The Fantasy Years

Meeting an Iraqi tonight

chs baker — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:42:47 +0000

I met an Iraqi tonight. An Australian-Iraqi. As an American I had to say something. After all my country and her parents’ homeland were enmeshed, as it were. She was curious to know about what was happening in politics in the United States. I asked her if Muslims really hated Jews. She said “just Zionists” [...]

Aussies dump Bush’s friend John Howard

chs baker — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 11:39:21 +0000

John Howard lost to Kevin Rudd in Australia today.

Krugman nails it on Republicans and race

chs baker — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:24:17 +0000

This so true, as my book The Fantasy Years shows. Race in America…it really doesn’t even have to be verbalized. It doesn’t have to be articulated. Since the end of Jim Crow, political correctness and the rebuke of a progressive society have together dashed their words of racists and constricted their ability to demean and [...]

Privacy? Get over it says intelligence chief

chs baker — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:44:36 +0000

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information.

When you hear Americans say the U.S. is in decline…

chs baker — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:35:29 +0000

...it’s these sorts of things they’re referring to. Because the fact is, the Bush Admin is blazing a new trial of lower standards that undoubtedly other administrations will follow. This merits reposting in its entirety. (From the Washington Post.)

FEMA Official Apologizes for Staged Briefing With Fake Reporters

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s No. 2 official apologized yesterday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions.

THINGS LIKE THIS SIGNAL THE TWILIGHT OF RUSH’S REIGN

chs baker — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:27:50 +0000

From Iraq War veteran Jon Soltz in the Huffington Post, Sept. 27, 2007 As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are “phony soldiers.” I’d love for you, Rush, to have [...]

HATE HIPPIES? READ THIS

chs baker — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:38:26 +0000

rush limbaugh rightwing think tanks movement conservatives
My wife and I watched the 1970 classic “Joe” a few weeks ago. The movie, starring Peter Boyle who was excellent and Susan Sarandon who was, well, young was set in New York in the late 1960s and directly concerned the cultural and generational clash known as the Generation Gap. Joe was a “hard hat”, an intolerant, racist, sexist, WWII veteran factory worker. Joe is in state of unceasing backlash against the liberals and hippies. He makes common cause with the ad exec father of Susan Sarandon.

NO TIME FOR INAPPROPRIATE ERUDITION, MR. GORE!

chs baker — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 12:37:32 +0000

rush limbaugh rightwing think tanks movement conservatives Al Gore’s inability to be anyone else than himself, particularly someone less annoying, is the former Vice President’s most enduring and nettlesome problem according to one Alan Ehrenhalt, writing a review of “Gore’s book ‘The Assault on Reason.’”

AL GORE’S ‘ASSAULT ON REASON’

chs baker — Sat, 26 May 2007 03:58:42 +0000

From everything I know of the ex-VP’s book, the themes of The Assault on Reason and the themes of The Fantasy Years overlap. Considerably. The Fantasy Years is about the irrational caricatures of political beliefs, -personalities and -history that grew through the 1990s, clouding sensible debate, and dissociating cause from effect in the American political mind. The Fantasy Years is about how the rightwing media machine created a generation of Rush-listening, Fox-watching post-modernists for whom objective reality ceased to exist. Oh, it’s also about people’s lives filled with personal triumphs and daily despairs.