Reading notes

I find this exchange (alt loc) wonderfully honest and funny:

In [his new book] Keillor, the host of public radio’s “Prairie Home Companion,” writes warmly of the homespun Scandinavian wisdom that informed his childhood — “Don’t Think You’re Special Because You’re Not,” which is just the local way, he notes, of reminding people to take care of their neighbors. It’s a basic human value, Keillor observes, that the party of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Tom DeLay gleefully abandoned years ago. “They are a party,” writes Keillor, “that is all about perceptions, the Christian party that conceals enormous glittering malice and is led by brilliant bandits who are dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in. I don’t accept this.” …

[John F. Kennedy] was a war hero who had a gift of public grace and utterance, which was quite remarkable, compared to the huffing and puffing of Richard Nixon, a cartoon pol. John Kerry has a similar gift of grace; you listen to him and you know there’s somebody home, the lights are on, the elevator is working. This is electric, compared to George W. Bush, who is the shallowest man to occupy the White House since Calvin Coolidge.

Worth reading in full!

[also archived at Truthout]