Quote Of The Day

I was fifteen before I saw any form of television, twenty by the time I was properly introduced to the nuclear American family happily in residence on network television – Mom and Dad, both white and presumably Protestant, content in their love for one another, his steadiness of heart and mind matched by her comforting spirit and competent managing of the household that was clean, well-lit, above all nice; two children, both adorable and neither of them known to the police; no crippling disease or black people anywhere in sight; nobody talking about money.

I’d never met such people, didn’t know the neighborhood, but apparently it is their exemplary innocence and charm that the saviors of the republic these days have in mind when they trace the cause of many of our sorrows back to the deterioration of the once-upon-a-time triple-A-rated American family values…the economy stumbles into recession, the schools decay, the currency is debased, the middle class implodes, the hope of the future is foreclosed, and why, pray tell, is that?  Not enough family values left in the minds of the free and the hearts of the brave.  ~ Lewis Lapham