Will The Real Generation Obama Stand Up?
By Lakshmi Chaudhry

“Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more–and it is time for our generation to answer that call,” declared Barack Obama, uttering the word “generation” no fewer than thirteen times in his speech announcing his intention to run for President. There is no mistaking his campaign theme: it’s time for the old to move over and make way for the new.

Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope makes it clear just whom he’s calling old: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation–a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago–played out on the national stage,” writes Obama. It’s a theme he’s returned to with increasing frequency lately. “There’s no doubt that we represent the kind of change Senator Clinton can’t deliver on. And part of it’s generational,” Obama told Fox News in early November. “Senator Clinton and others have been fighting some of the same fights since the ’60s. It makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”

For Obama, who is 46, and his followers, boomer politics clearly have to go. What is less obvious is whom Obama represents. He often speaks to the Millennials, recently telling cheering college kids in South Carolina, “It’s your generation’s turn.” But rarely mentioned is Obama’s own generation, i.e., Generation X, the Lost Generation, whose name has been virtually erased from the national conversation.

“We hear plenty about people in their teens and twenties, and even more about people in their fifties, but the stodgy old species known as the thirtysomething has been shuttled off, like Molly Ringwald herself, to some sort of Camp Limbo for demographic lepers,” fumes Details editor at large Jeff Gordinier in his upcoming book, X Saves the World. A recent Chicago Tribune article on Obama’s message of generational change focuses exclusively on 18- to 30-year-olds, discussing every other living generation in passing but with nary a mention of his own peers.

The irony is that X-ers–a sociocultural label typically used to describe those born between 1961 and 1976–have become invisible at a time when they are changing the face of politics. As Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD.com and best known as the Blogfather of the progressive netroots, says, “It’s people drawn from Generation X–the people who have gotten involved in politics this decade–who have brought about the whole new movement of progressive Democrats.”

A 1990 Time magazine cover story described the then-twentysomething generation variously as “lazy,” “passive” and possessing “only a hazy sense of their own identity.” As the decade rolled along, the same kids would soon be dubbed “conservative.” But many of the X-ers were less lost than lost in translation, their rejection of politics-as-usual mistaken for apathy, their questioning of liberal credo interpreted as “backlash” politics, their anxiety about economic security condemned as materialism and their reluctance to be identified either by labels or with larger institutions dismissed as a lack of commitment.

For the rest of the story, click here.

The big-box company’s new glossy environmental report can’t hide that its fundamental problem is its business model.

Wal-Mart’s New Greenwashing Report
By Sarah Anderson

Two years ago, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott announced a bold initiative to turn the world’s largest corporation green. After numerous delays, the company has finally released its first progress report.

So how much greener are they? To find out, you first need to wade through 40 pages of data on other various and sundry issues. For example, the report boasts that company employees enrolled in a personal sustainability project lost a combined total of 184,315 pounds in 2006 (1.3 pounds per enrollee).

There’s also a glowing review of health benefits, even though less than half of employees buy into a company plan that many have criticized as unaffordable on a Wal-Mart paycheck. (The company pays full-time employees an average of $10.76 per hour and refuses to disclose part-time pay).

The company brags about its charitable giving, highlighting that it has handed out over half a million dollars in one Chicago neighborhood selected as its first Jobs and Opportunity Zone. (The report doesn’t mention that Chicago is a hotbed of opposition. Activists have blocked one Supercenter, and in 2006 the mayor had to use veto power to kill a measure that would’ve required all big-box retailers to pay decent wages and benefits.)

But what about the much-hyped environmental goals? For two years, CEO Scott has received laudatory press for his pledge that Wal-Mart will some day be supplied entirely by renewable energy, create zero waste, and sell sustainable products.

The centerpiece of Scott’s green initiative has been his promise to reduce global warming pollution from existing stores by 20 percent by the year 2012. A look at the results so far reveals why these indicators are buried in the back of the report. On page 47, we learn that the company’s carbon emissions actually increased by nine percent in 2006. On the goal of producing zero waste, the report merely states that a “measurement tool is in development.”

To his credit, Scott admits in the report that there is “work ahead of us.” However, what he is likely never to admit is that even if he achieved all of his stated goals, Wal-Mart’s business model is inherently unsustainable.

For the rest of the story, click here.

Rove New Newsweek Columnist

Newsweek magazine hired the president’s former deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, as a columnist last week. What do you think?

Alan Baker,
Systems Analyst
“His insights into the presidential race will be invaluable. I wonder if he thinks McCain should be backstabbed or just trash-talked?”

Julie Pertwee,
Nutritionist
“I wonder if it still counts as planting stories when you’re doing it in your own column.”

Dave Troughton,
Mover
“Karl Rove is the last person I want to get sex advice from.”

TheOnion.com

Today’s photo of the day shows Ahmad Rashad and his new wife, Sale Johnson. For those who don’t know, Rashad was formerly married to Phylicia (Allen) Rashad. Johnson is Woody Johnson’s ex-wife. Ummm, best of luck to them!

Today’s video of the day comes from Kanye West, who offered a touching tribute to his mother in Belgium on Sunday. For those who don’t know, he attempted the tribute a few nights before and broke down on stage. All the best to Kanye!!!!!!!!!