Sunday, February 19, 2006

A Failure Of Liberal Imagination


Sarah Vowell, upon realizing that she has no optimism about the state of our union. (For the record, Dan and I found ourselves a NY bar at noon Jan 20, 2001).

...Alas, I see my initial worries about the current administration as the greatest betrayal in my whole life by my old pal pessimism. I attended the president's inauguration in 2001. When he took the presidential oath, I cried. What was I so afraid of? I was weeping because I was terrified that the new president would wreck the economy and muck up my drinking water. Isn't that adorable? I lacked the pessimistic imagination to dread that tens of thousands of human beings would be spied on or maimed or tortured or killed or stranded or drowned, thanks to his incompetence.

I feel like a fool. All those years of Sunday school, and still the apocalypse catches me off guard.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would rather put my head in a vise than endure Sarah Vowell. That our paper of record sees fit to give her FRANK RICH's space is surely a sign of the end of times, if not pandering to her imagined demographic. Jus say no to Sarah Vowell...

Jeff said...

I knew that you would love this one!

Jeff said...

And, for the record, in a battle of civic and social history knowledge, my money's on the nerd from the Great Plains and not the ex-theater critic from NY. Not that I don't love Frank Rich too.

Jeff said...

For those of us who grew up in houses where NO one (let alone everyone) went to college and even not everyone graduated HS, and had to not only learn most of what we know w/o the resources of even so much as a witty dinner table tradition, Sarah V is a great voice that cuts right to the loneliness of the long distance reader. and writer of too long sentences

Anonymous said...

the woman is nails on a chalkboard, a whiney, solipstic, navel-gazing nullity, and I blame Ira Glass for promoting what paltry talent shw has...sorry, man, she blows