Maher calls JASON out…

And it’s about fucking time!

Are you listening, MR. PRESIDENT?!

Meanwhile… please don’t make me spell it out for you!

I, Vagabond

I agree with the sentiments espoused here by Chris Darke.  When I saw the film Vagabond last year on IFC, I too was challenged (and disturbed) by the simultaneous dichotomy and similarity between the "passive" (counter-culture) nihilist shepherd/philosopher (in whom I romanticized myself) and the "active" nihilism of the "vagabond" Mona (see Adbusters #85).

I also agree (but more darkly and forcefully) with Darke that, in post-1980, post-Reagan America, we are all "nomads" -- adrift in a virtual-world of “progress" constantly undermined by anxiety from three decades of delusion, debt and denial.  A world reflected in the spirit of this film -- at once cold, bleak and perpetually out-of-season.

Dimwit American optimism coupled with gun-toting libertarian unwillingness to tax or regulate excess is today culminating in a massive deleveraging, a (so far) orderly collapse -- of values and institutions – personified by advertising-centric, “Obama change."  Healthcare “reform” my ass!

Going forward, I will not be surprised if nihilism becomes the new black!

You Know the Best Part About Dying in America?

You get to stop feeling cheated!

Rest in peace, Virginia Mae Wagner/Scribner/Sorenson.

Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.  Robert Louis Stevenson