This Is VDB: In Which Vermont Daily Briefing Readers Are Revealed To Be Themselves (The McLaughlin Edition)
Studies show that the average VDB reader is many things: savvy, brave, politically driven, good with children, bad with automobiles and small machines, given to laughter. And corresponding with readers has become more and more the highlight of my day. Like one big happy family.
But the problem is that you never get to meet you. And you really should, because you’ve all become collectively my favorite person in the world.
So beginning today, I’ll be running a new occasional feature: This Is VDB. A short profile of one reader, picked more or less at random, answering a few very short questions. Hopefully, you’ll begin to recognize one another at the grocery store and the grout aisle at Home Depot.
Which will allow you, of course, to flash the secret sign.
— PB
This Is VDB: The McLaughlin Edition
Name: Colleen McLaughlin
Location: Burlington, Vermont (4th Generation Vermonter on my father’s side, 1st generation on my mother’s side, so when you add it up, that makes me a 5th Generation Vermonter)
Interests: Listening to music, making music, art, history, philosophy, good Literature, Vermont, common sense, nature, putting ellipses at the end of a sentence, science, movies, funny jokes, South Park, songs that include hand-clapping, my family, metaphysics, ghost stories, and of course, politics, but only because I love a good debate . . .
What Brought You Home to VDB: Good writing. Relevant writing. Clever writing. The ability to address issues with a bit of a “sting” without being down-right vicious. VDB has class. The publisher always responds to your email, and that’s just plain old-fashioned politeness, if not damn good PR!
The fact that VDB humorously relays the absurdity of any given situation makes things seem a bit more tolerable.
Current Political Talking Points: Another reason I have stayed with VDB is to keep afloat of what’s happening here in Vermont. For the last six years, I have been tuned in to events on a more national/global scale.
The number one issue for me is the continued occupation of Iraq and the present “war on terror.” I do believe that “All politics is local,” and the blowback from the illegal and disastrous policies of the Bush administration are going to come back to bite us on our proverbial “arses” for some time to come.
I have family in the military, but I do not define myself as being “from a military family.” My son, and now my daughter, are part-time members of the Vermont Army and Air National Guard. I am very concerned as to who the next “Commander in Chief” will be.
The act of taking a nation to war is momentous, and the decision to send young men and women to the battlefield to kill and be killed should be an agonizing one, a decision made when all avenues to avoid war are depleted (which is rare).
We all now know the real story, and there are still more unbelievable events coming to light — the lies, the arrogance, the propaganda, the fear-mongering, a sycophantic media, a supine, bought-and-paid-for Congress, the public’s gullibility and lack of historical knowledge related to American Foreign Policy.
I have tried to rationally sort out my feelings and thoughts as events have unfolded, and without fail I am centered on one thought only: “Betrayal.”
On a more positive note, I will say that our Vermont Congressional delegation makes me proud to be a Vermonter.
Last Word On The Presidential Race: As one might have gathered by now, he/she who presents the sanest foreign policy will get my vote.
on July 10th, 2010 at 12:38 am
[…] Back in 2007, I decided to begin profiling VDB readers, so that other VDB readers could enjoy reading about people very much like themselves, people who also wanted to see Karl Rove frogmarched out of the White House. And so to begin, I picked a longtime reader named Colleen McLaughlin, who had written a series of long, sharp emails about the perils of Bush-era foreign policy. Scathing, detailed, hilarious emails. […]