Blyth Times

Get The Best Job in Washington!

Want to try for one of the best jobs in the world? Want to be in Washington at one of the most exciting times ever? Then learn more about the White House Fellowships, one of America's most prestigious programs for leadership and public service.

Each year about 11 to 19 people in the early stages of their career are chosen as White House Fellows. They spend a year in Washington working full-time as paid assistants to senior White House staff, the Vice President and other top-ranking officials in the Executive Branch of the government. They also have an education program which gives them the chance to meet and hear from leaders in the administration, Congress, the media and the business world. Add to that the fact they go on several interesting domestic and foreign trips. Plus they earn about $100,000. Yes, it is a great job.

The White House Fellowship program was started during the administration of Lyndon Johnson. Many outstanding Americans have been Fellows, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, author Doris Kearns Goodwin, and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Recent classes have included men and women who serve in the military as well as doctors, lawyers, educators, and those with a background in non-profit organizations as well as finance and media. Colin Powell has said about the program, "What I learned about government as a White House Fellow was the key to the opportunities that came my way."

Successful applicants have a strong educational background, have already demonstrated leadership in their careers and have a commitment to public service. Other important qualities - an ability to work well with others and a positive attitude. Not surprising for such a great job, the selection process is very competitive. Hundreds apply and they are winnowed down through regional panels to thirty finalists. The finalists spend a selection weekend with the members of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. Then the Commission recommends those individuals it finds most qualified for the fellowship to the President for appointment as White House Fellows.

You can find out more about the program and how to apply at whitehouse.gov/fellows/. Almost every Fellow says that their year in Washington was amazing and the experiences they had and the friends they made were important to them for the rest of their lives.

Talking to Amazing Ann

  Ann Coulter is at it again. Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum), the newest book from the leggy, blonde, irritatingly slender liberal-basher hits bookstores this week and is already climbing Amazon’s bestseller list. And so the usual media Ann-a-rama has begun with Coulter launching the book on her pal Sean Hannity’s radio and TV shows. She’ll be on “Today” on Tuesday and will follow that with countless interviews. UPDATE: She was supposed to be on "Today" on Tuesday but was abruptly cancelled.   "Today" claims it was because of "breaking news." Coulter isn’t buying that.   The "Today" cancellation just adds to the controversy she is the master at creating.    Undoubtedly she will do countless other interviews. -Myrna

Coulter’s publicist says she never turns down an interview, even on radio talk shows that sound as if they emanate from someone’s garage. She knows her people are listening and buying thousands of copies of her books. She has already had six New York Times mega-bestsellers. Yes, there is a vast right-wing book-buying public who loves a girl who can call JFK “a venereal-disease-ridden sexual profligate and drug addict”; who never forget that “Sen. Ted Kennedy drove Mary Jo Kopechne off the Chappaquiddick Bridge”; who can recall that “President Clinton walked to and from church every Sunday carrying a ten-pound bible for the cameras – and then returned from church on Palm Sunday, 1996, to use a cigar as a sexual aid on Monica Lewinsky”; who can document, in footnote after footnote, that the Swift Boat Veterans were correct in their condemnation of the war record of “the mountebank Kerry.”

I talked to Coulter about Guilty as she was about to embark on her media tour. The book is (no surprise) another in her attacks against liberals. Her thesis this time is that liberals always act like they are being victimized, primarily by the Republican Attack Machine. While in fact, they, with the help of a very biased media, tend to victimize all who disagree with them. She has written about media bias before. “I really didn’t intend to make the book so much about the media,” she told me, "but I just couldn’t help it because the media has so much power. They like to act as if they are powerless, but everything today is about the media. I just had to point out all their dirty little tricks. If you are Paul Revere you have to sound the alarm.”

She also tells the little-reported tale of how Obama won his Illinois Senate seat. During the presidential campaign, Obama was full of sanctimony about keeping candidates’ families off-limits. But, Coulter writes, “The only reason he was in position to run for president in the first place was that the Media Attack Machine ripped open the sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents … Why did no one know that during the 2008 campaign? The fact that Obama won his Senate seat by rifling through the divorce records of his opponents is surely at least as important as the fact that Palin’s teenage daughter got pregnant out of wedlock,” she contends.

What does Coulter think of Sarah Palin? “I loved Sarah Palin. The media went after her so viciously and it was all about class,” she says. “She is a real middle-class woman, just the sort of woman that Democrats are always pretending they represent, and they attacked her relentlessly. I am not saying she was ready to be president this year, but with McCain running, she wasn’t going to get anywhere near being president. If she goes back to Alaska and is a good governor and studies and learns, she may be a presidential candidate a couple elections from now. Maybe she could be another Reagan. Remember, Reagan didn’t run for president at forty-four. She has things she needs to learn. But she has heart and soul and you can’t learn that from a book.”

As for Caroline Kennedy’s bid to be named senator, Coulter snorted, “I am indignant! In New York and Massachusetts people act as if the rest of the country is primitive, but they are the ones who are so primitive and nepotistic to even consider her. Fortunately, I think that may be headed for a crash landing. Every time she opens her mouth it gets worse.”

Although Coulter has had her great success preaching to the converted, I wondered if she also hoped her books might be read, as well, by independents or even liberals who might be swayed by her arguments. "But liberals don’t read," she replied. “If they read anything they wouldn’t be liberals. Whenever I go to dinner parties it is always conservatives who know things, who have the facts. I want my readers to read the book and be able to shoot down the myth of the Republican Attack Machine. I want them to argue with liberals on the street.”

Still, as the Inauguration approaches, Coulter is feeling just a bit more positive about the Obama presidency. “Judging by his Cabinet choices, he may not be as crazy as I thought he was," she said. “That may be worse for my career but better for the country. And that’s all right with me.”

 

Teach Your Kids About Martin

Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday will be observed next Monday. There are lots of ways you and your kids could make this holiday as special as it should be. Each year this holiday is observed on the third Monday in January around the time of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, which is January 15. After King's death in 1968, a bill was introduced in Congress to make King's birthday a national holiday. An important supporter of the holiday was musician Stevie Wonder who released a single called "Happy Birthday" to popularize the idea. Six million signatures were collected on a petition asking Congress to pass the bill, which was the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history. In 1983, President Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor the great civil rights leader who changed America.

"I DIDN'T KNOW THAT"

Here are some Facts About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and His Holiday:

• He went to Morehouse College when he was only 15 years old.

• He got a Ph.D. from Boston University and met his wife, Coretta, in Boston.

• He was the first African American to be on the cover of Time Magazine.

• He was the youngest man to win the Nobel Prize.

• On January 17, 2001, for the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all 50 U.S. states.

Most schools will mark Dr. King's birthday with programs, projects or a day off, but here are some suggestions for other ways you can help your children understand the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and his importance to America.

1. Have your child read a book about Martin Luther King Jr. or other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Here are some we recommend:

• Martin's Big Words: The Life of Martin Luther King (Jump at the Sun) by Doreen Rapaport, ages 4-8.

• A Picture Book of Martin Luther King by David Adler (Holiday House), ages 4-8.

• I Have a Dream by Margaret Davidson (Scholastic Paperback), ages 9-12.

• If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King by Ellen Levine, (Scholastic), ages 9-12.

• Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks, (Dial Books), ages 8-10.

• Frederick Douglass: A Picture Book by David Adler (Holiday House), ages 4-8.

2. The web site enchantedlearning.com has several printable books about Dr. King including one called "I Have A Dream" which describes his dream of equality for all. It encourages kids to write about a personal dream they have that would improve the world and how they would make their dream come true.

3. Watch a DVD about Martin Luther King, Jr. Some suggestions: Biography: Martin Luther King, The Man and the Dream (A& E DVD Archives). Or do a little time traveling in an animated adventure called Our Friend Martin, starring Ed Asner and Levar Burton. (20th Century Fox)

4. On his actual birthday, take your kids on a Web tour of the most important sites of the civil rights movement. You will find a guided tour on the National Park Service web site, "We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement" at cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights.

5. We've already noted that Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" is one of the most important speeches in American history. You and the kids can listen to it on the History Channel at historychannel.com as well as Robert Kennedy's sad announcement of Dr. King's death. Ask them why they think the speech is so powerful and had such an impact on America?

6. Dr. King's life was one service to others. Make his birthday a day of service for your family by volunteering at a local organization that is involved in helping others. In fact National Service Day this year is on the day his birthday is being celebrated. Many areas also have special events around Dr. King's birthday that emphasize tolerance, diversity and understanding. Check your local news

Magazine Meltdown

Last week’s Manhattan  magazine buzz was all about whether Anna Wintour, the imperious editor of Vogue and the model for the Devil in “The Devil Wears Prada” was about to leave the job she had held for almost twenty years.   Wintour, 59, at a panel of Conde Nast editors at the Plaza ,discussing the magazine business, denied the rumor.  She  said,
"I have no plans to leave American Vogue now or in the foreseeable future.”  She also commented, “My father always said to me that when you get too angry that's the time to stop. The day I get too angry is the day I take up gardening."  

So though Wintour  is not yet  ready to gather her rosebuds, she did admit that the current economic downturn has even  made her high-fashion editing more sensitive. For example, she noted she had recently decided  against photographing  a sequined mini-dress with a $50,000 price tag. ( But in the September issue Vogue did  include a feature about  a $64,000 gold-dipped mink coat. Ah, those were the days.

She also saw an upside for magazines in these hard economic times.  “I think it makes you a little edgier,” she declared and later added, "I think we’ve been in difficult times before and we’ve come out of them and I’m sure that we will again.”   The others on the panel, David Remnick  of  The New Yorker and Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair agreed.

“I think magazines have a future,” said Remick.  The New Yorker’s ad pages are down 26% so far this year.  “If your magazine—or your company, whatever it is—has a point it can do well in tough times," said Carter.  Vanity Fair’s ad pages are down 13.6% and Vogue’s are down almost  10% through the November issues. 

 All this bland cheerfulness and glad tidings was even too much for some in the panel’s audience made up of devoted media watchers. . For  the magazine industry is currently  in a meltdown.  Ad pages have cratered.   Several magazines, both old and new, have shut down. .   And hundreds of magazine workers, both on the editorial and advertising staffs,  have been fired.   By the end of September over three thousand  had been laid off.   Just a few weeks ago hundreds more were added to that list  by Time Inc on what their employees called “The Day of the Ax.”  Right now there is a hiatus to the blood letting  because many magazines  do not hand out pink slips at holiday time.   It may be brief. 

Just as worrisome is the precipitous drop in the stocks of the publicly-owned publishing companies.  Eight stocks have lost more than 80% of their value in the past year and six are lower than they were on Black Monday in 1987.   And the privately-owned media giants  like Conde Nast and Hearst have showed they are hurting by also firing staffers and shutting magazines.  Hearst closed CosmoGirl, O at Home, and Quick&Simple.  CondeNast reduced the frequency of Portfolio and Men’s Vogue. 

So do magazines really have a future?  Yes, of course, some very strong magazines will survive.   But magazine publishing, overall, is really  a small business that for too long has acted big, often lavishing salaries and perksout of proportion to the profits a magazine as a business earns. In the future as print advertising continues its downward  spiral, staffs will be smaller and less well paid and  budgets for everything  far tighter.   There just may be no more editors like Anna Wintour. For unless publishing makes some big changes, by the time she starts gardening, it will be the industry itself that will be pushing up the daisies.          

 

Memories of Mumbai

Like many other past visitors to India, I watched with horror as flames leaped from the top floors of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. It was set afire during the terrorist attack on the hotel and its guests. I stayed at the Taj last year. I was heading a delegation of White House Fellows, a group of outstanding young Americans, who spend a year working in the executive branch of the government.

The Taj is a historic hotel, with more than a thousand rooms, which opened in 1903 in the days of the British Raj. It stands opposite the famous Gateway of India, Mumbai's most famous monument News reports say that the terrorist bands that attacked several hotels and a Jewish center landed at the jetty at the Gateway. Altogether ten sites were hit. Latest news reports say that at least 125 have died and more than three hundred have been wounded in the attack. The gunmen are still holding hostages at the Taj which is making fire fighting treacherous.

Anyone who ever stayed at this beautiful hotel, rich with the complex history of India, is especially touched by this tragedy. In India our group met with many leaders from social workers, who were trying to help girls from low caste learn a trade, to heads of call centers who were proud of India's new technological skills. After a dinner in an elaborate hotel one night our group visited the Gateway of India. We sat looking out over this city of eighteen million, filled with dramatic contrasts. It is India's financial center and home of Bollywood but it also has the largest slum in Asia. India is a country where millions are deeply spiritual yet still believe in the transforming power of modern education to give themselves and their children better lives. How tragic those terrorists filled with hate have tried to harm India and inevitably scare away the international tourists the country needs.

A Different Sarah

I know many of us are convinced that only today could a woman over 40 reinvent herself and become a big nationwide success. But it isn’t so. And since it is Thanksgiving week I want to tell you about a forgotten but extraordinary Victorian woman named Sarah Hale.  

Born in 1788, she was left a widow at 34. Penniless, she had five children to raise and so she supported them by sewing and writing poetry. At 39 she wrote a novel called Norwood, the first novel about slavery that was a big bestseller. She then became the editor of the Ladies’ Magazine in Boston and wrote successful collections of poetry, called Poems for Our Children, which included the poem “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”  

Some S.I. Newhouse of the day lured her to Philadelphia to a bigger and better job on a magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book which was the largest and  most successful publication in its day. It may be the fashion to sneer at women’s magazines and women magazine editors these days but Sarah at that time, through her publication’s pages, became the most influential woman in America. She was the first to advocate equal education for girls, start day nurseries for working women and suggest public playgrounds. She also supported American women writers and published them in her magazine. And the S.I. Newhouse of the day supported her. She remained the editor until she was 90.

Pretty impressive, right? But what she is remembered for, when she is remembered, is her promoting Thanksgiving as a national holiday. It was her idea. She wrote, “We have too few holidays. Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, should be a national festival and observed by all people.” She thought such a holiday would have a positive effect on our country. She wrote, "There is a deep moral influence in these periodical seasons of rejoicing, in which whole communities participate. They bring out … the best sympathies in our natures."

As the nation hurtled toward the Civil War, she felt such a holiday was especially important. In 1863, in the darkest year of the conflict, Lincoln did issue the proclamation that established Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Sarah had spent 40 years and written thousands of letters to achieve this goal. It is interesting in these troubled times to read Lincoln’s proclamation (www.historyplace.com). In, perhaps, our country’s darkest hour he still wrote of the blessings and the bounty of America.

Yes, the middle-aged Sarah Hale — tough, smart, determined — was quite a woman. Maybe she proves that women today are not different than American women in the past.  But, rather, we are lucky to be their descendants.  

Marina Oswald: Forty-five Years Later

‘I still don’t believe Lee was the lone gunman,” says Marina Oswald Porter, the widow of President Kennedy’s assassin. She talked to me on the 45th anniversary of Lee Harvey Oswald’s being gunned down in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Marina, now 67, says, “I don’t know if Lee even shot the president.” Was he part of a conspiracy? “I don’t know. But he said he was a ‘patsy.’ It was an odd word for him to use. I think he realized he had been set up.” first spoke with Marina 20 years ago, and am one of the few journalists she has talked to in recent years (she was on Oprah in ’96). Twenty years ago she had already begun to have doubts about Oswald’s involvement in the assassination. Right after JFK’s death, she had been a persuasive witness against Lee, in fact, the star witness, during the Warren Commission hearings. “I was led,” she says. At the time, she was a naïve 22-year-old, a Russian, who spoke hardly any English. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to lead a witness.” She acknowledges, “I couldn’t say that Lee was wonderful. But it would be easier for me if Lee had gone on trial. If that was the end of it.” Although Marina is uncertain of the details of a conspiracy, she has believed that Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, was part of it and that crime figures might have been involved. She also questioned why Oswald was taught Russian while he was in the military and was able to enter and leave the Soviet Union so easily, taking her with him to America, at the height of the Cold War. Raised under Stalin, Marina feared that after the assassination she would also be imprisoned. After Lee’s death, she once told me, she believed the FBI kept her under surveillance and that some of the men she met might have been FBI agents. In 1965 she married a Dallas carpenter, Kenneth Porter. The two divorced in 1974 but reconciled and have lived together for years although they never remarried. They have one son. She had two daughters with Oswald. “I have a grandchild who is already in college,” she says. She leads “a very quiet life” in a Dallas suburb and became an American citizen several years ago. She still doesn’t drive or use a computer. “How could I? I misspell too many words in English.” She worked for years in a friend’s Army surplus store where, no, they didn’t sell guns. She told me she has visited Russia several times to see a friend and stay with her aunt before she died. “It is better there than it was. Putin has done good things for the country.” She has never visited Lee’s grave or gone to the museum in the Texas School Book Depository (where Oswald worked) that is focused on the assassination. She explains, “I can’t live in the past,” although she says she is often reminded of It., especially when the anniversary comes around. She does not read the books or watch the television shows about the assassination that debate Lee’s role. “All the books and programs are just trying to convince a new generation of their theories.” “The more I learn the less I know,” she says, “and that isn’t exactly pertaining to Lee.” But she adds, “I try to weigh this and weigh that. It is an enigma but I know there are too many coincidences, just too many coincidences.”

Talking Turkey

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Amaze the crowd at the Thanksgiving table with your knowledge of the holiday. 

 

Here are five things you will know (and they probably won’t!)

v     The main course for the Pilgrims at that first Harvest feast wasn’t turkey but was probably venison, supplied by their Indian guests.  And the meal definitely didn’t include pumpkin pie, bread rolls or stuffing.  The Pilgrims had no ovens to bake and very little sugar for sweets. Yes, it was a hard life! 

v     The Pilgrims didn’t use forks so it was knives, spoons, and fingers only for the first Thanksgiving.  

v     Each year, the President pardons a turkey, and nobody knows exactly why.  Some say it happens because Abraham Lincoln pardoned his son Tad’s pet turkey.  After President Bush pardoned a turkey in 2005, the gobbler, like a Superbowl champion, was flown toDisneyland  to serve as Grand Marshall in Disneyland’s Thanksgiving Parade.

v      In case you ever wondered, the average American consumes on average, 4500 calories, at a Thanksgiving dinner, but then who really cares?  Just  pass the mashed potatoes.  

v     And, remember, it was Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, who made Thanksgiving Day a national holiday to be celebrated every year on the last Thursday of November. You can find his declaration at www.historyplace.com/lincoln/thanks.htm.   It  is interesting to read because even in the middle of that terrible war, he rightly saw that there are always reasons for Americans to be thankful and optimistic about the future. 

             

Obama, Hillary, and The West Wing

Is President-Elect Obama reading Doris Kearn Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln or is he watching the boxed set of the seventh season of The West Wing ? Why do I ask? Because in one of the final episodes of that show, the President-Elect — a Hispanic Congressman who reportedly was based on an unknown Chicago politician named Obama — asked his defeated Republican opponent to take the position of Secretary of State in his new Cabinet.

   The Republican, a Senator named Vinick, was older, wiser and had a lot more foreign-policy experience than the TV president-elect — who was practically an unknown before the race. Though the two disagreed during the campaign, the president-elect is shown as wise and self-assured enough to tap into the older candidate’s greater knowledge and broader relationships. Okay, okay — I know it was just a TV show. But if the offer is really made and Hillary really accepts, there is an uncanny similarity — even though they were rivals during the primaries and not the general election. The fact is, Hillary was probably tougher for Obama to defeat than McCain.

But why would Obama want the Former First Lady in the role? Well, she is scary, isn’t she? She certainly seemed to get Obama off his game in the primary debates more than McCain did in the presidential round. As Secretary of State she could easily play Bad Cop to Obama’s Good Cop on the world stage. And she would probably love it. Yes, American could agree to meet with Ahmadjinejad or Chávez if it would mean those guys would be sitting across from tough-as-nails Hillary. I bet some folks would be willing to order that on pay-per-view.

Hillary would solve another big problem for Obama. As Secretary of State, she would be in control of the two most gaffe-prone senior Democrats, our new Vice President—-Elect Joe Biden and her own dearly beloved. By the way, wasn’t Biden picked because of his foreign-policy experience? Yes, he has had a multitude of goofs in that area, which the press conveniently ignored. But I wonder how he is reacting to the talk of Hillary at State. Well, Biden did acknowledge during the campaign that Hillary would have made a better vice-presidential candidate. If he complains to his new boss, I suppose Obama could tell him coolly that he was just trying to rectify the mistake Biden had already pointed out.

And wasn’t there talk of Bill Clinton becoming some kind of official envoy solving the India-Pakistan conflict? Bill, as always, might be a bit of a challenge for our girl. One wonders how she would handle Bill’s messy foreign entanglements. I don’t mean the rumored one with an attractive female Canadian politician but rather that really questionable deal in Kazakhstan that even bothered those perennial Clinton apologists, the New York Times. Perhaps having Hillary in charge would be the best way to keep control of those two.

Why would Hillary want the job? Well, being senator is nice, but she is one of a hundred — and still fairly far down in the pecking order. Though there have been two female Secretaries of State before her, she would be the only one who had also been First Lady and Senator — a hat trick that no other woman has scored. And if Obama picks her it would be a big positive to start his administration — because it would make him look as smart as a character in a television show, and what could be better than that?  

Age Wars, Anyone?

         Which is the only  prejudice  that remains acceptable.  It is ageism.  Voters in the  recent election said that age was more of an issue than race which means, of course, that more voted against  McCain because of his age than voted against Obama because of his race. And nobody seems to think this is a prejudice that even deserves much comment.

     Pundits keep lauding Obama’s victory not only because of its inclusiveness but because it is a generational change.  Obama, though technically a baby boomer, is being touted as our first post-boomer president.  He comes in after two leading-edge boomers who both had seriously flawed presidencies.

      It is Obama’s youthful telegenic appearance, his coolness, his understanding of the power of the Internet that are important parts of his appeal to the public and, especially, to the media which need the young, the hip, the photogenic.   There is very much a sense of out-with-the -old and in-with-the-new, and in this case the old seems anything or anyone fiftyfive plus.  In fact, one wonders if in the future fiftyfive plus will be the sell-by date for any Presidential candidate. 

      This election also seemed to reinforce what we already know, that we now live in a society where experience doesn’t matter very much.   Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain went down claiming experience counted.   It didn’t.  Hillary’s harking back and McCain’s reference to even fairly recent history turned people off.  

        Americans have had great affection for “the greatest generation,” the generation of Obama’s grandparents, those who grew up during the Depression, and fought World War II.  Their sacrifices and their selflessness are still admired.    But there is a lot less affection or respect for baby boomers, especially leading-edge boomers. McCain’s defeat was the final shrugging off of the sacrifice of the Viet Nam vets.     

       Add to that baby boomers tend to be as full of ageism as anyone younger.     It is boomers who , while still humming “  Forever young”  reach for the Botox, the  Restalyne and the Viagra.   They have tried, somewhat desperately, to stay ageless rather than become mature.    Part of the problem with ageism now is that not only do the young not respect their elders any more.    Those who are older do not respect themselves

       In a way, ageism is not different from racial prejudice. African-Americans always  acknowledged  that they  internalized the negative attitudes society had about them and their physical appearance.  It is the same way boomers feel about their wrinkles and themselves.  But in the last years the media have helped change the image of black Americans.   Karl Rove was right.   The Huxtables of the Bill Cosby Show helped prepare the mindset for Obama’s election.   But the media, which does not even measure the appeal of their shows to viewers over 49, has no interest in creating  flattering portraits of older Americans.          

       This young-old divide can become a major problem for the future.  Boomers are still the largest segment of the population.  And, they are the ones whose  401(ks) have been decimated.   Part of our economy’s two-decade dizzying  growth spurt was fueled by the free-spending two-income boomers.   Now they will become the major recipients of government programs.  During the next decade more and more of them will be getting Social Security and Medicare.   More and more of them will be dealing with serious or chronic money-draining illnesses.  

       How will the public react if this generation, for which there is little fondness,  becomes our society’s greatest financial burden?    And how will the Democratic party that owes its recent victory to its enormous appeal to young voters deal with the increasing needs of the boomer generation?   Perhaps that depends on whether ageism, the prejudice we don’t even have be embarrassed about, becomes even more pervasive.