Let’s Start the New Year Right, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

January 2, 2010 Martha Thomases 7 Comments

All I have to say to 2009 is, “I hope the door hit you on the way out.”

The year started with record unemployment, and ended with record unemployment.  True, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 4,000 points, and various bankers and traders got record bonuses (bonusi?), but if ever there was proof that trickle-down doesn’t work, it’s this year.

Home-owners are similarly being trickled-down upon.  A large percentage owe more on their mortgage than the home is worth.  The rate of foreclosure is higher than ever.

We had a year obsessed with air travel.  Whether it was Sully landing a plane in the Hudson River, the balloon boy, or the guy who tried to blow up a plane with his pants, there was a reporter on the news filing a report from the airport.  Meanwhile, the experience of going to the airport, getting on a plane, and reaching one’s destination gets more and more unpleasant.

After the shoe bomber tried to smuggle explosives in his shoes, we all had to take off our shoes at the airport.  Will we now have to take off our pants?  What about when the next bomber  hides explosives in the padding of a Wonder Bra.

Complaining about air travel is something that only people with money can afford to do.  But try and find a reasonable train or bus schedule to anyplace you’d want to (or need to) go.

It was supposed to be different.  We were supposed to have a socialist in the White House, one who owed his election to the DFH (Dirty Fucking Hippie) wing of his party.  Single payer health care.  Funding for infrastructure creation and repairs.  The military taken out of harm’s way, and instead used for day care services in poor neighborhoods.  An end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  Gay marriage was not only going to be legal, but required.  LSD in the water supply.  Condoms distributed in school cafeterias.

(That wasn’t the Democratic platform Obama ran on, but it’s the one ascribed to him by the Republicans.  And it would have been way more fun.)

I’m not usually a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, because I don’t need a special occasion to feel like a guilt-ridden failure.  However, this year, I have two.

1) To consistently argue in favor of the DFH agenda.  What passes for the Left on television opinion shows is centrist at best.  Someone needs to stand up and insist we make love, not war.

2) One of my knitting students at Sloan-Kettering, a seven-year-old girl, said the most amazing thing.  “I’m really lucky to have leukemia,” she announced, “because the Make-a-Wish Foundation is going to send me and my family to Walt Disney World.”  I aspire to be able to find a bright side, no matter what.

Here’s to better days!

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is grateful that she has to pay for her own trips to Walt Disney World.