establishment agitprop;
Feed the Powerful praise, and the Readers slop.
Goodbye, Dean, we bury you and hope to bury the Consensus
with you, and the Nation return to it's senses...
(Dedicated to Low-tech Cyclist, as he has lost his 'white whale', so to speak)(crossposted at Cogitamus and Alicublog)
Bolton, Henry Kissinger, and Robert Strange McNamara are arguably the most immoral, sleaziest men of our time. Sir, I appreciate your place.
ReplyDelete