That Was The Week That Was

Now, if you get the popular culture reference in the above title, you ARE dating yourself, but it means you're my kind of people.

I figure I have about three faithful readers, so to them I apologize for no new "news" in the last week. We had an engagement party for my son on Saturday, and that entailed transforming the entire house from a den of dirt into something presentable enough to be seen by his future in-laws. In the middle of that an old college friend showed up, and so I HAD to see her, and that set me back even more.

The party went off without a hitch and a good time was had by all families. This is not always the case and we feel INCREDIBLY lucky that our future d-i-l is so wonderful and has such a great family. We are almost over the whole "Republican" thing. In fact, my goal for the next visit is NOT TO MENTION PARTY AFFILIATION ONCE. (We'll see how I do....)

Meanwhile all the people in the blog world are talking about "The Downing Street Memo." I will now tell you something very embarrassing.

I have purposely NOT read anything about the DSM. You know why? Because I would either be outraged, or depressed, or both. I would feel that I'd (and the world had) been had, and I just can't deal with all those emotions right now. I'm putting my effort into something constructive, my new political action committee, called, surprisingly, "The Margaret Johnson Ware Political Action Committee" (in part because under Mass. law a PAC controlled by only one person needs to identify itself as such.) I have put the DSM in a category of "wake me up when 5% of the population has heard of, and is outraged, by such, and then I'll hop on."

I use the figure 5% because back in the days of a wonderful movement , early to mid-80's called "Beyond War," they had two interesting factoids about the adoption of a new idea. For an idea to become "imbedded" in the public consciousness, 5% of the population had to hold that idea. For an idea to become virtually a fait accompli it had to be adopted by.......can you guess? Not 50% but 20% of the population. That's right. When 20% of American became CONVINCED that Richard Nixon should be impeached, it was as good as done. No, it didn't happen at that moment. But it had reached a critical mass that made it a virtually unstoppable notion.

So when 5% of ....hmmmm, should it be the U.S. or the world, or Western Europe or what? Well, we'll have to go with U.S. because I can't really get a handle on "world" opinion. When 5% of the U.S. has heard of the DSM and feels that it rises to the level of an impeachable offense, send me an email.

As usual, I have digressed, but that's my perogative is it not? Later this week I'll tell you the story of my PAC and the wonderful initial success it has had.

And so to bed.....