The elderly are simultaneously the country’s most powerful single demographic and its least respected. But if the elderly don’t want to be infantilized, if they don’t want to be referred to as the elderly, it may be time to means-test the term and the literal benefits it entails.
pierre tristam
How Obama’s Support of Gay Marriage Could Lose Him Florida Come November
With debate and votes taking place around the state and polls showing a growing acceptance, the issue of same-sex marriage and domestic partner rights will likely be among a host of second tier issues that could determine which presidential candidate takes Florida.
Gator Shame: Why I’m Relieved My Daughter Won’t Be Attending the University of Florida
Athletics aside, Florida doesn’t take its public universities and public schools seriously, making it difficult for top students to stay here–or for the state to depend on more than tourist ghettoes, sunbathing spreads and Medicare colonies.
Obama’s Come to Jesus Moment on Gay Marriage: More Buchanan Than Lincoln
One might be tempted to see in Barack Obama’s belated embrace of gay marriage a retraction of the infuriatingly compromising president we’ve come endure and a return to the audacious president we thought we were electing four years ago. But that would be projecting a fantasy on a cave wall.
Breastfeeding Frenzy
Time magazine’s cover featuring 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her nearly 4-year-old son is the latest revival of the old fervors and prejudices surrounding breastfeeding including, unfortunately, the sexualization of an asexual act.
American Soldiers Committing Atrocities: Placing the Blame Where It Belongs
From posing with corpses of insurgents to going on murderous rampages, American soldiers’ atrocities in Afghanistan are becoming routine. Without absolving the military of its responsibilities, the real isn’t the soldiers’ alone.
In Defense of Ozzie Guillen: Cuban-Americans Have Held US Policy Hostage Long Enough
The Florida Marlins’ duplicitous suspension of Ozzie Guillen aside, the real scandal is the degree to which South Florida’s Castro-era Cuban community continues to hold American foreign policy hostage to seven decades of juvenile antagonism.
The 4th Amendment, Stripped and Degraded
The Supreme Court’s decision allowing the strip-searching of anyone booked into jail–no matter how small the charge, no matter the presumption of innocence of the accused–is merely the latest in a long series of constitutional violations, enshrined by conservative justices.
From the Archives: Palm Coast’s Masonic Cemetery, Where a Cherished Glen Harbors Family Albums
The Masonic cemetery is Palm Coast’s oldest human landmark and the most noble monument to the region’s ancestry, forgotten relics of Indian haunts aside. But it’s been at the margins of care.
Flagler’s and Florida’s Economic Development Hoax
Florida lawmakers and their local replicas seem hypnotized by the buzz of economic development, nattering about it with great stamina. But it’s a hoax, and a costly one. The assault on public and higher education of the last few years proves it.
Do Kiss, Do Tell, Do Show
The homecoming picture of the gay Marine kissing his boyfriend has the same iconic feel as Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Life magazine shot of the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day. Both images capture the essence of liberation on a large scale.
Lady Liberty at Flagler Palm Coast High School: When Veterans Get Patriotism All Wrong
Veterans complained to the Flagler County School Board that student portrayals of Lady Liberty they say at FPC “desecrated” her and the flag and should be removed. The veterans were wrong, and were themselves desecrating American values.
A Video Message to the Komen Foundation: What Breast Cancer Is, and Isn’t
As good an answer to the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s misguided two-step as you’ll see: a woman’s testimony about what breast cancer has done to her, all politics aside.
Komen and the Smear on Planned Parenthood: Swiftboating Tactics From Abortion Zealots
The Susan J. Komen foundation had a choice with Planned Parenthood: Stick with rational neutrality or surrender to the political contamination of reactionaries’ echo chambers and the bogus war on abortion. Komen surrendered. The war on cancer–the only war worth fighting–and women will suffer.
Don’t Ban Internet Cafés. Regulate Them.
Internet cafés may be a pest, and their proponents make laughable arguments when they claim they’re not about gambling. But it’s not government’s business to ban them while swinging from the lottery’s levers. Regulation is the key.
My 10 Predictions for 2012
Obama is reelected, the world doesn’t end except for Tim Tebow, Jim Landon and Sharon Atack look for other jobs and the News-Journal goes into the cemetery business: predictions worthy of James Ussher.
We Don’t Need Another Payroll Tax Cut
We can all afford less tax coddling and more fiscal responsibility. But don’t expect to hear that from allegedly conservative Republican and our blandly, irresponsibly centrist president, who’s bribing his way to a second term.
Philip Roth’s Everyman
In Everyman, this is the Philip Roth writing the eulogy from behind the ordinariness, the Roth who reads hearts like America’s best social cardiologist, still writing like it’s a midday office tryst he can pull off with as much virility as Portnoy in his prime.
Obama’s Roosevelt Envy–And Ours
Obama’s version of Roosevelt Lite won’t cut it if he can’t back up his rhetoric with a more serious program of defending the middle class against corporate predators and rich-class irresponsibility.
In Praise of Tom Wicker, Antidote to the Age of Reagan
Tom Wicker, the Times columnist for 25 years, wrote as if he’d seen the country’s best days. He probably had even then, having witnessed the eight years of Reagan taking out a second, third and fourth mortgage on the nation’s prosperity while making Americans feel like a million bucks.
Our School District’s Uniform Follies
The Flagler County School Board’s push for uniforms is out of touch with the county’s struggling families and plundered budgets and revealing of a board too prone to selling out to charter-school gimmickry.
Since 9/11: A Reckoning
Moving tributes and grief aside, one lesson of the last 10 years is that we have yet to learn the lesson of the last 10 years: we are not only on a spiral downward. We are feeding the spiral, collectively and consciously. We should all be mourners, and not just for 9/11’s victims.
What Barack Obama Can Learn From Rick Scott
With Rick Scott’s poll numbers in the 20s, the governor went for a cosmetology make-over. Barack Obama could do the same, in reverse: he needs to be liked less and to govern more.
Why Attending Local Government Meetings Has Nothing To Do With Being Involved
No one was in the audience when school administrators making $97,000 a year made their pitch for raises. Don’t blame the public for not being there. It’s not the public’s fault, and there are far better ways to be involved.
Birthers, Royals and Crocks
Between Barack Obama’s birth certificate and William Windsor’s wedding to his girlfriend Kate, lust for make-believe idiocies at the expense of reality explains why problem-solving isn’t much of a priority these days.
God’s Plagues, Man’s Fates, Roth’s Nemeses
With Nemesis, Philip Roth puts an end to to a quartet of novels about death, dying and disease. Roth’s books are as much elegy as honest preparation. There’s no faulting him for not deluding us.
Reality Check: The GOP’s Straw-Stuffing Health Care Repeal
If repealing health care without presenting an alternative is the best thing the new GOP majority can do in an economic crisis, pack up your worries about 2012 right now and congratulate Obama for his second term.
My 10 Predictions for 2011
A recap of how I did last year and a look ahead: Obama creeps up, Jon Netts loses, the Supremes overturn health care reform, the fake recovery goes on, Arabs and Israelis go at it again, David Grossman wins big, and a few more.
A Confederacy of Bipartisan Dunces
Obama’s deal with a minority of Republicans over extending tax cuts and adding $900 billion to the national debt is the latest in three decades of bipartisan collusion between Washington and the myth of American power.
Pierre on WNZF’s Open Lines with David Ayers This Morning
Chatting it up about local politics, local media, the primary election, the good referendum on the ballot and the very bad one, and more.
Proudest Moment on a Gray Day:
On Becoming an American
My personal July 4th happens to fall on December 16. That day, 24 years ago, I became an American. The day has become more important to me than any other, including my birthday.
Bill Delbrugge Joins FlaglerLive Board; Here’s Who We Are
An introduction to the seven-member FlaglerLive Board of Directors, and a few words about who we are and what we’re about.
Florida’s Abortion Follies:
When Lawmakers Are Sexual Predators
Florida’s latest anti-abortion legislation shows that sexual predators aren’t just the monsters who assault and rape. They can also be men who control women and girls by subordinating them their moral assumptions, which usually have immoral results.
My Ten Predictions for 2010
“All prophesies are wrong, therefore this one will be wrong,” Orwell said. So here are mine for the coming year of our blogs, 2010.