What Liberals Say » Lifestyles

We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets

Barack Obama — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:29:47 +0000

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk- rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling conventions. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But this strategy alone couldn’t provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so- called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

Saunders Crushes on Clinton

George Saunders — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:19:15 +0000

“His super-sized fondness for life, humans, activity, accomplishment, makes you aware of your own negative mind” and “his drive, his fame, the public nature of everything he does, makes you giddily grateful for the humble scale of your own life.”

Being Muslim is Grand

Bob Kerrey — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:02:10 +0000

“I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim…There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Required for true political revolution.

Jill Johnson — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:50:05 +0000

“Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution.”

Let indulgence be our guiding principle.

Anton Szandor LaVey — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:17:00 +0000

“Why not have a religion based on indulgence? Certainly, it is consistent with the nature of the beast. We are no longer supplicating weaklings trembling before an unmerciful ‘God’ who cares not whether we live or die. We are self-respecting, prideful people — we are Satanists!”

Fight pollution, eat vegetables.

Pamela Anderson — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:30:51 +0000

“The best thing any of us can do to fight pollution is to adopt a vegetarian diet.”

Stop eating meat.

Jeremy Rifkin — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:49:52 +0000

“The elimination of beef and other meat from the human diet is now required if we are to have any hope of saving the planet and ensuring our children’s future.”

Homosexuals are influencing your children.

Donna Red Wing — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:47:10 +0000

â€œWe’re here, we’re queer, we’re in the classroom.â€

When homosexuals can marry, then Iâ€™ll consider marriage.

Brad Pitt — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:19:49 +0000

“Angie [Jolie] and I will consider tying the knot only when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.”

Environmentalists: we should lower our standard of living.

Aaron Wildavsky — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:56:59 +0000

“The environmentalist’s dream is an egalitarian society based on: rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.”