Fettucini Alfredo.

Thanks for sharing this with us, DFW!

I had the privilege of meeting her quite awhile ago while I was still with the A.P. and she was keynote speaker at one of our regional conventions. I admired her so much - I was so intimidated I could hardly burble four or five words when we were introduced. A one-woman Modern-American-History book.

I remember when she was rudely sent to the back of the room, her seat center-front in the White House press room where she'd presided while covering DECADES of Presidents yanked from her because she dared to ask uncomfortable questions of the bush/cheney schmucks. Those were questions that not one of the other pantywaists and brown-nosers and cowards in what I came to regard as the White House Press Corpse was willing to ask. Not one of them was worthy of touching the hem of her garment, or hell, even getting near enough to tell what color fabric it was.

We are all the poorer for her passing.

Rest in peace, Ms. Thomas.

No kidding.

Sacrificing our precious kids and teens on the altar of some lummox's paranoia and cowardice and the need to be Rambo. Or vermin like Zimbo. VERMIN. I'm a 60-year-old white woman, and a mom. I'm still just heartsick.

I don't know what upsets me more. Is it the loss, the stupid sheer waste of the murder of young, innocent, unarmed Trayvon Martin, or is it the number of knuckledraggers who think Zimbo did just fine, thank you, and that somehow, Trayvon Martin was the perpetrator and Zimbo the poor, poor, put-upon, threatened, endangered victim.

Or is it what you start feeling when you stop for a moment and try to wrap your brain around the statistics, how MANY young blacks, mainly male, who are judged, found guilty, in such an arbitrary and stupidly-prejudiced manner, and executed by unilateral vigilante schmucks? Or is it when you think how up against it the black community is here in America - how so many of them are marginalized and presumed guilty til proven innocent, with how broad a brush they're painted and their "image" is tarnished and they're not even considered as individual human beings of individual worth and merit. How MANY of them wind up arrested, jailed, left to rot in prison for "offenses" for which a white kid would barely get a hand slapped.

It's just so infuriating, embarrassing, disgusting, discouraging, shocking, disappointing, I've been in deep dismay ALL WEEK.

I think I'm also upset because of my own naivete. I was so sure the first election of Barack Obama to the presidency meant a huge leap forward in our battered and wrong-headed nation's history. That election night, I was just so happy! Thrilled! We'd come SOOOOO far as a nation. We'd come through all of the shit. And out the other side, into the light of broad-mindedness, tolerance, enlightenment. We'd grown up and weren't quite the spoiled snot-nosed imperious, demanding adolescent in the community of nations where the others were all adult-age, and had been through wars, famines, bombings, invasions, and sometimes THOUSANDS of years of history and culture. And we were growing up as a nation to take our place in the community of nations at its most mature. We HAD gotten over it. We HAD gotten the better of our baser urges that embraced the KKK and segregation and slavery and Jim Crow. We'd gotten beyond it, finally! This was a notice sent out to the whole world - America's officially and formally beyond all that. We outgrew our pig-headed childishness.

And MAN was I wrong. The reality of Barack Obama as PRESIDENT, in the Oval Office because he won the right to sit behind the historic Resolute Desk and do business, instead of the janitor-in-chief or White House chef or usher or errand-runner. Seems as though as that reality sank in, it only brought out the worst in too many Americans - those who resolutely cling to the worst of our nature, and just were not having any of this. I think that's what brought the teabaggers into existence. The moment it dawned on them that their worst fears were realized. There was a black guy in the Oval Office and he wasn't the janitor (which is how it's supposed to be!).

It's just fucking embarrassing. And SO discouraging. DAMN IT! We're BETTER than this!!!! Or at least I thought we were. I thought we had proof of it, starting in November 2008. I'm ashamed of my country - and my countrymen and women who insist on keeping their hearts on ice and their heads up inside their sphincters. No wonder their compassion is in the deep freeze and all they see is shit.

Good point. The LGBT's battle is not yet won, either.

Not all of us straights share that view - or see the gay community as merely another version of "those people," or "you people."

The LGBT community DID gain some ground with the Supreme Court, and frankly, with their abysmal track record, I'm still in a state of pleasant semi-shock about it. But you probably are plenty well-aware of the attempts in some states to put forth "emergency motions" to prop up the old-school version of marriage. They're not gonna give up on this. They're not gonna give up. They're gonna try to roll this progress back, too, just as we see them doing with voting rights, and a woman's right to choose.

The battle is NOT over, and it certainly isn't won.

Welcome to DU, UserNSAv32!

Good to have you with us! I'd go the other way and ask them to stay - to take over, storm Wall Street, and channel the revolutionary upheaval of the 60's with their Millennial mindsets. Spearhead an "American Spring" taking the best of the "Arab Spring" and applying it here. Forcefully if necessary.

I'd like to see the jamie dimons and other banksters of the world dragged out into the street, stripped naked, and shamed on public display in the middle of the town square. And the young 'uns have the numbers and the muscle power, and the internet/techno savvy, to do it. I'd like to see a huge public price imposed upon the robber-baron contingent as a consequence of their behavior. So far, their greedy, shortsighted, Bain Capital, hedge-fund, quarterly-earnings-only, too-big-to-fail arrogance has only made them rich, famous, coddled, and protected. In other words, their bad behavior has been rewarded, reinforced, encouraged, and lauded. I would LOVE to see that shaken up. We Boomers couldn't figure out how to do it. We always seemed to come up short. Perhaps what's needed is new energy and new blood, and the boldness that comes with youth - before it's ground down and blunted by the sandpaper of harsh, rough, abrasive reality.

My kids are Millennials. They both have their shit together.

My daughter somehow was BORN with her shit together. I had this conversation with her only yesterday - pointing out to her again how I just felt it in my bones that I never was going to have to worry about her too much. She's totally in command, and has been from the day she was born. My son - a different story, but as he approached adulthood (driven mostly by the reality of his increasingly happening band) he too had his shit THOROUGHLY together. Over and over from others including producers, promoters, radio people, industry people, the same words come out of their mouths about him - "he GETS it."

I felt like someone wandering in the wilderness, tilting at windmills, not really "GETTING it" for quite some time. Til late in my 20s - if even then.

Somehow I feel as though their generation set their rose-colored glasses down on the counter top a long time ago and, indeed, went out and started DOING shit. They have so much more of a sense of themselves and where they are - in the world, in their community, in time, in the whole generational thing. They're remarkable. I see it in many of their friends, too.

I feel like we Baby Boomers just screwed it all up. It's on OUR watch that the American Dream began its decline. It's OUR pollution and recklessness and that of our own elders that our Millennial sons and daughters have to clean up. And they know it. My kids grew up seeing my activism (such as it was - I certainly didn't move many mountains!!! ) and they know. They have a remarkably clear view of the job ahead.

Could be why so many in their generation recognize what's wrong in our world and know how they're going to do away with that wrong. Could be why so many of them are trending progressive. Could be why so few of them vote republi-CON - to such an extent that the statisticians and political strategists and demographics-trackers are all acutely aware of it as a reality. Could be why you're apt to hear again and again how the kids just don't get why there's intolerance against gays and other colors of skin - they just don't get it. They grew up in a world where all those skin colors and non-conventional lifestyles and outside-the-cookie-cutter feelings and ways of thinking and behaviors were THE NORM. My kids grew up knowing lots of single heads of households, gays - among their friends, peers, and parents of same, mixed-race parents with mixed-race kids, heck - sufficient numbers of followers of Islam that were so commonplace that it just wasn't anything even worth noticing.

My kids were in Catholic school. My daughter's First Communion class (2nd grade) was so diverse that only ONE THIRD of them actually made their First Communion. Catholics in her class were a distinct minority! Sure wasn't that way in MY First Communion class. Before we moved, I believe EVERYONE in class was Catholic. But after we moved, it was almost the same - until 6th grade, when we discovered that our class had exactly ONE member of the Greek Orthodox church among us. Now, WE are in the minority! And know what? That's more than okay by me!!! Seems to me that's a good thing. The Catholic Church needs to dispossess itself of the notion that it owns the world. When in reality, it's just one of many, and NOT the proverbial spoiled child who assumes it's all about THEM. And hopefully, many of us in the Baby Boom generation have recognized that same thing by now, too.

How'd that old saying go?

"...And the children shall lead."

That's a really great way to word it, annabanana!

It's my daily companion too. I appreciate all the posts and pontifications! I appreciate those who suffer through mine, too! But really. It's a great place to come and learn and turn ideas and events inside out and really look at them. My thinking has broadened as a result of hanging here. I know more. Sometimes it's regrettable and troublesome too. But there-ya-go. I love this place. And when you really need it, it will buoy you up.

Oh man... I bet she would!

We could make a kind of game of it here on DU. If she'd lived, what would she call him?

How would Molly Ivins characterize ted cruz? What I think of him generally can't be uttered in polite company. She'd be lightyears more incisive and clever!

This takes me back to that tsunami that happened in South Asia a few years back.

Over the Christmas holidays. Horrible. bush junior was still president. Which was also horrible. republi-CON bill frist was Senate Majority Leader.

And after the tsunami, frist went overseas to survey the damage. And I saw a clip of him on CNN or some such - where he was looking around at the devastation and shaking his head and, with some trace of overwhelm, whined - "this is horrible... there's no one to BLAME!"



I remember rolling my eyeballs and thinking - "Oh forcryingoutloud! That's the best you got, pal? You've ALWAYS gotta have someone to BLAME?!!!?!?!?!? What the Hell???!?!??!?!?!"