Not my headline, but rather that of the alternative Seattle Weekly to describe The Nation’s all Liberal cruise to Alaska, with prices from $2600 to $8400. Focus cruises are proliferating, started by The National Review decades ago. The cruise departed Seattle last Saturday.
Of course it was the success of The National Review’s cruise that obviously prompted The Nation’s first seminar-at-sea 10 years ago, a clever means of fundraising, cultivating subscribers, and rallying the base, so to speak. And I’m not sure which is worse: a boatload of smug, rich, insular conservatives, or a boatload of smug, rich, insular liberals.
Cough. You won’t find me on either cruise, though you might find me on an Alaskan cruise. I don’t need a week of political boot camp = fundraiser for a magazine.
Oh, but it’s not just a week-long sightseeing cruise to Alaska, it’s a seminar, a learning opportunity, a chance to rub shoulders not only with Nader (guaranteed not to remove his suit in the hot tub), but The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel and Victor Navasky, actor Richard Dreyfuss, journalist Mary Mapes (she who pushed the Bush-Air National Guard story a little too hard on 60 Minutes), several other lefty authors, the mayor of Salt Lake City (he’s a liberal Democrat?), and actress-journalist Annabelle Gurwitch (whom we kind of like after her stage show and movie Fired!, which leads from getting shitcanned by Woody Allen to a broader examination of downsizing and corporate insecurity)….
But the point is this: Liberals on the high seas! Birds of a feather flocking together! It’s a blue-state booze cruise, and some tickets may yet be available.
Seriously though, the minute you include Mary Mapes as a headliner you have destroyed any claim to objectivity. But you can sit with her at dinner.
Confirmed speakers include Richard Dreyfuss, Mark Hertsgaard, Ralph Nader, Mary Mapes, Liza Featherstone, Patricia Williams, Doug Henwood, Robert Scheer, Gary Younge and Salt Lake City’s mayor, Rocky Anderson as well as others soon to be named. They’ll join Nation publisher emeritus Victor Navasky and Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel in what has always been both an enlightening exchange of ideas and a no-hassle, relaxing vacation. Each day and night you’ll mingle with these Nation comrades – in both informal and formal settings. And dinner seating is arranged so that everyone has a chance to dine with the guest speakers.
And don’t forget, you can buy carbon offsets and make Al Gore richer at an additional cost.
we’ve partnered with Eco-Logic to re-forest a recently devastated area in Guatemala, paying for the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon emissions of each passenger on the Nation cruise.
Or as the Seattle Weekly says
it’s probably best not to consider what those Guatemalan tree planters are being paid—just like the Filipino deckhands and boiler stokers laboring in the bowels of the ship.
Even the left-leaning weeklies see through the charade. Though they are way behind the times as far as cruise ship propulsion, which is mostly gas turbines, not boilers.
I would have the same response to a cruise featuring O’Reilly and Coulter. These are preaching to the converted fundraisers.
If you want full marketing details on the cruise, The Nation has set up a cruise website.
