i didn’t write this, but i wish i had…

“When I heard that John McCain’s running mate had children named Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper, and Trig, I was floored.

“A lot of Americans, myself included, want to believe this is still the country we grew up in, a country where no one dreamed of giving their children names like Brooklyn or Rhiannon or Darcy.

“We want to believe we are still living in a country where naming children is a cultural self-preservation tactic, a means of maintaining an institutional memory of the ethnic and religious groups from which the newborn has sprung, a way of maintaining a link with a heroic past rather than a cute or ironic future.

“But that country no longer exists. American children are no longer named after prophets, warriors, healers, or cultural titans; they are named after Welsh fairies, characters in science-fiction movies, the outer boroughs of New York, and trees.”

– Joe Queenan in the Los Angeles Times