Studs Terkel died today. He wrote about working people from the perspective of a working person. If you haven’t read Working, you’ve missed one of the great oral histories of the twentieth century.
He was unique. I’m sorry he’s gone.
Oct 312008
Oct 292008
From vonandmoggy :
Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you’re in a heterosexual marriage, and you don’t want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.
Absolutely. Marriage is about love and commitment. The end,
Oct 272008
I hate telemarketing calls as much as anyone. Telemarketers, though, are usually underpaid workers doing a crappy job because they need to pay the bills. Them I don’t hate. This story about the Indiana call center workers who went home rather than read a sleazy McCain phone script makes me feel like being a little less rude the next time I get interrupted at dinner time.
Oct 152008
Schieffer: Go vote now. It’ll make you feel big and strong.
Yes!
9:28 Coming to an end, finally. Final comments: McCain is a careful steward of our tax dollars, Obama wants to work on America’s problems in a new way.
9:25 Autism is not the same thing as Down’s Syndrome. Check that with Palin, John.
9:23 Somebody’s gotta pay for it. That is the point McCain keeps dodging. That is the point we’ve dodged for the last eight years.
9:21 Charter schools provide competition and throwing money at education won’t solve the problem? Teachers don’t need to be certified? McCain is hitting all the same old notes.
9:19 Pay teachers better? Terrorist.
9:15 Oooh eloquence bad.
9:11 Supreme Court Justices! Obama wants to change the Court, MCain wants to change the entire culture. Which one is more obnoxious?
9:05 Joe the Plumber just called. He wants that scary man on the TV to stop talking to him.
9:04 McCain just made Joe the Plumber rich. He does understand Joe isn’t real, doesn’t he? EDIT: OK, he is real. My mistake.
9:00 Joe the Plumber! Here’s a tax credit! But your current ability to take an exemption for paying for employee health care is out the window. Thanks, McCain!
8:58 Health care wonkery. Look for McCain to call Obama’s plan socialist.
8:56 Obama is just like Herbert Hoover!
8:51 Trade agreements. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Oh, wait McCain just said we have to pay attention to words. Those crafty devils, words.
8:47 37 Nuclear power plants, right away! We can get that done tomorrow!
8:41 Who is more qualified, Biden or Palin? If I were McCain, I’d bring up Joe the Plumber again.
8:39 OK, throw it all in one great big long sentence, John.
8:36 ACORN is destroying America? Please.
8:35 McCain’s non-repudiation repudiation.
8:33 Obama does say that Lewis was over the line.
8:31 Here comes J the P again.
8:26 Would McCain say the things his campaign said about Obama to Obama’s face? No, I guess. How about Obama? He’s not answering the question either, but he pivots nicely to making it about the voters, not the candidates’ hurt feelings..
8:23 As Anne points out, so far McCain hasn’t made any big mistakes. But he does have some scars, apparently.
8:22 Hatchet! Scalpel! Chainsaw! Steamroller!
8:18 Not the overhead projector again!
8:17 Does McCain remember the Great Depression?
8:15 How dare Schieffer ask him to actually answer the question? Hasn’t he watched the other two debates?
8:12 I’m already tired of Joe the Plumber.
Oct 072008
Couldn’t make myself actually watch the debate tonight. Instead, I read a bunch of websites that were doing liveblogging. It’s an odd thing to read the responses without watching the thing itself, but I kind of like it. You get a sense of the bits that provoked strong reactions, things that will be drowned in a sea of analysis by tomorrow morning. For instance, McCain apparently had a bad moment where he lapsed into gibberish. Not the kind of thing that pundits are likely to make much of, but it was notable enough that multiple bloggers mentioned it right after the fact.
But what none of the bloggers seemed willing to talk about was Obama’s stunning display of supernatural powers in the early minutes of the debate. With a mere wave of his hand, he was able to reduce his opponent to nearly a third of his original stature.
For the remainder of the debate, McCain hopped madly around the stage, his squeakily unpleasant voice grating on the nerves of the audience. Yet neither moderator Tom Brokaw nor any other commentator had the courage to make note of Obama’s sorcerer’s ways. Just more evidence of reality-based community’s unvarnished bias.