Casual
LABASH, MATT
Casual Low Spirits in Granola-Land Fight the Right," beckoned the ad. "Decoding the Right," a four-part series, was to be held at the Social Action Leadership School for Activists (SALSA). The...
...Here's how to get them," Borosage said...
...But no such luck...
...Where's the can-do-ism...
...We need to go down to Dunkin Donuts where real people live-they don't read Mother Jones . . . they're reading the dag-gone Washington Times if they're reading anything-I don't know why that is...
...It was this kind of high adventure I was hoping to absorb...
...When the weather turns each spring, I yellow-highlight the weekends when freedom-fighters are to storm the Mall...
...He later remembered-they were "clean up the system" and "decide what comes next...
...He did have a plan, however, on how to broaden an eroding progressive base, citing Joe Klein's Newsweek cover story on capturing the "radical middle...
...The Christian Coalition doesn't have any magic dust, they're just working hard...
...ventured Freeman...
...Mark, the greenie sitting next to me, nodded vehemently, nonplused by the rash under his beard and scarfing a vegetarian burrito out of a chain-gang mess-wagon skillet like his non-profit tax status depended on it...
...As I walked to the car on this chilly eve, a street musician blew a little Chuck Mangione riff, harkening back to Carter-era Elysium- which put me in mind of another favorite relic, the venerable Dr...
...That was it-I had to bolt before they started sucking down cyanide Kool-Aid...
...Agreed another: "To force change quicker than that, to not think about how we do politics, would be a tremendous mistake, even if we have to take it on the chin for three or five or however many years...
...There's no vision coming from the universities and think tanks," cried one student...
...All it usually takes to staple the Granolae to the wall is a microrecorder and a fat lot of endurance...
...As an undercover spook for the right wing, I'm rarely disappointed...
...Where's the pluck...
...These people wanted answers, and the festivities turned morosely introspective, with a distasteful mix of self-doubt and self-loathing...
...The class started to turn...
...Those were some heady times, when IPS lost two employees to a Pinochet-era car bomb a few blocks away from this very building...
...How...
...and I forgot the other two...
...Four Wednesdays consecutive, the bell rang and I was there-missing wife, dinner, Beverly Hills 90210 to take my place in IPS's dingy outpost in D.C.'s Dupont Circle...
...What it may come down to is a choice of character," he said...
...There are no think tanks," retorted another...
...Ah yes, CHEE-lay in the'70s...
...Our course was for pros, by pros- muddy-eyed 501 (c)(3) foot soldiers from regiments like Earth First and the Doris Day Animal League...
...The progressives are basically abashed, they're not confident in their views anymore," agreed Borosage...
...One quizzical pupil wanted to know what "next" should be...
...The sessions were sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington-based booster of Castro, the Sandinistas, and all practitioners of "economic democracy" (that's Marxism to the unwashed...
...In the shadow of the diabolical 104th Congress, Freeman sensed sagging troop morale and limply suggested, "We have to force the debate on the issues and keep it away from generalities...
...This wasn't a fight, it was a wake...
...Piped another disgusted firebrand: "The Left is insular, it's talking to one another...
...The very name evokes that Tio Sancho activism-spicy and overheated lasses with unkempt Bianca Jagger manes...
...Balance the budget, increase civility...
...And that surely is not going to be our strength...
...Robert Borosage, the former IPS director who had the oxymoronic distinction of once serving as Jesse Jackson's foreign-affairs braintrust, spotted trouble on the horizon for the next presidential election...
...Colored sports page...
...someone asked...
...I thought we'd come here to barb-que right wingers, but that was not on the docket...
...This is my beat...
...Matt Labash...
...We're in a 20-year holding pattern figuring how to rebuild our infrastructure," said one fatalist...
...So Borosage offered his plan to jumpstart the gasgrillin', Jesus-freaked undereducated and overfed masses: "an internationalist trade position around labor rights and a global Keynesian agenda...
...The only cheeriness amongst the 10 or so people in the opening-night session emanated from the Skittles-colored arpilleras-hand-sewn collages telling tales of Chilean shantytowns and oppression...
...As for this business of decoding the right, Matt Freeman of People for the American Way assured us, "We're not talking about country rubes, we're talking about normal human beings...
...Hunter S. Thompson, who once observed, "Old whores don't do much giggling...
...One finds it difficult to imagine Ralph Reed gauging his impotence in a 20-year holding pattern...
Vol. 1 • November 1995 • No. 9
