Gary Hart gets a gig overseas and has his editorial published in the UK Independent.
Privatisation of the social security system is a tribute to human persistence. For decades, it was possible to find cartoons in the New Yorker magazine and elsewhere of grumpy old men in deep leather chairs in private clubs damning Franklin D Roosevelt for anything that went wrong in the world. It was amusing, at least until one began to realise, in the age of Reagan (and Thatcher), that those grumpy old men had progeny, and those progeny had progeny that were still damning Roosevelt for insinuating socialism into America's capitalist fabric. Entitlement programmes, including basic public retirement plans, sapped the entrepreneurial spirit and made people wards of the state. This put us on the path to ruinand would eventually, by god, lead to communism.
The great-grandchildren of those grumpy old men now see the chance to restore America to the 1920s when any rising tide would lift the gilded yachts of inherited wealth and to hell with the leaky skiffs of the working stiffs.
Nice flourish at the end there, Gary! Who knew? Also also, I wonder if he Briticized his column ("programmes") himself, or some Independent lackey does it, or the word processor does it automatically. I'd rather fancy him changing Zs to Ss and Ss to Cs as he types it up to fax over.
As much as I enjoyed the writing and totally agree with the point he's making, I have to give this a big raspberry. It's Inauguration Day, they realize in Britian, and just in case Gary mentions it in the first two words. Gary certainly knows it.
As Redford said to Hoffman as Post reporters, "I don't mind that you did it. I mind the way that you did it." Although I did in fact call the President a turd earlier on his big day, I absolutely meant everything else in that short post: inaugurals, at least those without a killing, are perhaps the apex of democratic process and virtue. So it's a little light on class to begin with. But to take it to England? That's lame. And not the Times or the Guardian, but the Independent. If you're going to call the leadership in power a bunch of crooks and war criminals, do it at home where your duty for it is.
Come home (so to speak) or shut up, Gary.
--TJ
Joe:
Sorry to leave this in comments...but I can't find a place on your site for contacting you via email.
Could you please send an email to me at [email protected]? I have something I'd like to run by you.
Posted by: Carla | January 22, 2005 at 15:49