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FRYMER |
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neglected, nostalgic liberal
By MURRY FRYMER
of TheColumnists.com
I used to be one of the silent generation, that quiet bunch of young people who did everything by the book. That was in my youth, before the Yuppies came around to protest, demand, expect and achieve. I have always hated Yuppies.
Now, alas, it has all happened again. I am again unseen and ignored, urged to keep it quiet. I am a liberal.
I am one of those people whose only weapon is whining, who sits around telling of the good old political days when one of our crowd had some power in Washington. To keep busy and pretend I exist, I write letters to editors wondering why the death of a half-dozen American soldiers in Iraq doesn’t make the front page. Worrying about Iraq is a liberal thing and it is not much done anymore.
The Supreme Court was once a liberal thing and I remember it fondly. I remember when most of the playwrights were liberals, too. Those were the days when TV had plays. Ah, nostalgia.
Nowadays the liberals look kind of desperate and I turn away when one of them comes on the screen. Does anyone look more helpless and bereft than Ted Kennedy? Kennedy follows the new liberal mantra: “Speak loudly and carry no stick.”
Liberals, for the most part, are nice people but so unthreatening that our President doesn’t have to cajole them or give them nicknames. They can safely be ignored and they are.
It is kind of sad being a liberal these days. In the old days we could march and protest things, but we don’t do that much anymore. There is no Martin Luther King Jr. to follow to Washington. There is no Washington that liberals want to go to.
I remember protests. I protested Vietnam. But nobody protests Iraq now, since it seems futile. Cindy Sheehan got arrested just being in the same Texas town as George Bush. I don’t know where she is now.
Torture seemed like an issue a while back. The president joked about it. Abu Ghraib went away. Spying on the American people seemed like an issue. The President said it was for our own good. That too is going away.
We have tried to say that the President lies or he does things that are unconstitutional but you can’t get a reporter at a press conference to bring it up. So it all goes away.
I am not completely lonely. I live in that part of the country, near an ocean, where liberals congregate. Nowadays it is just for a latte or to see “Brokeback Mountain.” We still read the New York Times, but then we are horrified that the Times knew about the government’s spying BEFORE the last election but decided not to mention it. The Times knew that mentioning it was a liberal thing to do and shied away. Liberals fear making the conservatives angry because they have such terrible tempers.
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still hiding out down in that section of San Jose that we thought we'd cleaned out. What say we go down there and take one more look..." |
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(John Kerry made the conservatives angry and they took away his war medals. THAT is power!)
Anyway, since the CIA will probably look at this, I should insert here that I am not a terrorist, unless the CIA thinks that liberals are terrorists. I have never thought of flying a plane into a building, unless the CIA thinks that liberals just might do something like that.
I used to point out that our northern neighbors, the Canadians, still welcomed liberals because liberals supported such goodies as health care for all. Well, last week they had an election in Canada and they threw the liberals out. The new conservative premier says he will reach out to our own President Bush, and who knows, maybe send some troops to Iraq, eh?
I also note that in Israel, Hamas just got elected. That is interesting. Terrorists can be elected, but not liberals.
No, there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. I grew up as the silent generation and I am ending up there again. And I don’t even like lattes.
©2006 by Murry Frymer. The Murry Frymer caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Jan. 30, 2006.
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