Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Dean: Back to the Future

No surprise here, at least for readers of this blog.

Howard Dean was in attendance at a conference of the emergent religious left in Washington. He used it as an occasion to:


  • Try out some religious-talk on a friendly crowd: "I came in the wrong door when I first got here. I came in the back, and everybody was talking about praising the Lord, and I thought, 'I am home. Finally, a group of people who want to praise the Lord and help their fellow man just like Jesus did and just like Jesus taught.' Thank you so much for doing that for me."
  • Identify the majority party with McCarthy (Joseph, not Eugene) and the bleak, loathsome 1950s.
  • Call wistfully for a revival of the dynamic, romantic, progressive 1960s.
  • Backtrack incoherently later from his 1960s nostalgia: "I'm not asking to go back to the '60s; we made some mistakes in the '60s. If you look at how we did public housing, we essentially created ghettos for poor people. . . .We did give things away for free, and that's a huge mistake because that does create a culture of dependence, and that's not good for anybody, either."
Our source does not indicate whether Dean took off his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and let loose with a full-throated, Vermont-physician-style "Yeauugh!"

4 comments:

farris said...

I just stumbled on SWIND in recent days, and am so glad to have a home away from home on the internet that isn't "www.cincinnati.com". I, in fact, am even more glad to hear the beloved Dr. Weatherly speak on issues that I never thought I would get the chance to hear about. The opening quote from Dean's appearance is pretty great by the way. My heart hurts from a lack of Skyline, and I now see what happens to enterprise when I abandon a "home" town...GOULET!

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

We don't know this "Dr. Weatherly" that you're talking about.

farris said...

I meant SWIND, pardon my confusion as to who I was staring at. SWIND must admit that the picture does bear striking resemblence to the man that taught me to hissssss at the name of a never to be mentioned German "Scholar"...

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

Your confusion is shared by many others. Life demands such careful distinctions of identity, however.