What does it mean to be a proud liberal in the year 2008/2009 licking her fingers and petting our backs? It’s not that I simply detest the more recent understanding of what liberal means (and not just by the vituperative tongue of some no-nothing wingding who thinks there might be socialism in her cereal, and and that Wall Street backs sneaky Marxists…) no…but the whole sclerotic status quo feel-good do nothing la-la land with a snarling bite that you must let into you’re yawning mouth because you have no option FDR-SPEAK ventriloquism…squishy self-righteous…defined primarily by what it is not, applauding itself for not really working towards a more democratic, participatory democracy…et cetera…..
I suspect the recently deceased Studs Terkel, if he was still a-kicking it around this mundi, would have approved what Norman Mailer wrote once to Playboyyz magazine: “I don’t care if people call me a radical, a rebel, a red, a revolutionary, an outsider, an outlaw, a Bolshevik, an anarchist, a nihilist, or even a left conservative, but please don’t ever call me a liberal.”