February 1st, 2006: Get your parkas: truthiness is the new black!
As I prepare for my trip to Tokyo, in great anticipation of joining my fellow Fulbrighters for our mid-year conference a melange of feelings has washed over me. Jumping on my suitcase, cramming in warm sweaters for our trip up to Hokkaido, the Northernmost island of Japan, to partake in the winter festival celebrations, sending off the last of letters and packages, I realize that in the midst of my life in Japan, something extremely significant has happened, and it almost slipped me by...
Hell, folks, has frozen over.
What? When did it happen? It started when truthiness, that word that defines, as the thoughful Stephen Colbert poignantly put it, the feeling in your gut rather than anything that can be claimed as fact, took precedence over anything concrete. Sure, James Frey fell to a million little pieces, Oprah supported, flip-flopped and then yelled. The Senate droned on and on and on about Alito, Bush wiretapped us all to figure out who's dating who and why....and now, W has seen the light...
The U.S.? Addicted to oil? Gosh, where have I been for the past 23 years...I must have been living under a rock in the Arctic Refuge...or hiding in my ginormous pimped out H2.
Or maybe, just maybe I was protesting for the freedom that all women want: the right to have men butt out of my reproductive private life and leave the abortion debate to my own choosing, rather than Sammy becoming the deciding factor.
Gosh, I'm gone for five months, and the country goes to pot (actually, it would of, but the Supreme Court ruled that we can't do that medically any more without fear of retribution).
So, I'll just put on my parka and ice skate over to Tokyo, where I am amicably joined by optimists, bright-eyed brilliant minds who still believe that the world can be saved. And we are going to do it, through medicine, education, human rights, economics, literature...and never give up, no matter how low our approval numbers drop, how often we are called traitors for questioning fundamental beliefs and no longer will we sit idly by and let our nation be destroyed by pundits.
I left America to study human rights....I never thought that the best place to do so would be right where I started.
Love,
An [extremely frustrated] American in Japan!
As I prepare for my trip to Tokyo, in great anticipation of joining my fellow Fulbrighters for our mid-year conference a melange of feelings has washed over me. Jumping on my suitcase, cramming in warm sweaters for our trip up to Hokkaido, the Northernmost island of Japan, to partake in the winter festival celebrations, sending off the last of letters and packages, I realize that in the midst of my life in Japan, something extremely significant has happened, and it almost slipped me by...
Hell, folks, has frozen over.
What? When did it happen? It started when truthiness, that word that defines, as the thoughful Stephen Colbert poignantly put it, the feeling in your gut rather than anything that can be claimed as fact, took precedence over anything concrete. Sure, James Frey fell to a million little pieces, Oprah supported, flip-flopped and then yelled. The Senate droned on and on and on about Alito, Bush wiretapped us all to figure out who's dating who and why....and now, W has seen the light...
The U.S.? Addicted to oil? Gosh, where have I been for the past 23 years...I must have been living under a rock in the Arctic Refuge...or hiding in my ginormous pimped out H2.
Or maybe, just maybe I was protesting for the freedom that all women want: the right to have men butt out of my reproductive private life and leave the abortion debate to my own choosing, rather than Sammy becoming the deciding factor.
Gosh, I'm gone for five months, and the country goes to pot (actually, it would of, but the Supreme Court ruled that we can't do that medically any more without fear of retribution).
So, I'll just put on my parka and ice skate over to Tokyo, where I am amicably joined by optimists, bright-eyed brilliant minds who still believe that the world can be saved. And we are going to do it, through medicine, education, human rights, economics, literature...and never give up, no matter how low our approval numbers drop, how often we are called traitors for questioning fundamental beliefs and no longer will we sit idly by and let our nation be destroyed by pundits.
I left America to study human rights....I never thought that the best place to do so would be right where I started.
Love,
An [extremely frustrated] American in Japan!
posted by Kristin at 5:17 PM
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