I was in Florida, at the Breakers Hotel, this weekend for the David Horowitz Freedom Center Restoration Weekend (say that ten times fast). It was a great event. Delightful — and enthusiastic! — people. While lounging at the pool — I am an accomplished lounger — I listened to some businessmen (not with the Restoration bunch) talking in the pool. It was a very common conversation. Both men were preening over the fact that they are independents. “I call ‘em like I see ‘em,” a particularly loud-mouthed fellow said. “I’m not extreme right or extreme left,” he explained as if he was saying, “I’m not dumb or ugly.” And the conversation went on — and on. Then they turned to health care. The loud-mouthed guy kept singing the praises of a documentary he saw on health care. It was “very intellectual” and “very controversial” and he enjoyed it a great deal. It was made by Michael Moore. “The one thing I can’t figure out,” he confessed, “is whether [Moore] was coming from the right or the left.
Then just a few minutes ago, I was listening to the morning call-ins on C-Span radio. Viewers were asked what newspapers they read. One woman explained that she used the Google translator function to translate foreign newspapers. In particular, she says she gets a lot of her news from Argentina’s newspapers. She doesn’t like China’s newspapers because they’re just like America’s — “full of right-wing propaganda.”
Geniuses!