How do you solve a problem like Tere-za?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
How do you solve a problem like Tere-za?
94
Sun, 08-01-2004 - 11:49pm

"How do you solve a problem like Tere-zah?"


All week I've been whistling the tune from "The Sound of Music," mentally substituting the name Teresa for Maria.


"How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Teresa? A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the-wisp! A clown..."


Kathleen Parker on the pickle princess -- http://www.townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/kp20040731.shtml

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 12:04am
I was sure I already answered this, now where did that go? OK, try again.

Well no, I didn't overlook it. I'm not trying to excuse her behavior, just trying to give the background of why she spoke the way she did. Sure, if she was a more perfect person, she would have come up with a better response. But she's not perfect. I think the background is relevant & interesting. When the news media covers these types of stories & fail to mention the history between them, they are misleading the public.

Anyhow, we are not voting for first ladies, we are voting for president.

Thanks for the welcome.




> And you overlooked the fact that she has seconds before concluded a very pretty speech on how civility needed to be restored in political discourse, and that the evil journalist had been granted a press pass to cover her husbands presidential nomination.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 8:12am
Glad to see we finally agree on something! :-)
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 8:20am
I'm glad you found the book "What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" by Thomas Frank (a Kansan & former Republican). I had only read an article on it and couldn't find it again. Please write back and let us know what you think. This is the one about Republican-ism harming rural areas?

I have a lot of respect for those that can read/watch/listen outside their party. But I think for the most part there are a lot of people that do read/watch/listen only one side and her statement is fairly true. I would be surprised to find many on this board as both sides are often argued - hence I like to check in when I can. :-)

BTW - I couldn't get into Air America because it was TOO one sided even though I'm a liberal. I agree you need something to balance the extreme right-wing (Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc.) but I don't think the Dems/liberals will listen to only their side. Too boring. :-)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-29-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 10:36am
dfd
Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 10:55am
This is the write-up of the book, What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank

on Amazon.com:

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically. To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas. --John Moe


About the Author

Founding editor of The Baffler, Thomas Frank is the author of One Market Under God and The Conquest of Cool. A contributor to Harper’s, The Nation, and The New York Times op-ed page, he lives in Chicago.



Excerpted from What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From What’s the Matter with Kansas?:

Hard times, instead of snapping people back to reality, only seem to stoke the fires of the conservative backlash. Indeed, those segments of the working class that have been hardest hit by the big economic changes of recent years are the very ones that vote Republican in the greatest numbers. We seem to have but one way to express our anger, and that’s by raging along with Rush—against liberal bias in academia, liberal softness on terrorism, liberal permissiveness, and so on. Our reaction to hard times is thus to hand over ever more power to the people who make them hard. In fact, the election of 2002 provided a perverse incentive to the men who gave us the dot-com bubble and the Enron fiasco: Keep at it. The more you screw the public over, the more they will clamor to cut your taxes. The more you cheat and steal, the angrier they will become—at the liberal media that expose your cheating and stealing.



Book Description

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash”—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?”—how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism—the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What’s the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.

*Los Angeles Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<< He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican >> I'll have to read & see if he studied at KU in Lawrence. Lawrence is known for being very Liberal & I wonder if this influenced him at all. I'll let you know how it was once Amazon gets it to me and I read it. Being a Kansas Republican, I'm curious. =)

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-09-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 5:25pm
what's worse than john kerry as president? tereza as first lady!

it is a very scary thought.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 5:40pm
???

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 5:45pm

Welcome macfos!


As embarrassing as it would be to have such a graceless & crass first lady, the really scary part is realizing what power she wields over Kerry.

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 7:06pm
That's quite an indictment of her, have you ever watched her biography - do you know anything about the woman other than a couple of words she uttered. How come Cheney telling a fellow senator to "Go f**** yourself" - received nothing more than a smirk.

Teresa has heart, but then I seems Cheney has a large part of America by the gonads.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 08-09-2004 - 7:18pm


Well, I can't give credit to Bush for anything other than having a really itchy trigger finger (there should be an ointment for that.) He couldn't wait until he was absolutely certain he was doing the right thing before he started a WAR (a little worse than saying "shove it" in my opinion).

The man is the worst thing that ever happened to our country and if reelected he & his smirk will be well on their way to galvanizing the entire middle east into manufacturing more terrorists than we can imagine. He's on to Iran next, you think they hate us now, just wait 'til that 10-gallon excuse for a man gets done. But hey, I'm still buying oil products.

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