Dennis Prager has a trenchant column on the 40th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone, which I’d link to directly, except it’s in this nightmare digital-edition format that takes forever to load. Anyway, Dennis cites various of the great thinkers gathered to mark the anniversary, among them the anthropologist, primatologist, ethologist and UN Messenger for Peace Jane Goodall:

We seem to have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people, which dictated that in any major decision, the first consideration was, ‘How will this decision we make today affect our people in the future?’

Really? That barely passes muster even as boilerplate counter-tribalist western self-loathing. When you say “the wisdom of the indigenous people”, is that any “indigenous people” – tribe, nation, whatever – in particular or just “indigenous people” in general? The “indigenous people” in my corner of New Hampshire were not noted for environmental far-sightedness: They set up an encampment in one spot, ate everything, killed everything, trashed everything, and then moved a mile or two away to start all over again. But don’t let that get in the way of your romantic fetishization of the natives.

Dennis Prager also notes the vast amount of cussing by George Clooney, Tom Hanks and the rest of Rolling Stone’s interviewees. When my S-CHIP comments attracted a little attention from the left a few weeks back, what struck me was not the f-words and rectal obsessions of e-mailers but those of so many big-time leftie bloggers like this fellow Atrios. Hard to believe in 2007 anyone can still think effin’ and blindin’ is cool or macho or authentic or whatever it’s supposed to be – although, to be honest, I would applaud John Edwards if he abandoned his present oleaginous style for a vernacular more tailored to the netroots he’s pandering to.