I'm procrastinating in the computer lab in the English Building on doing a project about bird communication and Hockett's criteria of language. Boring boring shite, it is. So's I've been perusing the Guardian, English newspaper par excellence, and have come up with a great editorial by Will Hutton criticizing the bizarre rise of the new right, and the cultural bloc that binds the disenfranchised everyman with the uber rich corporate whore politicians. Here's an exerpt (you can read the rest here):

Its success, as Thomas Frank writes in his compelling book What's the Matter with America? , is that it has used largely cultural symbols - against irreligion, abortion, gun control, stem-cell research - to build a new working-class constituency that believes an allegedly hegemonic liberal elite wants to do down what working America holds dear.

They will build national parks on farmland, mandate special holidays for transgendered war veterans, decree only gay couples can adopt children, as part of the same world view that wants to control gun use and get UN resolutions to act in Iraq. Thus the working class becomes the ally of a party that gives tax cuts to the top 1 per cent and is set on undermining the institutions that try to offer working Americans security and opportunity. The irony could not be more complete.