The New Republic

Are you sure the "angry blogger hippie" is meant to be a hippie? To me he has more of a biker look. And the subtly ideological metateachers look angry and militant, but where's the hippie imagery?

- mnkoplow

April 1, 2011 at 9:15am

Someone has said it before, but TWS's cover artist is actually quite talented. Any idea how much it might cost to get him (or her) to bat for our team?

- wildboy

April 1, 2011 at 11:35am

"Are you sure the "angry blogger hippie" is meant to be a hippie? To me he has more of a biker look. And the subtly ideological metateachers look angry and militant, but where's the hippie imagery?" It's the burns and the chin, man. Dig it. Far out! I guess 'far out' has been replaced with 'off the hook', man.

- jacko

April 1, 2011 at 11:39am

and granny glasses. All that can still work on a Harley. I've seen it first hand. Grease and Hip convergence. Like the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

- jacko

April 1, 2011 at 11:42am

TWS evidently has a groovy kind of love goin on. Hey children what's that sound? I better get off while I'm behind. Gotta go pick up some roach clips.

- jacko

April 1, 2011 at 11:55am

They hate hippies because they are (were) mostly affluent, upper class draft dodgers who resented the fact that the "hippies" could actually be openly anti-war, lay the hippie chicks and smoke pot without getting their trust funds cut off.

- desertdog

April 1, 2011 at 3:16pm

When we were young, my wife and I dressed a bit weird and wore long hair, but we didn't inhale and didn't fit in. I thought most of the opposition to the Vietnam War was not caring about Communism or about war in general, but mostly, "Please don't inconvenience ME." Today I live among aging hippies. I don't find them much more impressive, though I have no better answers to society's and life's dilemmas. When I was in graduate school a seminar once discussed the difference between sarcasm and irony. A fellow student said, "Sarcasm is being on the shore and and mocking oblivious passengers on a sinking ship. Irony is saying, 'Oh, look, our ship is sinking.'" Today's top Google News Headline: Obama says 'Drill, baby, drill.' Will new oil policy ease gas prices? President Obama used his weekly address to announce steps to promote greater domestic oil production and reduce the burden of high gas prices. Republicans say it's not enough. Drill, baby, drill. You won't run out of irony while our ship sinks beneath our feet.

- skahn

May 14, 2011 at 2:04pm

skahn: I was intrigued by your comments but they became so ethereal and, well, sorry, convoluted, I ended up not quite knowing what you were saying! Was that intended irony (or sarcasm) on your part? Or am I just missing the point?

- Atlas-QT

May 16, 2011 at 9:22pm

A lot of hippies are now Tea Partiers -- same anti-intellectualism, nostalgia for the past/rejection of modernity, embrace of crackpot "revolution" theories, fond of questionable economic theorists (like Ayn Rand), similar hunger for ectastic experience, religious and otherwise (Jesus Freaks, back to earthers, home schooling earth mommas). I was a working class girl, living in the Haight and putting myself through school by doing clerical work on Montgomery Street (SF's financial beat) in the Mid-late 60s. The "hippies" were white and mostly apolitical, or, at best, small government/no government Libertarians. Many of the most influential were children of affluence. Even if few used that term back then. They shouldn't be confused with the New Left. Millions of dollars were made by proto-libertarian hippie entreprenuers selling drugs out the back door and hippie gegaws (produced by below minimum wage sweatshop labor) out the front. They didn't think government had the right to control what they sold or what they paid their workers. (Ken Kesey, Merry Prankster in Chief, by the way, was/is a libertarian.) If you want to know what happens to the social and economic order when libertarians are in charge, follow the arc of destruction in the Haight from 1965 to 1969 -- from pleasant liberal and working class community with thriving local businesses to lawless nightmare filled with drugged out homeless people whose degraded state was helping make a few souless exploiters very, very rich.

- esmense

June 7, 2011 at 4:36pm