MCCC Fall Conference Dinner Speaker

A Spine is a Terrible Thing to Waste

aka Why I, too, am a knee jerk liberal.

“ ... I am a knee jerk liberal, I confess to that sin. When I find that a widow has been left penniless and alone with three children by knee jerks. When I learn that funds for a library have been diminished almost to the vanishing point, my knee jerks...When men of ill intent cut back on teachers' salaries and lunches for children my knee jerks...When I hear that all the universities in Texas, combined, graduated two future teachers qualified to teach calculus but more than 500 trained to coach football, my knee jerks. I hope never to grow so old or so indifferent that I can listen to wrong and immoral choices being made without my knee flashing a warning.
  Why does it jerk?To alert me that I have been passive and inattentive too long, to remind me that one of the noblest purposes for which human beings are put on earth is to strive to make their societies better, to see to it that gross inequalities are not perpetuated. And to halt them  requires both effort and financial contributions usually in the form of taxes....
     When I have been dead 10 years and a family comes to tend the flowers on the grave next to mine, and they talk about the latest pitiful inequity plaguing their town, they will hear a rattling from my grave and can properly say: "that's Jim again. His knee is still jerking.”

- James Michener November 1991 Parade Magazine

D. Arnie Arnesen is a radio and TV commentator based in New Hampshire. She is the only person to be recognized by the NH Association of Broadcasters as both Radio and TV Personality of the Year. She has lectured at Harvard, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Iowa State, UNH, Plymouth State, Keene State, SNHU, Vermont Law School, St. Olaf, and other colleges and technical insitutions. She served in the NH House of Representatives from 1984 to 1992 and in 1992 was chosen as the first female Democratic nominee for Governor. In 1996, as Arnie was running for Congress in NH's Second Congressional District, she was ID' by the national Democratic Party as the one of the six best and brightest of that class of Democrats running and chosen by Glamour magazine as one of the Eleven Women that would change the world if she won (note: Arnesen lost and the world has been in turmoil ever since!).

In 1997 Arnesen was selected to be a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics  at Harvard and began writing for the Boston Globe's NH Weekly.  For the last two decades Arnie has provided political analysis to leadership programs across NH and has addressed a wide variety of groups from the Massachusetts based Theological Opportunities Program to local Rotaries and Chambers of Commerce to the Monadnock Summer Lyceum to the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women for Women and Politics at Iowa State. Arnie is a regular political commentator on Iowa Public Radio, WGBH, and WKBK in Keene NH. Every four years Arnie provides Presidential Primary analysis for such outlets as: New England Cable News, TV Ontario, SBS TV Australia, CNN and Al Jazeera English. Arnie provides content for TheLobbyNH.com and is a point-counterpoint contributor  to InsiderIowa.com with Newt Gingrich's former chief of staff. Arnesen graduated from St. Olaf College in 1975 and received her JD from Vermont Law School in 1981. She currently resides in Concord, NH and can see the State House Dome from her house.

ARNIE ON THE AIR?

tune into www.IowaPublicRadio.org (regular political contributor on The Exchange Noon to 1pm CST)

tune into Keene NH's WKBK 1290 AM every Friday at 7:10am EST with Dan Mitchell (podcast available at www.wkbkam.com )

tune into www.WGBH.org - regular contributor on the Callie Crossley Show 1 to 2pm EST

ARNIE IN PRINT?

www.insideriowa.com The intersection of Big Ideas and News (check out politics: red and blue)