Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
This is old. But it’s important, and since I’m just finding out about it…
Meet Old Economy Steve. As a proud member of the class of 1970-something, he’s got a doofy haircut straight out of “Dazed and Confused,” along with a sunny financial future. With commencement season drawing to a close, his awkwardly smirking face has become the canvass upon which some angry Millennials have decided to vent their frustrations with the economy, not to mention condescending Baby Boomers. There are almost 700 of these on quickmeme.
Definitely check out that QuickMeme link if this is new to you. As the article promises, it goes on and on…and on. Not that it takes a lot of talent to create a meme, but I’m sure a lot of the makers have talent to do something much more impressive and they chose to squander it by whining and crying about the older generation getting all the breaks…so they could sidestep any appreciation for their own breaks, and pretend to be wallowing in nothing but hurt and tragedy. How sad.
Yeah kids. Grandpa stormed Normandy dodging machine gun fire so you could whine and cry like this.
Article continues:
But wait, how good did Steve really have it? Assuming he finished school some time in the late disco era, probably not so hot. Remember, the 1970s were the time of stagflation — that awful combo of high unemployment and spiraling inflation that left policy makers flummoxed. When the Federal Reserve finally jacked up interest rates to combat it, the bank induced several rocky years of recession. In 1982, the unemployment rate for 20-to-24-year-old men peaked at more than 18 percent. For teens it was in the twenties. Meanwhile, the late 70s also kicked off America’s first plunge into industrial decline. Little remembered fact, Chrysler actually needed a government bailout to survive in 1979.
Meanwhile, there’s a decent chance that Steve saw his 401K cut in half come the 2008 financial crisis. Or, if he was a Chrysler worker, he might have gotten laid off just a few years short of retirement. So, maybe we should give Old Economy Steve a break.
When an enlightened, woken, no-comments Internet tabloid like The Atlantic is telling you to stop sniveling and pick yourself up by your bootstraps, something’s way off course. Here the problem isn’t that the meme-makers have never been told how to work hard at something; the problem is that they’ve made it impossible for anyone to tell them that. They live in their dungeon of despair. Say a word to bust them out of it, or a sentence or a paragraph or a whole essay, they’ll pigeonhole you as “Old Economy Steve” and let it all roll off them like water off a duck’s back.
It’s a popular idea now: The generation before ours, got all the advantages. You go back a few years before bad-haircut Steve, and you hit another crew that didn’t have to worry about expensive college tuition. In what would have been their sophomore year, they were worried about landing the plane after coming back dodging anti-aircraft fire. How’s that figure into the morose, angst-filled ruminations about dopey ol’ Steve and how he doesn’t realize how good he had it?
These “woe is me” kids were made and not born. It’s a manufactured problem, conjured up not by the requirement to try harder or to jump through a few hoops, but by the lack of such a requirement. It’s that soft sheltered space in mom’s basement with the electricity that always works and the video game console that’s always ready, that makes the problem. In my day, I didn’t have that, I had to pay rent. That created a necessity to get a job, and cope with rejection. There was no safe space for me to build memes or to play video games, unless I made one for myself. But that all begins with “In My Day” so you just try telling these kids that.
It should be noted that the Atlantic’s list of hardships for poor Steve, whatever relevance it has, is not complete. In my day, it was Black Monday. I saw it on the front page inside a newspaper machine — yes we really had those — waiting for my first-real-job job interview. Yes, at eight in the morning, Monday, October 19, 1987, getting my start at the very instant it all turned sour. I remember looking at the newsstand, maybe with my head cocked a little bit like a quizzical puppy dog. Looked like a dark omen. Still waiting to find out if it really was one! That’s life. But I guess not…I have a two-story house, with a mortgage I’m still paying…which makes me you-know-who, in the eyes of some.
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