General Strike

I have the day off so I can join in the demonstrations in support of illegal aliens, their families, friends and support networks against proposed federal legislation that would turn us all into felons. The action is called A Day without Immigrants.

I took Friday off as well so that I could participate in the student walk-out against the war. It was great to attend an anti-war event I didn't help plan and to see the energy and brainpower of so many young people speaking out against the war. There were about 500 people in a steady rainfall.

On Saturday, I worked at the bookstore and spent the early evening at a forum about the labor movement today. Lots of talk about the strike on Monday and the sense that progressive movements are popping up all over the place.

Saturday night I watched the White House Correspondents Dinner. Bush made fun of himself and was followed by Stephen Colbert from the Comedy Channel show, "The Colbert Report." Colbert spoke in his character of blowhard Bush supporter. I have to agree with the right wing blogosphere: his bits bombed. Almost no one laughed, either because they didn't get it or they did and didn't like the points Colbert made. You gotta wonder what they thought was going to happen when Colbert was invited. Of course he is going to make fun of the president and the press. What is astonishing is that they somehow didn't know it would happen and have the graciousness to accept it well. In fact, Laura Bush didn't have the common decency to thank the man. Sheesh!

Actually, what has gotten lost in all the back and forth about whether Colbert was "brave" (no, he just did his job) or unpatriotic (no, it's patriotic to be able to laugh at ourselves) is another part of the evening. Early in the night, Bill Plante, the CBS white house correspondent presented a filmed tour of the White House press offices in which highly paid people whined and moaned about having to work out of small, overcrowded cubes. Talk about not having a clue about reality! There are hundreds of thousands of Americans working out of cramped and crowded cubes every single day. And we're not demanding that the government provide us better digs. One woman even whined that she had to (she even demonstrated this difficult maneuver for the camera) the screen on her multi-thousand dollar laptop to answer the phone in her cube. Gee, that took about one second -- you poor thing!

Yesterday I slept in, napped, and napped some more. It's old age, I guess.

Today I'm getting some housework done and then off to the rally at 3 p.m.