Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Kvetcher in the Rye

Greg Palast with a bitter rant on our society as seen through Catcher In The Rye.

Then we fell over the cliff.

A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious "Southern Strategy;" the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.

And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.

There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.

You stand on the cliff edge and there's no one left to catch.

Is he right? Sure. Is he wrong? Sure.

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