Sunday, March 15, 2009

NYT Op-Ed

There's a lot of great stuff coming out from the NYTimes these days. Maybe they are the liberal paper.

Including this most excellent op-ed piece (which I stole from JMG):
When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Not only was Obama’s stem-cell decree an anticlimactic blip in the news, but so was his earlier reversal of Bush restrictions on the use of federal money by organizations offering abortions overseas. When the administration tardily ends “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you can bet that this action, too, will be greeted by more yawns than howls.
I made this argument to a fellow progressive the other day, and he didn't seem to care or agree. Meanwhile, the amount of progressive (and especially gay) activism that is going on in the world is literally amazing to watch happen.

Keep it going guys... Cincinnati will catch up shortly! I promise!

That is, if people I'm actually restraining myself right now. Amazing, I know. Actually, that was a lot of restraint and a lot of deleting I just did. Be blown away folks.

No comments: