== Gratitude Not Dead After All = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

This just in: Feelings of genuine thanks return to U.S., unpack bags, 'might stay awhile'

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/11/22/notes112206.DTL&nl=fix

It is time to be giving up some thanks, good and juicy and now. It is time -- somewhat shockingly, somewhat unexpectedly, mostly beautifully -- to take this crazy new opportunity to say, Oh my God I can't believe it and I didn't think it was possible but here we are again, in a thanks-giving mood. Who woulda thunk?

It has not always been this way. It has, lo these past half-dozen bleak and Bush-stabbed years, not felt the slightest bit worthy of any sort of gracious thanksitude. Have you not noticed? Of course you have.

It has, in fact, felt like quite the opposite, like there were no more thanks left in the well of human gratitude, like we were barren and impotent and thanks were like a family of starving immigrants, shivering in the corner of the barn and wrapped only in a threadbare blanket and staring blankly at the roof and saying, Oh my God please kill us now.

Remember 2000? Early November, specifically? Neither do I. I believe I have blocked it out entirely. I believe I am, like tens of millions of Americans, much like a plane-crash victim, my brain mercifully protecting me from the deep traumatic horror of that election, the feeling that the nation's heart had been ripped through its teeth by Karl Rove's rusty toenail clippers. ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/11/22/notes112206.DTL&nl=fix