Quote/unquote

 
"I may be blind, but I'm not oblivious."
  --- New York State Governor David Patterson, who is legally blind, in response to questions about whether he would run again after rumors of Obama's advice not to.
 
"In a boat down a fast-running creek,
It feels like trees on the bank are rushing by,
What seems to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft leaving this world..."
                        --- Rumi (1207-1273) happy birthday, you Sufi goofball you.
 
"Many of the problems that we tend to lay at the feet of popular culture have more mundane causes. The roots of the most serious problems American children face, problems like lack of a quality education, violent victimization, early pregnancies, single parenthood, and obesity, poverty plays a starring role; popular culture is a bit player at best. And other problems that this book addresses, such as materialism, substance abuse, racism, sexism, and homophobia might be highly visible in popular culture, but it is the adults around young people, as well as the way in which American society is structured, that contributes most to these issues."
--- Karen Sternheimer in her book "Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture: Why Media is not the Answer."
 
"Look at TV: fat people dancing, talentless people singing, Glenn Beck slinging lunatic conspiracy theories. Stupid stuff sells. The genius of Twitter is that it manages to be even stupider than TV.  It's so stupid it's brilliant. No person with an IQ above 100 could possibly care what Ashton Kutcher or Ashlee Simpson has to say about anything.  But Kutcher has 3.5 million Twitter followers, and Simpson has 1.5 million. Who are these millions  of people? If you're an investor in Twitter, you probably think, who cares?  Kutcher and Simpson might be buffoons, but they've built  bigger audiences than a lot of TV shows."
                             --- Daniel Lyons, in Newsweek, 9.28.09

(editor's note: compiled by Wilson in St. Louis. )