Aging Hippie Feminist Watch

The San Francisco Chronicle's Ruth Rosen uses Friday's column to tell us about a reunion with her aging hippie feminist girlfriends.

We are women of a certain age, raised to embrace traditional lives, but transformed by the 1960s and 1970s.

In other words, these are women who haven't learned anything new since the Ford administration.

This year, each of us arrives depleted and drained from having tried, in different ways, to stop this war from starting.

For all the things they might have tried to accomplish this year, their top priority was to keep Saddam Hussein in power.

we've all dedicated our lives to leaving the world a better place than we found it. We've worked here and abroad to end poverty and promote world peace.

Their definitions of "ending poverty" and "promoting world peace" apparently include keeping Saddam Hussein in power.

We've fought for racial equality, women's rights, environmental justice and universal health care

Isn't it ironic that Saddam Hussein, whom they want to keep in power, has done as much harm to these causes as any other living human?

We are all educators of one sort or another

It frightens me that the Chronicle runs Rosen's column in order to educate the public.

... anguish dwells inside each of us. There is the quiet recognition that this ultraconservative administration -- by bankrupting our national wealth through war and tax cuts - - has turned our dreams into a nightmare.

Whether or not one approves of the war or tax cuts, tax cuts do not reduce our "national wealth". All they do is slow the redistribution of national wealth. And our country is nowhere near bankruptcy. These so-called "educators" seem to be in need of remedial lessons in economics.

"Things have never been this bad in our entire lives," one of us says. Heads nod in agreement.

Now Ruthie, stop your whining. How bad can your life really be? You get paid for what is probably the easiest job on the planet. All you have to do is write a bi-weekly column where you do little more than regurgitate McGovern '72 campaign slogans. You aren't even held accountable for getting your facts straight, and you are free to present arguments that are untethered by logic and common sense. Be grateful for how good you have it, and think about what you could do to extend your blessings of freedom and prosperity to all of those would-be columnists who are silenced by tyranny in, say, the Arab world. You could start, for example, by dropping your misguided opposition to the liberation of Iraq.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 05, 2003 01:29 PM