LUDDITES LAST STAND

I think it will be interesting to see what happens when all over-the-air television broadcasts become digital. Even though there have been innumerable public service announcements and a concerted ad campaign by the FCC I think there will be a huge uproar. The same people who are still watching TV with rabbit ears are (by and large) the same people who are on the wrong side of the "digital divide". There are simply two kinds of people in this country: those who are at least somewhat comfortable with computers and who are linked to the greater society via the Internet and those who either can't afford a computer or are unwilling to embrace the future. Time is running out for the Luddites. When their screens fill with snow and they are finally totally cut off will they accept the inevitable or will they get in their wagons and trot to Washington en masse and demand a return to simpler times?

SUNSHINE

I was playing trivia at Molly Malone's Irish Pub in Louisville on election night 2000. I vividly remember when Florida was mistakenly put in Gore's win column and it was assumed that he would be our next president. A month later in a hotel room in Chicago I watched a resigned and fatalistic Al Gore concede to he who shall never be named again. Eight years later after thousands of our soldiers have needlessly died, after our constitution has been mangled, after the reputation and mystique of this country has been degraded to perhaps its lowest ebb in many generations, we have come out of this fugue state of hatred, denial, and division. The sun has shone on this nation once again.