Bored with ward

Last updated on July 27th, 2017 at 01:23 pm

Ward Reilly—a popular figure at this site in recent months—wonders where the children are:

Having been a part of the anti-war movement since before the “war” with Iraq started, I can attest to the fact that what was sorely missing before this year was the “youth of America.” Our meetings and marches were dominated by Viet Nam era citizens, and some of the students that did come to our early meetings quickly got bored with hanging around with an older generation, understandably …

Meetings are tedious. As much as we encouraged and recruited, we had very little luck in drawing the youth of our nation into the movement in large numbers.

Kids are smart these days, Ward.

Posted by Tim B. on 12/31/2005 at 01:53 PM

1. The environmentalists poisoned any hope of converting me during elementary school in the mid 70’s.  In Environment class, we were relentlessly pounded with doomsday propaganda and did projects illustrating the coming end of civilization.  If a fourth grader could see through that crap, I not surprised that high schoolers can even with slipping education standards.

   Posted by deadman on 12/31 at 02:16 PM • permalink

1. Ward is a dope.  My daughter has a friend who plans on only serving 6 years (he has already done two) and will be deployed to Afganistan in February (after basic he made sure he got into a unit most likely to be deployed the Tenth Mountain).  That is a volunteer. You don’t have to plan to be a careerist to be a volunteer. And he doesn’t need the money.

   Posted by David A on 12/31 at 02:18 PM • permalink

1. This is why lefties are in favor of reinstituting the draft. If young men face involuntary military service, then the lefties hope that the young will become motivated against war.

   Posted by Steven Den Beste on 12/31 at 02:46 PM • permalink

1. Similarly, a Journalism Professor recently lamented in a Portland “Oregonian” editorial that journalism students just didn’t want to save the World anymore but instead wanted more to go into Public Relation areas of journalism [say what?], which apparently pays more.

   Therefore, he ascribed this trend to selfish materialism on the part of the Yutes.

   Coincidentally, my 18 y.o. daughter, who is interested in a Media career, recently “shadowed” a local National Network News affiliate newsroom in a large city.  She reported that the reporters in the newsroom sat around bored and wishing out loud that a car wreck would occur so they could have some “news”.  Otherwise, they just awaited wire reports and listened to the police radio. [But they did not watch Court TV.]

   She concluded without any knowledge of the above editorial that maybe she should go into Media PR. QED: The Yutes just don’t seem to be as dumb as they yutes to be.

   Posted by Joe Peden on 12/31 at 02:51 PM • permalink

1. Well, is it not a wonder that the Yutes would be bored with hanging around with a bunch of old liars and blowhards, bragging about their fake demonstrations during the Viet War?

   Posted by stats on 12/31 at 02:55 PM • permalink

1. Dear Ward.  You’re old, you’re a fraud, your life was futile and you’re going to die a failure.  Happy New Year!

   Posted by richard mcenroe on 12/31 at 02:59 PM • permalink

1. Even the kids know that all that will result from hanging out with aging protesters is getting trapped at an impromptu Hippie Jam Fest.

   They don’t need geriatric tie-dyers bogarting their weed. They’ve got enough troubles already.

   Posted by Teaparty on 12/31 at 03:01 PM • permalink

1. Ward is a dumbass. Not only are the armed services meeting their enlistment objectives, it just may be possible that the younger generation does not view everything through the prism of the Vietnam war. This is post 9-11 and they realize it. I am a boomer but my generation needs to get over itself.

   Posted by Latino on 12/31 at 03:02 PM • permalink

1. Stephen, young women will face the Draft too, I think.  What A Riot! But only consistent with the demands of our God, Equality.

   Posted by Joe Peden on 12/31 at 03:03 PM • permalink

1. Some moonbat bunch tried to stir up a ‘walkout against Bush’ at the high school where I work.  They spent the better part of a month handing out leaflets and trespassing on campus to put up their posters (it was like a cockroach infestation, we were clearing them out of everywhere).  Finally, the big day came.  Only about 300 of our 3000 students actually left class.  And only about 30 of those actually left campus—and then came right back in, saying okay, they’d walked out.  All of them milled around, clueless.  And I do mean clueless—when asked what it was about, one of the kids said ‘I dunno, something about Clinton.’ When lunchtime came, one of the assistant principals (a staunch Democrat, but one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly for all that) brought out the portable microphone and invited them to make their case, let their voices be heard.  None of the few who took her up on it were coherent (one was clearly reading from somebody else’s script, since she couldn’t pronounce half the words).  It was truly pathetic.  A couple of the staff who were involved with the Cesar Chavez activism back in the day were shaking their heads with pitying scorn.

   Posted by Achillea on 12/31 at 03:04 PM • permalink

1. great story achilles! Ha!

   Posted by debi L. on 12/31 at 03:10 PM • permalink

1. Robert Kaplan, the author of “Imperial Grunts” interviewed American soldiers all over the world.  He spoke to an Army special forces guy who said he took ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) while a student at the University of California at Berkeley.  Cal is well-known as one of the last redoubts of Stalinism in America, except for Journalism schools, Kaplan asked him if he was harassed on campus on days he wore his uniform.  The soldier said “no”, and that students frequently came up to him and thanked him for what he was doing.

   Will America survive the pernicious influence of the demented baby-boomers?  Watch this space.

   Posted by Mystery Meat on 12/31 at 03:12 PM • permalink

1. Look, I, for one, am just grateful as all get-out that Ward Reilly was in Germany protecting us from Vietnamese Communists, but the man needs to hang up his Wal-Mart made-in-Honduras boonie cap, take a bath, get a shave and stop being an ass. He’s now becoming a bore of Homeric proportions, a human tranquilizer, a seedy old fraud whose fifth-rate propaganda speeches are probably drowned out by the gurgling hack of his audience’s sleep apnea. Throw the bong away, Ward, and hie thee away to the half-way house.

   Posted by paco on 12/31 at 03:37 PM • permalink

1. Our meetings and marches were dominated by Viet Nam era citizens, and some of the students that did come to our early meetings quickly got bored with hanging around with an older generation, understandably …

   “Down with the Establishment!”Oh, wait… Horror! That’s us!

   Posted by deblucar on 12/31 at 03:57 PM • permalink

1. Ward Reilly, Cindy Sheehan, charter members of the Useless And Clueless Leftard Club.

   Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 12/31 at 04:16 PM • permalink

1. It’s part of the new conservatism of today’s young adults.  A press item today reports that Australia’s marriage rate has increased 5% over last year.

   The downside is that ankle-length floral printed skirts are back.  I say my daughter wearing one in the house and thought, “How did that hippie get in here?”.

   Interesting comment about journalism and PR: my daughter’s experience exactly.  Having graduated with a BA in media she has taken up PR with an ‘alternative’ film distributor.

   Posted by walterplinge on 12/31 at 06:09 PM • permalink

1. #4: And as a bonus of going into PR, you get to use your press releases to pull the wool over the eyes of the idiots who did go into straight journalism.

   Posted by PW on 12/31 at 08:37 PM • permalink

1. The good news is that eventually these sad pathetic relics will die off and we won’t have to listen to them anymore.  Or at least we won’t have to ignore them.

   The not so good news is that as a member of the same generation I probably won’t have much time left myself to appreciate their absence.  It’d be much better if the Fascist Smirkychimp W. McHitlerburton really did send them to the Gulag.  I’d cheerfully march onto the extermination camp myself if I knew the Ward Reillys and Cindy Sheehans and Michael Moores had preceeded me.

   Posted by Steve Skubinna on 12/31 at 10:03 PM • permalink

1. Steve — Relax.  Between their bile, their drinking, the drugs, and the social diseases they diligently courted all through the 60’s and 70’s, we should see them off with plenty of time left to goose the nurses from our wheelchairs, in celebration…

   Posted by richard mcenroe on 12/31 at 10:11 PM • permalink

1. It’s all about Ageing actually …

   Silly marxist columnist Terry Lane at The Age pines for his youthful days of “energy and an optimism and, dare we say it, an idealism” with an old man’s sour view of the present:

   “In 1966 smart alecs did not pour scorn on the concepts of left and right in politics. The Labor Party was not yet completely the captive of capital. We believed that there was a momentum in political events and that eventually – possibly soon – things would change.

   “We had hope! Hope! What a pathetic delusion. The best we can manage now is a sort of fatalistic resignation …”

   and

   “Last year was one of darkest, except to those for whom the shackles on capital have been thrown off – it’s sad for Kerry that he died just before he got the go-ahead to minimise his employees’ wages. Bad timing.

   “But for the majority of us it is all a matter of indifference and boredom. Perhaps the majority is right. Who cares? This isn’t ‘66, mate. Caring is old-fashioned …”

   Off to the the home for you Terry!

   Posted by Geoffrey MG on 01/01 at 12:48 AM • permalink

1. “We believed that there was a momentum in political events…” — Terry Lane.

   Damned if he wasn’t right… What?

   Posted by richard mcenroe on 01/01 at 01:36 AM • permalink

1. I think ol’ Ward who fought the VietCong in Germany, is longing for the good old days when he could stick it to tha Man, and maybe get laid after passing out some LSD to the groupies.

   Sad sack suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, whose time has passed, but can’t let it go.

   Waste of oxygen.

   Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 01/01 at 09:12 AM • permalink

1. Our meetings and marches were dominated by Viet Nam era citizens …

   Three plus decades is a hell of a long time to be stuck on stupid.

   Posted by Achillea on 01/01 at 06:04 PM • permalink

1. “Last year was one of darkest, except to those for whom the shackles on capital have been thrown off…”

   I suppose by that he means the lucky citizens of Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.  Who could complain about dying of starvation or of torture in a Gulag if one was free of the shackles of Capitalism?

   Posted by Michael Lonie on 01/02 at 12:27 AM • permalink