Take Five (Summer of Shove edition)

[DemocratsForProgress]

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (Summer of Shove edition)

ONE: Piggies

Summer began yesterday, and with both the weather and election campaigns heating up, intelligent public discourse and basic civility continue to decline at alarming rates. Dearborn’s 17th Arab International Festival last weekend drew thousands of Arab Americans and a dozen bigoted morons. The “Bible Believers” are a group of so-called Christians who staged a missionary event on Friday evening near the festival site. One of them carried a pig’s head on a pole...

TWO: “If we appear to seek the unattainable…”

Last Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the Port Huron Statement, the foundational manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society. After half a century, what’s most striking about the Port Huron Statement is its undiminished immediacy, and while that is partly attributable to the timelessness of its themes, it is also because so many of its goals are as dauntingly beyond reach now as they were then...

THREE: V for Vagina

I can’t imagine what the SDS founders would have thought about the “vagina” controversy unfolding 50 years and 100 miles away in Lansing. For starters, they would might shocked to see the word “vagina” appearing in print outside a medical textbook, but of course a lot of things have changed in half a century. Or have they...

FOUR: What Not to Watch

This all prompted none other than Meghan McCain to comment in an interview on The Ed Show Tuesday:

“… I just think that we’re regressing as a culture when you can’t even say the word ‘vagina.’”

Which is a commendable thing to say, especially coming from a conservative...

FIVE: Nyet, Nyet Soviet

Despite being stupider than a bowl of oatmeal, Monica Crowley has a doctorate in international relations (from Columbia, no less). Her complete ignorance about one country, at least, was demonstrated recently during a book-hawking appearance with Bill O’Reilly...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/06/21/take-five-summer-of-shove-edition/