"Rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg"
Much ado has been made about Steven Colbert's recent flogging of President Bush and the Washington Press Corps at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (the entire dinner is available here on CSPAN's website). When I sat down and watched Colbert's how stick with my little brother this weekend I was speechless. Damn, much more than I would have expected from any liberal.
But the comment, perhaps one of the sharpest of the evening, that has received not nearly enough attention is the following:
"The greatest thing about this man [Bush] is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will."
Many people may not make this connection right off the bat, so follow along and we'll get there. During my first semester in college the University Libraries' study room was sold to UT Dining Services, which is privatized out to Aramark. Several of us, especially anarco-types on campus (of which I was one at the time), started a failure of a campaign to "boot Starbucks." Our tactics were tired from the beginning, free coffee every Tuesday and occasional street theatre involving folks in bear-suits and life-size Monopoly in the cafe.
And this leads us back to Colbert. My first semester was Fall 2001, and on one of those Tuesdays (those days between Monday and Wednesday), early on in the campaign as we stood out in an unusually cold September day handing out coffee, US imperial hubris was smashed into by two commercial airliners.
So to repeat, damn. This guy, especially for a liberal, wasn't pulling punches, even if he was "boxing with a glacier."
But the comment, perhaps one of the sharpest of the evening, that has received not nearly enough attention is the following:
"The greatest thing about this man [Bush] is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will."
Many people may not make this connection right off the bat, so follow along and we'll get there. During my first semester in college the University Libraries' study room was sold to UT Dining Services, which is privatized out to Aramark. Several of us, especially anarco-types on campus (of which I was one at the time), started a failure of a campaign to "boot Starbucks." Our tactics were tired from the beginning, free coffee every Tuesday and occasional street theatre involving folks in bear-suits and life-size Monopoly in the cafe.
And this leads us back to Colbert. My first semester was Fall 2001, and on one of those Tuesdays (those days between Monday and Wednesday), early on in the campaign as we stood out in an unusually cold September day handing out coffee, US imperial hubris was smashed into by two commercial airliners.
So to repeat, damn. This guy, especially for a liberal, wasn't pulling punches, even if he was "boxing with a glacier."
There's been a lot of talk about how activist movements pre-911 were thrown for a "Tuesday" loop. I saw it up here in New York perhaps a little sharper.
Few were ready to roll, I took notes on who that was...
Many of the social movements were defined by finding where people were already at, with a lot of assumptions about what was "real" and what "mattered" to "people."
People, in this case, being defined by their circumstances and not their complexity.
Here we are when capital P politics IS the agenda, and so many groups who should know better still aren't engaging the fight FRONTALLY.
Know the enemy, know yoursef... how does the old saying go?
Posted by the burningman
5/15/2006 11:28:00 AM