OK, I'll confess that my friend Heather, aka Ellinorianne, dared me to post this diary as a snarky response to Please Thank the Women of Daily Kos.
When I went to YearlyKos in Vegas, now reinvented as Netroots Nation, I was amazed by how many folks there looked a lot like me and teacherken. Old. White. Men.
I took my son to Vegas, and also to Austin, doing my part to bring the average age down, but much of the world of kostopia (my apologies to skippy) is still a bunch of what Atrios calls Dirty Forking Hippies.(Or at least I think that's what DFH stands for). A bunch of old white guys, who were young in the sixties. We were Clean for Gene, and supported the national student strike after Kent State, when we had a little time between Dead concerts and acid trips. But I digress.
Which brings me to the real point of this diary, which is to shamelessly promote Ellinorianne's application for a DFA scholarship for Netroots Nation.
One of the reasons that the people who attend Netroots Nation are older, whiter, and more estrogenically challenged has to do with who can afford to attend a convention, with airfare, lodging, and other costs.
I've worked with this extraordinary Woman of Daily Kos day in and day out, cooked for her, met her husband and her daughter Char and even her mom. It was my pleasure to score a ticket for her to see President Obama here in Orange County.
We old white guys realize that we've screwed the pooch. It's not that we didn't try, but we didn't do enough, and we need to do our part now to make sure that people better than us are carrying the ball, or better yet, moving forward without some stupid testeronic sports metaphor that involves balls or carrying balls.
So vote for this extraordinary woman. In her words,
Take the time to remember all those who help to heal and hope to make this place a better world for all. We can't focus all the time on those that make these changes harder for us all, although shining light on them makes their ability to intimidate and scare that much harder.
And as for thanking us old white guys, you can do that best by voting for Ellinorianne's application for a DFA scholarship for Netroots Nation.
Thank us by supporting someone like this who carries on where we did "Not So Much".