Sarah Palin has firmly remained in the media spotlight since her bid for the vice presidency ended four months ago, but the Alaska governor embraced a decidedly lower profile when she traveled to the nation’s capital this weekend.
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Sarah Palin Lying Low During Washington Trip
NEW YORK — Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care. Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama’s spending priorities. The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, planned to meet in Washington this weekend with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other senators to press for her state’s share of the package. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist worked the phones last week with members of his state’s congressional delegation, including House Republicans. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the Republican vice chairman of the National Governors Association, planned to be in Washington on Monday to urge the Senate to approve the plan. “As the executive of a state experiencing budget challenges, Gov. Douglas has a different perspective on the situation than congressional Republicans,” said Douglas’ deputy chief of staff, Dennise Casey. Not a single Republican voted with the majority last week when the House approved Obama’s $819 billion combination of tax cuts and new spending. The president’s goal is to create or preserve 3 million to 4 million jobs. Republicans led by House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio complained that the plan is laden with pet projects and will not yield the jobs or stimulate the economy in the way Obama has promised. The measure faces GOP opposition in the Senate, where it will be up for a vote in the week ahead. But states are coping with severe budget shortfalls and mounting costs for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. So governors, including most Republicans, are counting on the spending to help keep their states afloat. This past week the bipartisan National Governors Association called on Congress to quickly pass the plan. “States are facing fiscal conditions not seen since the Great Depression _ anticipated budget shortfalls are expected in excess of $200 billion,” the NGA statement said. “Governors … support several key elements of the bill critical to states-increased federal support for Medicaid and K-12 and higher education; investment in the nation’s infrastructure; and tax provisions to spur investment.” Clyde Frazier, a professor of political science at Meredith College in North Carolina, said it wasn’t politically inconsistent for Republican governors and members of Congress to part ways on the stimulus plan. “For governors, it’s free money _ they get the benefits and they don’t have to pay the costs of raising the revenues,” Frazier said. “Senators and representatives get only some credit for the expenditures, and they have to pay the bill.” That’s not to say Republican governors are entirely enthusiastic about the plan. Some worry about the debt incurred through so much federal borrowing. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a former member of the House, said he would accept the stimulus money but would have voted against the bill if he were still in Congress. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he wasn’t sure whether he would accept the approximately $3 billion his state would be in line for. “Yes, we need some help and we appreciate the help,” Barbour said in an interview. “But I don’t know about the details and the strings attached to tell you if I’ll take all of it or not.” The most outspoken critic has been South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has warned for months of a steep spike in inflation and a severely weakened dollar if Obama’s plan passed. His state is on track to receive $2.1 billion of the stimulus money; Sanford has not yet said whether he would accept it. “It’s incumbent on me as one of the nation’s governors to speak out against what I believe is ultimately incredibly harmful to the economy, to taxpayers and to the worth of the U.S. dollar,” Sanford said in an interview. “This plan is a huge mistake and is going to prolong and deepen this recession.” Sanford outlined his concerns in December when the then-president-elect met with governors in Philadelphia to discuss the stimulus proposal. Sanford said he had heard nothing from the White House since then. Associates say Sanford, who recently was elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has been disappointed in how few of his GOP colleagues have joined him in speaking out against the size and scope of Obama’s plan. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is widely viewed as a potential presidential contender in 2012, said governors have little choice but to accept the relief being offered. “States have to balance their budgets,” he said. “So if we’re going to go down this path, we are entitled to ask for our share of the money.” But Pawlenty expressed reservations about the cost of the plan and its impact on the federal deficit, which has already grown to over $1 trillion. “I’m quite concerned about the federal government spending money it doesn’t have,” Pawlenty said. “We’re on an unsustainable path of deficit spending and borrowing.” ___ On the Net: National Governors Association: http://www.nga.org
JUNEAU, Alaska — Driving home at night from her Capitol office, the leader of Alaska’s House Democrats often passes the governor’s white-columned mansion and wonders why more lights aren’t on. Rep. Beth Kerttula assumes Gov. Sarah Palin is out of town, though Palin’s staffers say so far their boss has been there for most of the legislative session that began Jan. 20. It’s a small matter, but it’s part of the buzz around the Capitol among lawmakers who are seeing less of their governor than in years past and wondering what it means in the wake of a Republican vice presidential run that brought Palin global fame and notoriety. They’re accustomed to spotting her striding past, using two BlackBerries, stopping to chat in the hallway or inviting reporters into her office while she prepares for a speech. Palin insists her focus is still on Alaska. “I swore to steadfastly and doggedly guard the interests of this great state like a grizzly with cubs,” she said in her State of the State address two days after the session began. “We’ve got to fight for each other, not against, and not let external sensationalized distractions draw us off course.” Some say she appears more tense than the vice presidential candidate who delivered sly jokes and incendiary speeches to packed rallies across the Lower 48. “Not so sparky,” said Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, who wonders if the distractions of her newfound celebrity will keep Palin from devoting her full attention to Alaska’s looming budget shortfall. Others grumble that she didn’t seem to reach out to the nearly 60 lawmakers assembled before her. “I think her speech was not directed to us but right over our heads to a national audience,” said Rep. David Guttenberg, D-Fairbanks, who remembers a much different Palin from just six months ago. “There were days when she walked around the building with (her daughter) Piper, handing out bagels. I think those days are gone,” he added. Speculation that Palin is positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012 was fueled by news that she formed a political action committee. “The half-life of political celebrity is really quite short, so she has to make a move,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Some pundits say Palin should go after U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s seat in 2010, but Sabato doubts Palin would win that contest. He said she would do better by running for re-election and launching a White House bid during a second term as governor. She’ll have to prove that she’s engaged and energized over Alaska issues, though. “If she gives any indication that she’s bored, she will literally get herself in trouble with what would otherwise be a slam dunk re-election,” Sabato said. Some Alaska lawmakers say Palin already has proved she’s engaged. “So far, I’ve seen the governor deliver her energy package, she delivered her budget on time and she met with the majority caucus,” said Sen. Gene Therriault, R-North Pole. “I’ve not seen or heard anyone come up with anything the executive is supposed to be doing that she has not done. It appears to me she’s back on the job full-time.” Palin’s spokesman says her press office continues to receive hundreds of media requests for interviews, most of which she turns down. She has yet to hold a press conference at the Capitol this year. However, just a few days ago, she walked out of the mansion after meeting with majority lawmakers and took reporters’ questions. She greeted the small group with a cheerful, “Hi guys,” then she addressed the issue of her priorities. “I’m sure legislators know I am the governor of Alaska, and this is first and foremost on my mind and my agenda. Any travel or meeting or participation outside of Alaska will only be if it’s good for Alaska,” she said. Juneau Democrat Kim Elton, a member of the Senate’s ruling coalition of Republicans and Democrats, predicts Palin will be tested this session. “Is she going to have a legislative agenda that speaks to a national base, or is she going to have a legislative base that speaks to Alaska’s future?” he asked. “I’m not sure it’s easy to answer at this time, but I can assure you people will be watching very closely.” House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, said he wants the governor to keep the lines of communications open. Then he won’t be worried that travel and political organizing will detract from her state job. “What the governor does is of her own concern as long as she’s here to address the Legislature during the session and as long as her administration is engaged,” Chenault said. “If it doesn’t interfere with running the state government, I’m fine with it.”
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Sarah Palin’s Focus Questioned By Alaska Lawmakers
Day Three: Friday’s Newsweek lunch hosted by Lally Weymouth and Fareed Zakaria was, unfortunately, off-the-record. So I cannot fully recount all the bon mots uttered by central bankers, trade ministers, presidents and former presidents — each focusing on their own slice of the crisis pie. But, after the lunch, I caught up with the two men who had given expression to the most diametrically opposed perspectives on the economic meltdown. The prevailing Davos pessimism had been brilliantly summed up by Niall Ferguson, a history and business professor at Harvard. So I asked him to elaborate on-the-record. He called what we are going through not a Great Depression but a “Great Repression.” He was referring to measures taken by governments to repress the symptoms of the greatest financial crisis the world has ever faced. “Our leaders,” he said, “are in a state of denial, turning to a 1936 book [ Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ] to save us. They’ve convinced themselves that the world can save itself from excessive leverage with more leverage.” I asked him what he thought should be done to deal with the Great Repression. “It is time to start new banks,” he said. “The old banks need to be completely restructured so that they stop trying to protect equity holders and let the bondholders know that they have to ‘take a shave’ — something around 20 percent. “It’s what happened in Argentina,” he said. When was the last time anyone compared the largest economy in the world to Argentina’s? It was time to go find Henry Kravis, who, not surprisingly, presented a completely different view, focusing on a number of recent equity offerings — including a $2 billion offering by Goldman Sachs. So while Kravis was seeing “cracks” of light breaking through the darkness, Ferguson was seeing a state of denial. During the lunch itself, I was in “Facebook Heaven,” seated between Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and Sheryl Sandberg, its COO. For a change, we talked about everything except the economic crisis. We even talked about the Greeks, since Mark had studied the classics at Harvard. “Homer didn’t actually exist,” he said. So, I wondered, since Homer’s stories were shaped as they were passed from person to person and generation to generation, were The Iliad and The Odyssey the first examples of User Generated Content? My night started with a really special all-women’s dinner on top of the Davos mountain, hosted by Wendi Murdoch and Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, to raise awareness, pledges, and support for improving maternal health and infant mortality around the world. Sarah Brown, Britain’s first lady, who spoke, called it the “new face of feminism,” while Melinda Gates spoke passionately about the fact that “at the end of the day, what matters is not how much money I gave, or how much I cared but what kind of impact I had… how many lives did I lift up?” The evening, which began on a personal note from Wendi Murdoch, recounting how her grandmother had died while giving birth to her mother, ended on another personal note when Sarah Brown turned to Cheri Blair and, from the podium, lauded the work and example set by the woman she succeeded at Downing Street. There was a hush in the room, as many of those present were aware of how the two women had barely been on speaking terms. So altogether a great evening, demonstrating both the need to take action to help women around the world and the value of setting aside grudges closer to home. My night ended at the Google party at the Belvedere hotel. Those who wanted to dance and listen to the music were inside the party. Those who wanted to talk, including Al Gore and the party’s hosts, Larry and Lucy Page, were in the hallway outside. Not only was I solidly in the hallway group, but I even found a windowsill where I sat to talk with Marc Forster, director of Monster’s Ball , Finding Neverland , The Kite Runner , and the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace . Forster was actually born in Davos and, growing up, had watched the World Economic Forum from the outside. This was his first time as a participant. He had, not surprisingly, taken part in a few art and politics sessions — and came away wishing there had been more sessions on the arts. Come to think of it, more sessions on the arts would probably have given us more insights than more sessions on economic models and theories. Read More Davos Notes: Contrition, Paralysis, and the Embrace of Faith and Philanthropy Take Hold Blackstone’s Schwarzman “Walking with His Head Still On” Contrite Bankers, Overflow Interest in Philanthropy, Mistrusted Americans Davos ‘09: Less Glitz, More Anxiety And be sure to keep checking our Davos BigNews page for the latest news, commentary, and video coming out of the World Economic Forum.
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Arianna Huffington: Davos Notes: The Great Repression, Homer as the Original UGC, and Is America the New Argentina?
What is it with shoes this week? First we had the sale of Sarah Palin’s “Double Dare” Naughty Monkey shoes on eBay. And now someone has erected a statue of a shoe , according to the BBC. A very specific shoe. Muntadar al-Zaidi’s shoe. You remember him — he’s the Iraqi journalist who hucked both his shoes at President Bush’s head a while back. Well, an Iraqi artist has honored him with a huge statue of his shoe. The funniest quote from the article? After describing the statue’s dimensions and appearance, the Beeb adds: “There is also a bush sticking out of the shoe.” Heh. But enough frivolity. Because, according to Paul Krugman (who just won the Nobel Prize for Economics): “There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.” A populist rage? Really? If I seem skeptical, let me assure you that I would like nothing better than to see a populist rage rise in this country. I think it’s just about the only way politicians are ever going to restore some fairness to the way we tax our citizens. I wrote a book two years ago urging Democrats in Congress to adopt what I called a “Neo-Populist” stance. So while I ask you to forgive my skepticism, at least let me reassure you my heart’s in the right place. While I think a growing populist rage is indeed possible in this country at this point, I don’t quite think we’re there yet — and I really don’t think most Washington politicians would know how to ride that wave even if it did appear. Because, from Obama on down, Democrats know how to stoke the fires of populist rage, but what they propose doing about it usually falls far, far short of what I would call “populism.” Consider, if you will, President Obama’s remarks on the fact that the Wall Street fatcats took billions of tax dollars last year, and then turned around and gave themselves all bonuses, to the tune of just under $20 billion. Here is Obama expressing his “anger” at the situation: Part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses. Now is not that time. Got that? Greed, huge bonuses, and lavish CEO lifestyles are OK, as long as the economy is doing well and nobody notices. But “now’s not the time” for that sort of thing. Not exactly fire-breathing populism. Not exactly Teddy Roosevelt versus the trusts. All this high dudgeon over executive pay is amusing to me. Because when the Democratic Congress passed the TARP legislation (the $700 billion Wall Street bailout) last year they could easily have avoided this problem . All they had to do was write it into the law. But they didn’t. Now they want to pry those bonus billions out of the hands of financial executives, even though they got the money fully legally. Here’s Obama again: And, you know, Secretary Geithner already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion-dollar jet plane purchase at the same time as they’re receiving TARP money. We shouldn’t have to do that, because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear. The time to send that message is when you write the legislation, not after the fact. Because otherwise, you’re asking for “restraint… discipline… and responsibility” from the very same people who just drove this bus off a cliff . The very same people you trusted to “regulate themselves” for the past twenty or thirty years. Vice President Biden put it even stronger by saying he’d like to “throw these guys in the brig,” but you can’t do that unless they’ve done something illegal. And the way to make it illegal is to write it into the law in the first place . I hate to say it, but Barack Obama has never been much of a populist. He’s always seemed to me a reluctant populist, at best. Perhaps he can improve, though. And when he uses populist anger to his benefit, he may wind up with a more populist stand than he started with. But before we get to real populist rage, we’ve got the weekly awards to hand out first. Update: McCaskill and Whitehouse (see Talking Points, below) will be eligible next week, their news broke after I had already written this. While John Conyers had a strong showing this week, he narrowly misses getting the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week. Conyers made a strong showing at the beginning of the week, introducing a single-payer health care bill ( H.R.676 ), proposing extending by 10 years the statute of limitations on torture, and then subpoenaing Karl Rove again just for good measure. But the news later in the week topped even this valiant effort by Conyers (especially after it was announced the Rove appearance would be postponed ). I don’t even know if she’s a Democrat, but I would guess that she is one now if she wasn’t before. The winner of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is Lilly Ledbetter. Her court case went to the Supreme Court, got decided the wrong way, and (for once!) Congress immediately stepped up to rectify the situation. They passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and sent it to President Obama as the first piece of legislation to his desk. That’s pretty impressive — first you fight for your rights all the way to the Supreme Court, and then when they snub you, you have legislation to change the law named after you. Which means that Lilly Ledbetter gets this week’s Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Well done, Lilly! All American women thank you for your tireless effort. Every once in a while, there’s a clear winner of one of these awards, where no further discussion or explanation is necessary. This is one of those weeks. Ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois is the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week . What more can I say that he hasn’t already said? Here’s wishing Blago from Chicago (or, as I like to call him, “Blaggy”) sinks quickly into obscurity. Oh, wait, he’s still got an upcoming federal court case, doesn’t he? Sigh. I guess we’ll have to hear about him again, then. [ I don't have any contact information for the ex-gov, sorry. Illinois wasted no time stripping his face and name off everything they could, so I have no idea how to get in touch with him. Probably just as well. ] Volume 63 (1/30/09) There is some good populist news this week. First, President Obama overturned some anti-union rules from the Bush era. Then, news broke that union membership actually slightly increased last year, reversing a long trend downwards. And today, the Obama administration announced that Vice President Biden will head up a task force on the middle class. As usual, they’re asking for ideas from everyone on how to help the middle class, so feel free to send this column along to them at www.astrongmiddleclass.gov . Because the more populist rage the better, as far as I’m concerned. Maximum wage As I was writing this article, news broke from Senators Claire McCaskill and Sheldon Whitehouse on the executive pay issue. They have written a bill which would limit any company taking bailout money to a salary cap for all employees (including executives) of $400,000 — what President Obama makes. Bravo, Senators! Previously, Democrats (including Obama) have shied away from a hard definition of what exactly “excessive” compensation would legally be. McCaskill and Whitehouse have shown the rest of the Democratic Party that it is time to take a stand. I have two suggestions, though. First, start talking about this pay cap as a “maximum wage” to tap into all that populist rage out there. Everyone understands the “minimum wage” so this is a good way to frame the issue. Secondly, I would say (possibly as a followup to this bill) to expand your horizons. Introduce a bill which states that any compensation of any type for any employee be “capped” at $400,000 a year. Allow companies to pay their executives whatever they want, but limit the tax deductibility of such pay to the first $400,000 per year. In other words, anything above that comes directly out of the shareholders’ profits . How many shareholders’ meetings do you think it would take to rein in executive pay if they were paying for it out of their own profit, instead of tax deductible operating expenses? But for now, it’s a good start. Here is Senator McCaskill, on the Senate floor, showing Democrats how to properly express populist rage ( video available from McCaskill’s website): Going forward if you want taxpayers to help you survive, if you want the people at your financial institution to have a job tomorrow, then you’re going to have to limit everyone’s pay at your company to the same salary that the President of the United States makes. Now once they’re off the public dole, once the taxpayers aren’t footing the bill, then it’s not as much our business what they get paid. But right now they’re on the hook to us. And they owe us something other than a fancy waste basket and $50 million jet. We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. They don’t get it. These people are idiots. You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. What planet are these people on? 20 cents out of $825? Really? During the entire stimulus package debate, Republicans have once again proved masterful at picking nits in such a way that the American public is bamboozled into thinking they have a point. This, in my opinion, is largely due to Americans’ general ignorance of simple mathematics (see: Joe The Plumber). Believe it or not, for most folks “millions” and “billions” and even “trillions” all tend to run together a bit. They’re all a whopping amount of money, and they all sound pretty much alike (unlike, for instance “thousands” and “millions”). Democrats need to fight this by stripping off all the zeros. Here is the counter-argument to the “wasteful spending on grass for the National Mall” Republican bugaboo of the previous week. Picture a Democrat on a news show being interviewed in tandem with a Republican who just brought the subject up of “$200 million wasted on the National Mall” responding thusly: “Hold on a minute — that’s the best you can come up with? Let’s put this in perspective. If we strip the zeros off to show what you’re talking about, call our entire package $825 that we’re spending, OK? Of the $825, the money for the National Mall equates to 20 cents. So you are complaining about twenty cents out of $825?!? And how, exactly, do you think that sod is going to get onto the Mall? You think it’s going to lay itself? Or you think that some jobs might be created or preserved in the short-term for the people who would actually do the work?” GOP betting its fortunes on failure This used to be a common complaint from Republicans about Democrats and President Bush (mostly on Iraq, but on other diverse issues as well): “Democrats are trying to politically succeed by betting on failure.” In other words, Democrats took a political stance that would wind up being more popular if things got worse. So it’s time for Democrats to throw this right back in Republicans’ faces. Because, led by a certain right-wing talk radio windbag, the House Republicans have now seemingly “doubled down” on the failure of the American economy, President Obama’s stimulus plan, and indeed, the Obama presidency itself. This needs pointing out in no uncertain terms, to counter the headwind of hot air already blowing in the other direction. “Republicans seem absolutely bent on staking their party’s fortunes on the failure of both the stimulus package and the American economy. They are content to sit on the sidelines instead of productively joining in the debate. President Obama has bent over backward reaching out to them, but the only thing they have to offer is the same stale, old idea that got us into this mess: more tax cuts for the richest among us. It doesn’t work. We’ve seen that. We’re trying something new now, and we encourage Republicans to join in the process instead of cheering for the American economy to fail from the sidelines. Whatever happened to ‘country first’ after all?” What part of “you lost” don’t you get? This one should be held back until it is needed. And it’s more for the media than for the Republicans. Because the media needs a little remedial training in the definition of “bipartisanship.” For over a decade, the definition of this term in Washington was warped to mean: “Democrats slinking across the aisle to vote for Republican proposals without any input.” Or, more viscerally, “Democrats knuckling under to Republicans, once again.” This definition is no longer operative, as the politicians say. The new definition should read: “Republicans joining in the process of legislation to have input to the process,” and not (as the media seems to have been bamboozled into): “Republicans having absolute veto power over everything Democrats try to do.” It needs to be said over and over, to counteract this trend: “President Obama got the largest mandate from the voters in decades. Democrats have made sweeping gains in both houses of Congress in the past two election cycles. Americans want Democrats to get some things done in Washington precisely because they are tired of these political games. The tide is flowing in our direction, and the only ones who haven’t realized it are the ones in the GOP acting like King Canute. I’ve got news for them. We are now the majority in Washington. We will set the agenda now. You can join us if you have some new ideas and we will consider them, but we are in charge now, and you should realize that fact. What part of ‘You lost’ don’t you understand?” First thing we do, let’s tax poor people OK, I’m swimming against the tide myself on this one. Nobody will probably notice anyway, because the overall bill is for such a good cause. But doesn’t it concern any real progressives that the first spending legislation we’re going to pass (and Obama is going to sign) is, in essence, a tax on poor people? “Passing children’s’ health care in the SCHIP bill was the right thing to do, but I feel that we should consider other tax revenue in the future to fund such good legislation. By slapping a tax on cigarettes, we have put the burden of paying for children’s’ health on smokers. And people who smoke are disproportionately the poorer of our citizens. I would have funded this through a millionaires’ tax instead, because I believe in progressive taxation instead of regressive taxation.” Turn Social Security upside-down In fact, I’m feeling swept up in populist rage myself. You want to hear an idea that makes such enormous amounts of sense that it’ll never become law? How about taking a shot of straight-up, no-chaser hair-on-your-chest populism? “Republicans are complaining because President Obama’s stimulus package contains payroll tax relief for millions of hard-working Americans who make so little in wages that they do not pay federal income tax. Republicans are calling this ‘welfare’ for some unfathomable reason — I thought the GOP was in favor of tax cuts of all kinds, but I guess they are showing their true colors when it comes to tax cuts for the hardest-working Americans of all. I propose a one-year experiment that would take this concept even further: for one year, instead of figuring Social Security from the bottom up, let’s figure it from the top down. Instead of every worker paying 6.2 percent up to around $100,000 and then absolutely nothing on any pay above that amount, let’s instead make it so that every worker making over $100,000 pays 6.2 percent on everything above that amount, and everyone who makes less than $100,000 will pay nothing at all. The Treasury would take in about the same amount of money, and it would be an enormous stimulus package for 95% of the workforce, which they would get immediately in the form of a 6.2 percent break on the taxes taken out of their paycheck. How’s that for a tax break, America?” ”What’s fair” not “class warfare” Finally, we have to counter the biggest weapon that has (for some strange reason) been most effective against populism in the past thirty years or so — the term “class warfare.” Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do. Here’s what Democrats should say when the term comes up in debate with a Republican (as it always does): “Excuse me, did you just say ‘class warfare’? Did I really hear you use that term? This term is highly offensive to me for two reasons. First, there are no crowds of peasants storming Wall Street with pitchforks and torches that I am aware of. There are no armed rebellions going on against the wealthy. When America is in the midst of two foreign wars, I find it highly offensive to suggest that discussing tax policy is akin to ‘warfare,’ and on behalf of the soldiers from my district I would like an apology from you. “Secondly, the Republican Party has shown for decades now that the only thing it really cares about is tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy. Well, you know what? The rest of America is sick of getting ‘trickled down’ upon. The middle class in this country has seen all of the benefits of Republican rule going to the top one percent of Americans for too long, and they are fed up with it. It’s been more like highway robbery committed against them, and the robbers are finally getting their comeuppance. Americans have never begrudged others from making money, but the days of tax cuts for the rich while regular Americans suffer are over . We are indeed going to fight back for the interests of the middle class against the Wall Street fatcats and the Republicans who protect them. We call it ‘what’s fair’ not ‘class warfare,’ but if you’d like to continue using that term to make your wealthy donors feel better, then be my guest.” Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground
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Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [63] — Populist Rage?
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE… Friday Mollyblogging Molly Ivins died two years ago tomorrow, dammit. She was 62 and that was too young by at least 40 years. Effing cancer. I can only imagine how she would’ve sliced and diced the ‘08 campaign (She’da spun Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber into comedy gold, that’s for sure). Or Blagojevich. Or the vanishing species known as Republicanus Moderatus . Or the contrast between Obama and her frequent (and oh so easy) target, “Dubya.” We humans are so greedy. Always wanting more more more. Even though she delighted us last year by releasing a new book posthumously, I still want more Molly. I’m very upset that I can’t have it. But I’m grateful for the decades of snark, sass, satire, sarcasm and sense she left behind, of which this is just a fraction : Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention. - Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory. - On Pat Buchanan’s “culture-war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention: “[It] “probably sounded better in the original German.” - The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion. - Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts. - I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. And this… Keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was. When the shit gets you down, just Google Molly . Even though she’s no longer with us, her columns and books are still like Red Bull for the progressive soul. She was the best damn teammate you could ever ask for. Cheers, Molly. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There’s Moreville… [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
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Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!
It’s always a small joy when PBS periodically unveils a new program that reminds us all what smart, engaging television is like. Prime example: “Make ‘Em Laugh”, a six part series that traces the evolution of comedy from several different angles and perspectives. By far the most revealing episode thus far addresses the bold, courageous comics who in their times dared to stretch the definition of what constitutes “acceptable” humor, focusing on the edgy work of groundbreaking figures like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin. When one considers the sheer guts it takes simply to get up and try to amuse people, the fearlessness of a Lenny Bruce becomes even more striking. Although his persona emanated a sort of willful self-destruction, there was always a noble cause at stake: a freedom of comedic expression that’s too easily taken for granted today. Like the stark images of past discrimination against African- Americans and the gay community (brought back to haunt us by the riveting “Milk”), it seems unthinkable that less than half a century go, police were literally planted in nightclubs where Lenny performed, ready to disrupt his act and arrest him at the first utterance of a four-letter word. And he knew it, but went on regardless. All the major stand-up talents that have emerged since that time stand on the shoulders of that brilliant, troubled man. And as “Make ‘Em Laugh” astutely reminds us, comics everywhere are attuned to this, because they recognize that the fundamental fascination of comedy lies in how far it can be stretched into absurdity, even nihilism, and in discovering what happens when it bumps up against the opposing force of prevailing social mores. For most any comedian worth their salt or vinegar, the very essence of their craft lies at this tricky intersection. Back to Carlin, whom I miss more with each passing day. By focusing on the power of words to affect us, George may have done more to advance the Lenny Bruce legacy than anyone else, with the possible exception of Richard Pryor. Carlin’s gift lay in his indirection: his inspired language play planted the idea that demystifying all we could not say could actually help neutralize its power over us. George brought liberation, helping us free ourselves from the shackles of polite conversation. He took the curse off being naughty. This brings me to “The Aristocrats” (2005), a documentary that lets us in on one of the most unique and (up to this point) untold jokes in history, one that only comedians know and reserve for themselves. Why? Because its humor lies not in the punchline, but in the body of the joke, and involves improvisation that busts through any and every taboo, including public defecation, bestiality and incest. Thus, it quickly arrives at that previously mentioned juncture where for many, humor stops and smut begins. In the film, George Carlin does his own wonderful pass at the fabled joke, along with countless other funny men and women, including Sarah Silverman, Drew Carey, and Paul Reiser. With each different rendition, we sense the reverence and even affection the joke holds for the teller, at the same time fully appreciating why it has remained a professional secret for so long. It’s almost like a form of mental calisthenic for comedians, forcing them into dark, outrageous places they don’t ordinarily visit. I myself found “The Aristocrats” thoroughly engrossing, and very, very funny, but in selecting titles for www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com, I usually overlay some final attempt at objectivity, asking myself: “I may love it, but will my audience?” It was surprising how many people I met who were turned off by the film, finding it repellent, repetitive, and overall, not a bit funny. Others completely embraced its anarchic spirit. So- feeling conficted, I hesitated adding “The Aristocrats” to my “go” list. On recently screening the doc a second time, I now lean towards putting it on the site. My rationale is that whatever your personal reactions to its off-color nature, for those interested in how comedy works and how its practitioners think about what they do, “The Aristocrats” constitutes an invaluable and insightful piece of work. Added bonus: some twisted folks will also find it hilarious. Before I push the button, tell me, dear readers: am I right or wrong?
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John Farr: George Carlin and "The Aristocrats": A Best Movie By Farr?
This recurring blog series features a collection of recent news stories about threats to public health, our democracy and the planet which are ignored or underreported by the handful of corporate mainstream media conglomerates, TV pundits, and radio shock jocks who’ve turned the “news” into little more than an entertainment and product placement opportunity and let down the American public. Rep. Conyers Subpoenas Karl Rove: “It’s Time For Him to Talk” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers issued a subpoena to Karl Rove requiring him to testify about his role in the Bush Administration’s politicization of the Justice Department, including the U.S. Attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. “I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court,” Conyers said in a statement announcing the subpoena. Rove refused to appear in response to a Judiciary Committee subpoena in the last Congress, claiming that executive privilege protects even former presidential advisers from compelled Congressional testimony. That position was supported by then-President Bush, but rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates. Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, forwarded the subpoena to the Obama White House, asking the President’s opinion on whether Bush administration officials retain their ability to assert executive privilege. President Obama has previously dismissed the claim of “absolute immunity” as “completely misguided.” Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly interviewed Rove Wednesday night, portraying the subpoena as a “witch hunt,” and offered Rove a spot in the Fox News bunker. “Now, if you need a place to hide out, we have it here at the Factor. We have all kinds of tunnels and places we can put you,” O’Reilly said. “I don’t need to hide,” Rove replied. “I don’t need to hide.” The subpoena requires Rove to testify in front of Conyers’ Judiciary Committee next Monday, February 2nd. “Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it’s time for him to talk,” Conyers added. King Coal and Nuclear Set to Benefit from Senate stimulus package The coal industry’s indentured servants in the Senate managed to include more than $4.5 billion in benefits for King Coal in the Senate version of the economic stimulus package. West Virginia Senators Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, whose state has been devastated by mountaintop removal coal mining, injected several of the so-called “clean coal” projects into the bill. Sen. Rockefeller already secured $2.8 billion for the coal industry in last year’s massive Wall Street bailout. Coal-friendly provisions in the latest Senate draft include $2 billion for “near-zero emissions” power plants designed to capture and sequester carbon dioxide; $1 billion for the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative; and over $1.5 billion for carbon capture at industrial plants. The bill also aims to secure billions in loans for new nuclear plants and coal-to-liquid fuel plants. Coal-to-liquid fuels would double greenhouse gas emissions over conventional gasoline and require up to seven gallons of water for every gallon of fuel produced. “Clean, carbon-neutral coal can be a ‘green’ energy,” Byrd said in a statement announcing his contributions to the stimulus package. As the New York Times editorialized last week , the myth of “clean coal” has collapsed in the wake of a recent billion-gallon spill of toxic coal ash at the TVA Kingston coal plant, which buried 300 acres of land, destroyed several houses and devastated the Emory River and other local waterways in Tennessee. The editorial skewered “the coal industry’s cheery ‘clean coal’ campaign, whose ads would have us believe that low-polluting coal is here or just around the corner. It is neither,” the Times’ editors wrote. Obama blocks some of Bush’s last-minute environmental rollbacks but others may survive Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Obama blocked several of the Bush administration’s 11th-hour attempts to weaken environmental laws, including plans to loosen air quality standards and to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list. Several other controversial, late-term environmental regulations issued by the Bush administration remain to be addressed, including a major assault on the Endangered Species Act, initial approval for oil shale development on Western lands, oil and gas drilling leases near several national parks, a rule allowing mountaintop removal mining companies to fill stream beds with toxic mining wastes and debris, and initial steps toward opening new offshore oil rigs off the Atlantic, Gulf, Alaska and California coasts. Although the Obama administration retains the ability to review many of those 11th-hour decisions, it appears that on several fronts the outgoing administration explicitly tried to finish its rule-making early enough to tie Obama’s hands and make overturning them increasingly difficult. Since some of the measures - such as the oil shale regulations - were published in the Federal Register and cleared a statutory waiting period before taking effect, it could take months or years to reverse them. “The number of examples where they succeeded far exceeds the examples where they failed,” according to John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Study Confirms that Clean Air Regulations Work, Extend U.S. Life Expectancy A new study confirms that laws aimed at reducing air pollution in the U.S. have added nearly five months to average U.S. life expectancy over the past two decades. Between 1978 and 2001, Americans’ average life span increased almost three years to 77, and as much as 4.8 months of that can be attributed to cleaner air, researchers from Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health reported in a federally funded study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Joel Kaufman, an expert on environmental health at the University of Washington, said the study “shows that our efforts as a country to control air pollution have been well worth the expense.” Passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency have helped to protect people from particulate matter, carbon monoxide and other pollutants. Scientists have long known that particulate air pollution from factories and coal-burning power plants raises the risk of lung disease, heart attacks and strokes. “We saw that communities that had larger reductions in air pollution on average had larger increases in life expectancies,” said the study’s lead author, C. Arden Pope III. Palin Administration Plans to Sue Federal Government Over Endangered Whales Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s administration announced plans to challenge the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act, the second time in a year that her administration has sparred with the federal government over an ESA listing. Last summer, Alaska sued the Interior Department for listing the polar bear as threatened, at the behest of the oil industry. NOAA scientists estimate there are only 375 Cook Inlet belugas left, almost half the 1994 population estimate. The whales have been protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act since 2000, but that alone was not enough to help the species recover from dwindling numbers. A 2005 government estimate put the number at an all-time low of 278 Cook Inlet belugas, prompting federal officials to list the species as endangered last Fall. The Palin administration argues that the belugas show signs of recovering and that additional regulation is unnecessary. “The State of Alaska has worked cooperatively with the federal government to protect and conserve beluga whales in Cook Inlet,” Palin said last week. “This listing decision didn’t take those efforts into account as required by law.” Echoing last summer’s challenge over the polar bear, the Palin administration’s objections are based on the fear that additional safeguards will interfere with oil and gas development. “I am especially concerned that an unnecessary federal listing and designation of critical habitat would do serious long-term damage to the vibrant economy of the Cook Inlet area,” Palin said in 2007. In the ongoing fight over the polar bear listing, the Palin administration has tried to cast doubt on the underlying science by citing the work of global warming skeptics, one of whom acknowledged receiving funding from the American Petroleum Institute and ExxonMobil for his work. In this latest legal challenge, Palin’s administration has attacked the accuracy of beluga population estimates, citing the “questionable use of computer population modeling.” And it has challenged “the contention that the belugas in Cook Inlet are a separate and distinct population from other belugas.” Meanwhile, the state’s claim that Cook Inlet beluga’s are recovering is at odds with the judgments of federal scientists, whose systematic surveys indicate this population is not recovering.” NSA Whistleblower Reveals Bush Administration Snooping on U.S. Citizens, Journalists Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice came forward less than a day after George W. Bush left office to reveal that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists and the domestic communications of all Americans, not just those suspected of communicating with overseas terror suspects. Tice revealed the details to MSNBC ‘Countdown’ host Keith Olbermann in two interviews last week, and confirmed his role as one of the anonymous sources who spoke with The New York Times for its 2005 story on the government’s illegal wiretapping program. Tice described his own role in the spying program as trying to “harpoon fish from an airplane.” He was charged with monitoring U.S. journalists, ostensibly to eliminate them as suspects for further scrutiny, but Tice soon discovered that the NSA was stockpiling news organizations’ communications “24/7, you know, 365 days a year — and it made no sense,” Tice said. James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and co-author of the 2005 NSA spying story, joined Tice on ‘Countdown’ to reveal that he was targeted for surveillance during his investigations. “What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records … we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury, and we have asked the court to investigate that,” he said. Risen asserts that the point of the program was to intimidate whistleblowers inside the government from speaking to journalists about the illegal spying on Americans, rather than to intimidate the journalists themselves. The effect, Risen said, is to “frighten people in the government from talking … to have a chilling effect on potential whistle-blowers in the government to make them realize that there’s a Big Brother out there that will get them if they step out of line.” President Bush asserted after the 2005 Times story that the NSA only targeted those in the United States who were communicating with terrorists overseas, and that a court order was required to monitor Americans’ communications. Tice confirmed that, in fact, “the National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications,” including “faxes, phone calls and their computer communications.” “It didn’t mater whether you were in Kansas in the middle of the country and you never made any … foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications,” Tice explained.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle: Unearthed: The News Without the Chaff
Let’s put the whole Barack Obama-Rush Limbaugh flap into some perspective and not get our “femiNazi” vs. “Big, Fat Idiot” undies in a twist. It’s Mr. Obama who may come out ahead on the whole thing. When Richard Nixon went on Laugh-In and said, “Sock it to ME?”, the polarized political world at the time gasped. What’s the meaning of this! The show was about counter-culture - drugs, sex and so on. Mr. Nixon was the antithesis of that. So did this tragically Shakespearean, physically awkward presidential character actually have a sense of humor? Why was he giving his valuable time to a bunch of anti-establishment freaks? And what were these iconic cultural pioneers and anti-war hipsters doing letting Mr. Bomb Cambodia horn in on their stoned, satirical fun club? What a mess. Wasn’t the Elvis-Richard Nixon Oval Office handshake weird enough? Maybe Laugh-In creator George Schlatter and the Dark Knight of the Republican Party were actually in a conspiracy together to boost each other’s agenda. There’s a little bit of that dynamic hidden beneath the sniper fire on both sides about Mr. Obama “elevating” Rush Limbaugh to the status of worthy leader-of-the-free-world just by mentioning him. Actually, the whole thing suits both of them for different reasons. And that crafty President Obama may be getting the real boost. When I used to spend a little time every summer up in the rural Feather River country of Northern California, mixing with loggers and hermit hippies, Rush was on every radio station I could get and I listened to him most mornings. Whatever you thought about his politics, he was entertaining, the first performer in a long time on either political flank to use pointed humor as a partisan weapon; it took Democrats a few years more to gear up with Al Franken and, for the most part, the Daily Show crew. Rush was a kind of king then, particularly in the Clinton years, railing and dishing to the delight of a legion of his Dittoheads. I’m not saying he’s slipped down the cultural food chain since, particularly with a reported $400 million compensation package to stay on the air till 2016, and 13 million listeners (a figure widely cited but possibly from a three-year-old survey.) And just today, we have the Rush Limbaugh economic stimulus plan right there in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. He’s a heavyweight, with or without Oxycontin to dull the pain of fame. But Rush’s popularity may be, for people who don’t like him, a self-inflicted wound. A 2007 Zogby poll showed that liberals are much more likely than conservatives “to listen to commentary and entertainment with which they disagreed philosophically,” according to a BBS News story. Meaning that Mr. Obama may have been driving traffic to his own natural constituency by calling out Rush by name. Very slick of the President, almost a full Willie. Of course in San Francisco, always contrarian to everything, Rush’s station ranks only 12th in the most recent Arbitron ratings. Depend on the Bay Area to ruin the grading curve for everyone, including Rush. Then there’s a study last year by Coleman Insights, a radio consulting firm, that says Rush’s listener share is greater during his show’s ads than when he’s actually on the air - by .18 percent. Maybe this is a trend that should worry him but it no doubt pleases his sponsors (remember: $400 million!) Whichever way Rush is headed on the popularity meter, the face of the Republican Party, now in some disarray, and of conservatives in this country, is inevitably moving away from corpulent white dudes and, at a minimum, to painfully thin blonde, white women like Laura Ingraham and the naughty Ann Coulter. Let’s also not forget ex-Attorney general Alberto Gonzalez and pundit Armstrong Williams . Rush Limbaugh has (half) joked that his talent is “on loan from God” but Ms. Ingraham has a law degree so she actually made a down payment on that loan. She was also chosen to replace Sarah Palin at the Republican convention for a right-to-life event after the Alaskan Governor had to withdraw because she was the Veep nominee. And remember that the Republicans pick a new Party chair this Friday. Serious conservatives, specifically, are meeting next month to anoint their own new stars, with Sarah Palin still a strong contender . So Mr. Obama’s Rush quote serves the new President in another meaningful way. He’s heaping attention on the guy who will soon be eclipsed, if not as a radio host, at least as a figurehead and floor leader for Obama opponents everywhere. By doing that, the most powerful person on earth has purposely snubbed all those up-and-coming challengers. Who socked it to whom?
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Phil Bronstein: Obama picking on Rush? Brilliant.
Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving. At least for snarky left-wing pundits. [Ahem. Let's try that again, shall we?] Sarah Palin is the goose that just keeps laying golden eggs, so to speak, and the Republican National Committee seems astonishingly clueless when it comes to capitalizing on Palin’s star power. I mean, this is supposed to be the party of free enterprise, making lots of money, and fatcats in general. And yet, a little girl has to show them how to make money? In an Obama-esque spirit of reaching across the aisle, I would like to rub their noses in it. Um, wait a minute, that’s not quite Obama-esque enough… how about: “I would like to draw their attention to an entrepreneurial spirit in their midst.” Yes, that’s better. Here are the facts, in case you haven’t heard the story: Sarah Palin’s niece sold some old shoes of her aunt’s on eBay. I apologize for calling her a “little girl” earlier, as I was merely making a point. I don’t know anything about this woman, other than the photo she posted on eBay which shows her with her aunt. I don’t need to know anything further, as it is irrelevant to the story. The one thing I do know is the girl’s an absolute genius compared to the RNC. The shoes (you just can’t make this stuff up) are size seven-and-a-half red “Double Dare” Naughty Monkey shoes, bought by Sarah Palin (specifically ” NOT paid for by the RNC”), and worn onstage with John McCain during the campaign. They come with two photos autographed by Sarah Palin showing her wearing the shoes onstage, as well as the option of having the shoes themselves signed by Palin, and even the custom campaign Sharpie pen used to sign them. The eBay auction page even includes a statement by the shoe store owner who sold the Naughty Monkeys to Palin: We sold our Governor a pair of red Double Dare Naughty Monkey shoes a couple of weeks ago. She just wore those shoes as John McCain announced Governor Sarah Palin from Alaska as his vice president running mate. Although not everyone agrees with her politics, everyone can agree that she wears “sexy shoes.” He seems to be doing a little Obama-esque reaching across the aisle himself, there. [Ahem.] But, while amusing, the real story is the outcome, which is what you’d expect: the bidding was brisk , and the shoes sold for $2,025. To put this in perspective, the shoes reportedly retail for around $100. On eBay, you can buy a pair for $75 (although maybe not in red…). That is about a 1900% profit. Here’s where the RNC should perk their ears up. Because they’re sitting on a potential fundraising goldmine, and they don’t even appear to be aware of it . The clothes the RNC bought for Sarah Palin to wear on the campaign trail have been returned, and are reportedly being stored in “garbage bags” in the bowels of the RNC building. They originally said they were going to donate these clothes to charity. But let’s all stop and imagine that for a moment. Let’s see… a photo of a homeless woman dressed in Christian Dior looking puzzled… you can write your own headline. The RNC knows it would be a press relations disaster to have the story end this way. Which is probably why they haven’t disposed of the clothes yet — no one can figure out a way to do so without looking foolish. Last November, I wrote about this and cautioned Democrats about what seemed to me to be the most obvious end result of the RNC Palin shopping spree fiasco: Sarah Palin’s shopping spree was paid for by the Republican National Committee, and has been the butt of many jokes since. But I am predicting that they will ultimately get the last laugh on this one. Democrats need to admit this before it happens, to get out in front of it, and not look stunned when it does happen. “You know, there have been a lot of jokes about the RNC buying Sarah Palin a wardrobe. But my guess is that they will end up profiting on the entire deal. Those clothes are owned by the RNC, and (once they are all returned) there is nothing stopping them from using them as fundraisers. I can easily see some sort of auction where wealthy Republican donors get into bidding wars over owning an outfit worn by Governor Palin. An outfit that cost the RNC $5,000 could wind up making them tens of thousands of dollars from a donor who wants to wear an authentic Palin outfit, or give one to their wives (in the case of male donors). So the RNC had to endure a lot of jokes, but they could wind up getting the last laugh on this one.” The Republican National Committee would be crazy not to follow the example of Sarah’s niece. Unless they’re really being crazy like a fox. Because it occurs to me that this whole thing may be a trail balloon to see what the media’s reaction is to Palin souvenir sales on the internet. If nobody yelps, or nobody even notices, then perhaps this is just the beginning. After all, Sarah Palin herself has obviously sanctioned the sale of her “Double Dare” Naughty Monkeys. She will — as a part of what is being offered — autograph the shoes themselves (or not) if the buyer wishes. So she obviously told her niece it was OK with her. Which makes me wonder. Perhaps there will be an auction soon (online or not) of the RNC’s stash of Palin clothes. Republican donors will obviously put up big bucks for this stuff, so why not turn a fundraising profit on the whole deal? The only thing they have to fear is negative media reaction. The Republican donors who are seriously annoyed at how their money was used couldn’t even complain if the RNC used their money to make even more money , now could they? And, from what I hear, the RNC could use a few bucks right about now. So don’t be too surprised if Palin memorabilia becomes a “Republican stimulus package,” so to speak. And don’t be surprised either if it follows the prophecy: “and a little child shall lead them.” Oh, wait, I said I wasn’t going to talk about the niece in diminutive terms again, didn’t I? Hmm… OK… let’s focus on the shoes, instead: “And a pair of Naughty Monkeys shall lead them.” Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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Chris Weigant: And A Naughty Monkey Shall Lead Them: Upcoming RNC Palin Wardrobe Auction?
Sarah Palin is hilarious . From her new PAC website : Dedicated to building America’s future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation. So what are those fresh ideas? Well, there’s a “Donate Today!” button, and a “About Sarah” button, and a place to sign up for emails. Are those ideas? Because really, that’s all the site has. Yup, about as vapid as Sarah herself.
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Vapid, thy name is "Sarah"
It was not intentional. In fact, quite the opposite. Of course, Obama might very well have won anyway, by a very narrow margin. But I believe that the true turning point in the fall campaign — though rarely noted — actually came in the summer, at the Democratic convention in Denver. No, it was not the general good vibes about Obama, the ringing speeches by Teddy, Michelle, Bill and Hill, and by the candidate himself. Rather, it was the electronic media’s overblown coverage of the allegedly widespread threat by female Hillary delegates, and other Clinton fans, to bolt Obama in favor of McCain. As you recall, the dissidents got massive face time on TV and, it was said, they represented just the tip of the iceberg. And it was said (by commentators, not just by the new pro-Hillary media stars), that women, particularly older ones and suburban/blue-collar types who had voted for Hillary in the primaries, would likely abandon the Democrats in November. There was no firm evidence for this, of course - and few pundits, on TV and in print, seemed to notice that the same few disgruntled Hillary delegates appeared on all of the shows. No matter. Obama’s possible defeat because of the possible defections was widely predicted. Why did this matter, since the mass defections near happened? Especially since here and elsewhere at liberal political blogs no one ever took the threats seriously? Because John McCain and his people bought it, hook, line and sinker. This explains the sudden rise of Sarah Palin to the top of their VP list. They saw an opening - which really wasn’t there - and went completely overboard. Not only did a female VP suddenly look like a great idea, but one who would have extra appeal to the particular type of Hillary primary voters so hyped by the media. So the preposterous media coverage of the (few) unhappy Hillary-ites at the Dem convention - which was aimed not at helping Obama but maintaining interest in the affair and the coming campaign - inspired McCain to select as his running mate someone who would virtually destroy his campaign. Recall that after months of trailing, McCain came out of his convention with a bump that led to at least a tie with Obama in the polls — then he plummeted very quickly as the truth about Palin seeped out. A week after the GOP convention ended, polls were already showing (as many of us, if not most MSM pundits, had predicted) that , if anything, women thought LESS of Palin than did men. . Imagine if McCain had picked even a neutral figure such as a Pawlenty or, say, Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Yes, Obama quite possibly still would have won - but if he did, it would have been in a real nail biter. And Tina Fey would not have named entertainer of the year, and we wouldn’t have had that turkey slaughtering video to enjoy. Greg Mitchell’s new book is “Why Obama Won.”
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Greg Mitchell: Yes, the Media Helped Elect Obama, But…
There has been some buzz about the recent piece in the New Yorker featuring on Tim Palen co-head of theatrical marketing at Lion’s Gate one of the only remaining independent studios around. Lion’s Gate is an interesting studio of late because their slate of films are so different from slasher porn to Tyler Perry to the upcoming New in Town starring Renee Zellweger which is opening Friday. As a person who does marketing/publicity for women’s films my job is to get the word out about a certain film and I focus on making people aware of what I have and not trying to deny what I don’t have. Because women’s films generally don’t get paid enough attention, getting the word out just to get people to notice a film is always a challenge. But then again, I don’t have to promote slasher porn and honestly don’t think that I could. The article was quite depressing on many levels especially when it talks about how deception is used to lure audiences and it exemplified the ongoing difficulties in marketing movies about women to women. I was also surprised that Palen’s partner in theatrical marketing Sarah Greenberg was basically missing from the piece. She focuses on the publicity front but it sucks that the article made it seem that Palen did everything to make these films successful. The one thing I got out of the piece is that marketing is king and movies are made today not necessarily because it might be a good movie, but because it can be sold and marketed. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that women are not valued since we are harder to market to. Lots of industries have figured out how to market to women because they think it’s worth it because women make most of the purchasing decisions. (Some studies say that women make over 80% of all purchasing decisions.) The thing to note is that because women are harder to reach you also get the guys cause they are easier to sell to. Motto of the story — if you figure out how to get women you get men and women. If you figure out how to reach guys, you just get guys. Here are some parts of the piece I thought were really interesting: Marketing considerations shape not only the kind of films studios make but who’s in them–gone are lavish adult dramas with no stars, like the 1982 “Gandhi.”…”If we weren’t making decisions based on marketability, John Malkovich would be in every movie,” a top studio marketer says. “Great actor, but not someone you want to see half-naked in the sheets next to Angelina Jolie.” Depressing. Now they make low budget, stupid movies with no stars. What about splitting the difference and trying to make lower budget movies for adults with stars (or non-stars) who will probably work for less money now that the economy is in the crapper. There are not many actors who can still say I’ll make this movie if you get me my $20 million. Below is even more depressing. The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex–but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance–but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall. Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them. Older women are discriminating. Mind you, older means 30. It means women are interested in making sure what they are spending their money and time on is worth it. I find that is actually a smart way of going through life. Why would I want to spend $12 and two hours of my time on something I know I’m not going to enjoy. And why is discriminating such an evil word? Is it because they know the content they are trying to sell sucks? How about making better movies? But here’s another problem with women being “review sensitive.” Who are the reviewers? Mostly guys (women are only 23% of the reviewers at daily papers and since that stats is several months old I’m sure it’s less now) and many have issues with women’s films. (Because don’t you know that all films about women are pathetic chick flicks that guys shouldn’t be stuck going to, but I should want to go see a Judd Apatow film cause it’s just a good movie- give me a break.) But the good thing for women is that the blogosphere gives us the opportunity to talk directly to each other, to let each other know what sucks and what doesn’t suck and where we should spend our time and money. I talk all the time about women needing to get out and support films they are interested in on opening weekend so you get counted in Hollywood terms. But it’s stories like this that gives me the feeling that no matter how many tickets we buy we will still be treated like second class citizens. Why haven’t the studios looked for scripts about four women over 40 like Sex & the City ? I know they are going to make the sequel but there have got to be other stories that can continue to build on the market. Also, why aren’t they trying to figure out how to replicate the success of Mamma Mia which has made over half a BILLION now and was an even bigger hit overseas than in the US? Tim Palen has a big challenge ahead of him this weekend with the opening of New in Town the Renee Zellweger film. He can’t sell it as slasher porn cause that would turn off all of us over 30 and he admits “he had no playbook for a PG-13 romantic comedy about a strong woman.” Tim, just look around you. Life is a playbook for strong women. I think they are much closer on the recent ads that feature Zellweger front and center. What attracts me to her is her desperate desire to fit in and in trying to do so making tons of funny mistakes along the way. She’s very endearing. I still love the original Bridget Jones and I watched Bridget Jones 2 this past weekend at the gym and totally laughed at the scenes in the Thai jail where she drills her fellow prisoners on her love for Madonna. (BTW did anyone else notice that Baltar from Battlestar Galactica plays one of her best friends?) She makes me smile and not many people can do that. The most depressing part of the depressing article is the comments of David Schneiderman one of the expert trailer cutters. I gotta give the guy props on his honestly but yikes: “We’re in the business of cheating, let’s face it. We fix voice-overs, create dialogue to clear up a story, use stock footage. We give pushup bras to flat-chested girls, take people’s eyes and put them where we want them. And sometimes it works.” And lots of times it doesn’t. Sigh. I’m gonna take a shower now cause I feel dirty. The Cobra (The New Yorker) Originally posted on Women & Hollywood
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Melissa Silverstein: Marketing Movies to "Discriminating Women"
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant last month wasn’t so much “catastrophic” as it was a “sudden, accidental release.” That’s according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press that was prepared by TVA’s 50-member public relations staff for briefing news media the day after the disaster at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville. The nation’s largest public utility has been accused by environmentalists and affected residents of soft-pedaling the seriousness of the flood of toxin-laden ash that filled inlets of the Emory River and swept away or damaged lakeside homes. Steve Smith, director of the environmental group Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, told a U.S. Senate committee that TVA downplayed the potential toxicity of the ash and the extent of the damage immediately afterward and for several days more. “Oh, absolutely. They came out and said everything is safe, right?” said Bruce Nilles, a Madison, Wis.-based attorney for the Sierra Club. The Dec. 23 document, inadvertently sent to the AP and once labeled “risk assessment talking points,” was crafted as TVA scrambled to contain a spill that caused no serious injuries but displaced several people and continues to pose an environmental threat. “That was very early on,” TVA spokesman John Moulton said about the memo, in which “catastrophic” was replaced with “sudden, accidental” to describe the “release of this large amount of material.” “We were putting in the word that we thought … best described it at that time,” he said. “Now, we certainly realize it is a very serious event and we realized then it was a very serious event. There was no attempt to downplay it.” The memo was edited to remove “risk to public health and risk to the environment” as a reason for measuring water quality and the potential of an “acute threat” to fish. A reworked description of fly ash noted it mostly “consists of inert material not harmful to the environment,” while references to “toxic metals” in the ash were moved to a section on water sampling. At least four writers or editors contributed to the memo, which was prepared as some environmental groups were releasing their own statements pumping up the spill as potentially “over 40 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez (oil) spill in Alaska.” Noel Holston, a public relations specialist with the University of Georgia’s Peabody journalism awards program, said it would be “hard to infer a motive to such corrections and fine tunings.” But he said, “I can’t imagine that anyone who sees these additions and deletions would not conclude that the final version is softer and less alarming than the earlier wording. The fact is they whittled away at this until it said something a little less frightening than what it originally said.” Emily Reynolds, a TVA senior vice president who oversees agency communications, wasn’t available for an interview about the public relations strategy for the spill. She instead issued a statement saying, “From day one our priority has been to provide our stakeholders, especially Roane County residents, with accurate and timely information about the Kingston spill. TVA will continue to be open and transparent with the media and public in addressing questions and concerns … ” As the scope of the spill became more clear, TVA’s message did expand. Five days later, it doubled its estimate of ash released _ from 2.6 million cubic yards to 5.4 million. A day later, it prepared a warning with state health and environmental agencies saying residents should avoid direct contact with fly ash to prevent skin irritation and respiratory problems. The agency also set up an outreach center in the community, held four public meetings and one open house. It’s spending more than $1 million a day on the cleanup. But even local emergency officials wanted a second opinion when it came to dealing with the disaster. Scott Stout, spokesman for the Roane County Emergency Agency, said his agency contacted the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation as quickly as they could, which led to the involvement of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Because whatever TVA was saying, we didn’t feel like the public had confidence in what their reports were saying,” Stout said. So far, environmental monitoring suggests drinking water from the river and private wells is safe and the air is clear. Still, Sarah McCoin worries. She lives less than a mile upstream of the spill and hoped to get straight answers from TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore at a public meeting two weeks ago. “If fly ash is not a hazardous material, why then are all these precautions being made?” she said she asked him. “We are spraying the contamination off the trucks that are going up and down the road. ‘Don’t let your dogs or your pets get out. Don’t let them drink the water. Keep your kids away from it. Don’t breathe it. If you have any contact with it, spray it off.’ “He said, ‘It is not a hazardous material.’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’” ___ TVA: http://www.tva.gov/
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TVA PR Memo Shows Company "Whittled Away" Descriptions Of Coal Spill
Yes, Sarah Palin has her own PAC, also, which is so needed in this great country of ours. And here’s why: “The PAC is a smart thing to do because she’s getting so many speaking requests still, so if she gets a request from, say, Bob McDonnell in Virginia, she could do that travel out of her PAC money,” explained the spokesperson, noting that Palin has been in high demand from Republicans around the country since the campaign ended. This is very common, of course. The use of a PAC essentially for lifestyle enhancement. But it’s hilarious in its implications, too. SARAH PALIN: Hey Bob, you think I could come down to Virginia and speak some time? Also? BOB MCDONNELL: Uh, yeah. Sure, Sarah. Come on by any time. SARAH: Well, you know, I’m all the way up here in Alaska. Also. So… it’s kinda costly, also. BOB: Oh, wow. Really? Geez. That’s a shame. I hadn’t thought of that. Well, any time you’re in the neighborhood, you know? Later… SARAH: Todd, how can I make other people pay for indulging my political habit? Not just the clothes this time, either. Bob McDonald, the guy from… was it West Virginia, or East Virginia? He wants me to come down there real bad, also. TODD: You’re already governor, Sarah. Use tax money for it. Take the state plane. SARAH: I did that and it didn’t work, remember? They’re making me pay it back. Who else has ideas, for which people are so hungry in this great country of ours? How about you, passing moose? MOOSE: You could start a PAC, and then you could use the PAC money to reimburse the state. And as governor, you could even set the rate at which you have to reimburse, and cut yourself a break. Then you could get people like Bob to invite you to Virginia to talk about “energy issues” in your “capacity” as governor, and you could schedule a PAC fundraiser for later that night, and get the state to pay part of the tab because of the “official” part of the trip. SARAH: You’re one smart fucking moose! Also! Now, get in my belly! **BLAM!**
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AlsoPAC!
If you saw Politico’s Jonathan Martin’s metaphorical mugging of President Obama on Thursday and then read his and Carrie Budoff Brown’s hit piece on him, perhaps you’re as offended as I am. Watch Martin’s body language and face from about 2 min 50 seconds into the above clip. After the President is finally able to move past him, Martin repeatedly looks Obama up and down. What I see on his face is the look of contempt especially given the disrespect he had just shown the new President on his second day on the job. In fact, a cameraman had to verbally intervene to remind Martin of whom he was trying to mug: “I’d like to say it one more time: ‘ Mr. President. ‘” Hopefully the MSNBC clip of this scene will soon appear. It shows much more clearly than the above clip or CNN’s just how physically confrontational Martin was. You can see him essentially blocking the President from getting past. Almost all Black men recognize Martin’s contemptuous look and confrontational pose — it’s the one that White cops give us after pulling us over for Driving While Black or even Standing While Black, and then start to interrogate us like we just committed a crime. In fact, about a minute into this live video clip a White cop, who looks similar to Martin, confronts a Black man in a manner that makes me wonder if Martin studied this video to pick up some pointers. Significantly, although other members of the press corp tacitly consented to the social nature of President Obama’s visit, instead of acting like a respectable reporter, Martin acted more like a racist cop and treated President Obama like he just committed a crime. There is nothing wrong with asking tough questions at the right time and place and manner. But Martin’s subsequent article unmasked a much uglier side to his method and apparent motivation. He made a specific point of saying that Obama put his hands on him, like he had just committed assault and battery, even though it was Martin who had aggressively confronted the President and physically blocked his path. Martin then accused the President of committing another cardinal offense for a Black man: staring him in the eye, like this was back during Segregation times when Black folks weren’t allowed to look White folks in the eye and had to get out of their way if they were walking on the sidewalk. As you can see in the video, President Obama put his hands on many people’s shoulders and looked many people in the eye. Martin and Brown then accused President Obama of “dodging,” “flashing,” and being “irritated” and “agitated.” The latter two words are commonly used in Court proceedings by Prosecutors when making a case that a Defendant is unstable, dangerous and prone to violence, particularly if they are Black men. “Irritated,” “excited,” “agitated” are also terms commonly used by police to describe people whom they used violence on when they subsequently justify their use of force. On Friday morning, during an interview with MSNBC, Martin excused his behavior by equating the situation of President Obama coming down just to shake hands and greet the press corp with Obama the candidate on the campaign trail who should be used to having reporters ask him tough questions. He again seemed unwilling to acknowledge that Obama is now the President, essentially portraying him as no different from any another “politician” and therefore deserving of the same exact treatment. Wake up Mr. Martin. He’s President Obama now and deserves that respect. He’s not Rod Blagojevich or Bernie Madoff. Even the cameraman seemed compelled to have to remind you of that fact given your behavior simultaneously dishonoring Obama the man and disrespecting the Office of President. Sadly, too many others in the media seem to think your treatment of Obama is warranted and/or OK, when they never physically confronted President Bush, Cheney, or Rove like that. Empirical studies repeatedly find that a widespread unconscious bias exists among the population that it is more acceptable to treat Black males in an aggressive, punitive, disrespectful, and/or abusive manner than White males or females and/or that Blacks are more adapted to such treatment. Other findings show widespread inability to either recognize the disparately negative treatment of Blacks and/or emotionally respond when it actually happens . And then there is the well documented history of fear, jealously, and/or contempt of “black masculinity” especially among segments of the White male population. Just check out the paranoia of Lou Dobbs and others who’ve been accusing Obama and economic adviser Robert Reich of discriminating against “white male workers” in the stimulus plan. The blogosphere is now replete with “White men need not apply” headlines. And do we need to be reminded of Ashley Todd’s self-mutilation she blamed on a “big Black man” who supposedly carved a B for Barack on her face? She knew that her story would resonate with substantial segments of the population. All I can say is thank God she pulled her stunt in Pittsburg where there a lot of Black cops and not in the parts of Pennsylvania Palin called the “Real America.” It is often such blindness, negative emotions, and stereotypes that result in disrespectful, punitive, or contemptuous behavior towards African Americans and failure to do or say anything about it when it happens even though the same folks may actually love Obama , Oprah, and Will Smith. Then there are those folks like the cameraman who spoke up and said the right thing at the right time. None of this means that people are consciously racist. It does mean that there are many implicit biases, associations, and stereotypes about Black folks, especially males, that many people are unaware of and/or tolerate because this society has conditioned all of us, to one degree or another, to accept them as normal. It’s the product of the nearly 400 years of race related history on this Continent as well as the inability of the dominant ideology ” to describe adequately the collective dimensions of our experiences.” I believe that all of these things played a role in Martin’s behavior, subsequent article and the failure and/or unwillingness of the media to recognize and acknowledge it. It is why more strong African American voices, like those of Roland Martin at CNN and Bob Herbert of the New York Times are needed to join the ranks of those few Black men with enough seniority and national recognition that they don’t have to fear being fired or sanctioned by their White bosses if they dare to air out this dirty American laundry. Sadly, most times such analysis never sees the light of day. Mr. Martin, please listen to the President’s inaugural speech, particularly his quote from scripture about ending our childish ways and his appeal that we end recriminations. From my perspective, and other Black men with whom I’ve spoken, you acted like a schoolyard bully who seemed unable to get over the fact that this Black man is now the President of the United States and so you had to try and “put him in his place.” And then when he failed to answer your question on your terms, you threw a fit and depicted him according to the stereotype of Black men being hostile and aggressive because stereotyped people are easier to control and President Obama hasn’t conformed to the ones you’re apparently used to and comfortable with. True, you did get Fox to back up your biased account with their own stereotypical headline, “Irritated Obama ‘Stares Down’ Reporter During Press Corps Visit” and depiction: Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter’s shoulder and staring him in the eye. And sadly, most of the media has so far went along with the false light in which you portrayed the President. They’re also spreading stereotypical memes like “agitated,” “irritated,” “volatile,” “meltdown” etc. to describe Obama’s behavior (Anderson Cooper called it “testy”), whereas you have gotten notoriety and a free pass, once again proving that the 4th Estate is bending over backwards to show the most conservative and biased parts of our society that it’s “fair and balanced” and “just like them.” Perhaps they’re jealous of ABC/Disney ’s Rush Limbaugh getting 20 million loyal listeners per week and grateful for any time he cites them favorably. Even though Limbaugh told his listeners that he wants Obama to fail as President and made the following racial appeal: We are being told we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to grab our ankles…because his father was black, because he’s the first black president, we’ve got to accept this. Mr. Martin, I do believe your “reporting” of this incident seemed more in common with racial profiling and thuggery than journalism and it needs to change. But you’ve also implicated most of the 4th Estate, which has blindly followed suit by spreading your account without rejoinder. In other words, you’ve offered at least some proof to the world that the Press is NOT giving Obama a free ride because of his race, which is the common conservative and Karl Rove party line. You also helped demonstrate what fear, envy, and/or contempt for Black masculinity and Black men can look like in your world. If this is not so, then why didn’t you and others get up in the face of Bush, Cheney and Rove like that? You’ve also given us a peak at how you and/or others may try and physically confront, provoke, and challenge the manhood of the President in the future. You know his hands are tied, and if he doesn’t smile and shine and do as you say, you’ll just paint him as another “angry Black man.” You’ve already shown us how racially coded “emotion words” will be used to try and undermine his effectiveness. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh will show you some love with some of his loot and not just hold you up as a hero. I just ask that when you get to the part in Obama’s speech where he talks about those who helped bring the country to its current crisis, please realize that he was also talking about you Limbaugh, and the mainstream media, even as you present yourselves as being “colorblind” or “post-racial” but are anything but. So please, sir, grow up, ante up, kick the Karl Rove-limbaugh habit and help us get through this collective crisis. It’s time to put country first and stop trying to be the news .
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Ronald B. Robinson: Fear and Envy of Black Masculinity: How Politico’s Jonathan Martin Mugged President Obama and Got Away With It
For this week’s Wife Watch!, go here I’ll tell you one of the reasons I enjoy Big Love : The writers know how to give each episode a satisfying internal arc without sacrificing the sense of the big picture. Every week, we get mini-plots that are interesting on their own, yet also propel the sweeping conflicts of the current season (and the series at large.) It’s the balance that eluded Lost in season three, which had too little “big story” and too much nonsense about Jack’s tattoo, and is currently stalling Heroes , which wastes so much time explaining grand themes that it forgets to give characters nuance. Full disclosure: I went to graduate school with one of Big Love’s new staff writers. This week’s episode, “Empire,” has one of the best examples of that small-yet-large writing. It comes when we learn why Don Embry has been screwing up at work, forgetting to provide architectural models for the Native American casino and what-not: It’s because Vernie and Jo Jo, his second and third wives, have run off together and taken their kids. Now Don’s family has scattered, he has no way to find them, and he can’t go looking without possibly exposing himself and his entire polygamous community. So delicious. In the big picture, this is a fantastic callback to Vernie and Jo Jo’s lesbianism, which was coyly referenced way back in season one and then totally dropped. By having it burst into the plot in such a major way—threatening Bill and Don’t business, ruining Don’s life, etc.—the writers are reminding us that things don’t happen lightly around here. This show is a universe where small cracks can spread silently for years and then open up. That’s a great way to get us anticipating the looming drama in Roman’s trial and Ana’s potential role in the family. Vernie and Jo Jo also give an interesting spin on this episode’s theme. In almost every storyline, someone is breaking an established rule, and though not every scofflaw meets the same fate, “scofflaw” is still the name of the game. For instance, Sarah breaks her religion’s rule about having premarital sex, and she gets pregnant. That’s also her “punishment” for breaking the community’s “rule” about staying close to home: She wanted to go to ASU, and this baby could force her to stay in Utah. Honestly, the lay-down-in-his-bed-get-up-with-his-baby twist is beneath the show, but I’ll stay hopeful for now. I just want Sarah to keep wanting things, even if she keeps the kid. Anyway, back to rule-breaking… Barb also gets a smack-down. When she thought she had cancer, she violated her internal rule about not wanting a fourth wife, and she agreed to date Ana. How fitting, then, that she found out she was healthy while sitting in Ana’s house. Jeanne Tripplehorn’s episode-closing expression amazing, because it clearly communicates that since Barb is out of the woods, she wants it back to three-wives-n-Bill. But since she violated her own beliefs, she’s stuck. For now, Nicky is getting away with her treachery, flaunting her duty to keep having babies by popping birth-control pills. It’s all so Bill won’t stop thinking she’s sexy, which is another violation of the “subservient woman” clause. You just know Nicky’s going to pay up for this. On the flip side, it’s helpful to look at the rule-breakers in this episode who didn’t get punished (or seem destined to.). Since Margene overstepped her bounds with Weber Gaming, for instance, she practically landed the casino account by herself. I think we all figured out that her “shocking” speech about prejudiced Indians was going to turn out well, but obvious writing aside, it was an interesting moment. And then of course, there’s Lois, who broke the rules in a big way and got to kick some major ass. Lois didn’t behave when Frank was threatening to kill her, meaning she hog-tied his sorry butt and stuck him in the corner. Awesome. We’re supposed to cheer, of course, because Frank is a jerk. All these stories are designed to make us sympathize with the rule-breakers, not the rules. Even with Barb, you can argue that the expectations of polygamy forced her to overlook her own internal code, and so she was wronged by the system. But then there’s Vernie and Jo Jo. They decided to leave their priesthood husband (!), run off with his children (!!), and shack up together in gay, gay sin (!!!). We should be cheering for them loudest, right? In a way, yes. They’re actually out in the big wild world, which last week I didn’t think could happen on this series. Their freedom is exciting. But also? They’re doing damage. The scene where Don breaks down is devastating, especially when he explains that he can’t seek the very children he’s hoping will join him in heaven. It’s a moment where we see the attraction of the polygamous life… where we see that these rules bring some people joy and comfort. By ignoring the code of their community, Vernie and Jo Jo might be happier, but they’re also causing harm. So we end the episode in some murky moral terrain, where no one is completely right or wrong. (Except Lois. Tie him up, girl!) That’s enough to get me back next week. Episode Grade: B+ It would’ve been higher—especially because of the Vernie and Jo Jo stuff—but Sarah’s pregnancy and Margene’s lesson on tolerance were just too hokey to overlook.
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Mark Blankenship: The Big Review: Big Love Season 3, Ep. 2 (spoilers)
This has the potential to be far too much fun . Here’s a name I’ve not heard linked with presidential aspirations before: former Idaho governor and senator Dirk Kempthorne. Republicans familiar with his activities say that Kempthorne has begun to reach out to allies gauge their opinion about whether he should run for President in 2012. Greg Casey, the CEO of the Business and Industry Political Action Committee, has known Kempthorne for 30 years . If Kempthorne were talking to anyone, it would be Casey, who wouldn’t quite bite when I asked him whether his friend had national ambitions. “This is an immensely capable guy. I’ve never seen anyone who has connected with people then.He’s always been able to work in a bipartisan fashion,” Casey said. “I do know that Dirk is very pleased and happy to be looking in the private sector for a while. I think Dirk right now is enjoying his time with his family.” Is he thinking about a presidential run? “… if he isn’t, then someone will think about it for him. People just gravitate to him,” Casey said. Yes, Dirk Kempthorne of the $235,000 office bathroom fame, and the guy who subjected Interior department employees to a 600-slide “homage to himself” in his farewell speech. Yes, 600 slides featuring pictures of Dirk. Those of us who’ve followed Kempthorne’s career since he was mayor of Boise didn’t find those stories shocking. Kempthorne is all about aggrandizing Kempthorne. From his first appearance in public life, my Dad dubbed him “that oily coyote,” and Kempthorne has lived up to it so far. Imagine Bush’s lack of curiosity, Palin’s vacuousness and knack for self-promotion, and Romney’s perfect hair all rolled up into one, and you get Kempthorne. He’s been blessed to have come up in Idaho politics, where few have every really challenged his “record of achievement,” but he’s pretty much slid by. As one Idaho blogger puts it , his main achievement has been that he’s “he has managed to be a shallow, incompetent, narcissistic phony at almost every level of government- Mayor, Governor, Senator and Secretary of the Interior.” Given what we’ve seen with Bush’s and Palin’s ability to captivate wingnuts, Kempthorne might just be the answer for the Republicans. He’s as empty a suit as they could possibly hope for. There is that whole little family values question surrounding him, but that’s hardly stopped Republicans before. But I really hope he keeps testing those waters. It’s going to be even more fun for Idaho bloggers than wide-stance jokes.
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Dirk! GOP Looks to 2012
Welcome back to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that names the most powerful wife of the week on Big Love . (I’ll review last night’s episode tomorrow.) In last week’s season-opening smackdown, Nicky came out on top. She’s still a strong contender, since we learned she’s popping secret birth control in order to be “more wife” and “less mother” around Bill. Plus, she had that amazing moment where she judged Ana for getting free refills at a fast food restaurant. Honestly, Chloe Sevigny is so fussily domineering in this role that I’m tempted to make Nicky the winner every week… … except my girl ceded some power when she let Barb sneak up on her with that “we’ve planned your visit to the fertility clinic” thing. Nicky should’ve seen that coming. And speaking of Barb … well, I’m glad she doesn’t have cancer. It will be interesting to see what happens now that her attention is back on the “I don’t want a fourth wife” idea. Let’s keep our eyes on her! In last week’s comments section, almost everyone supported Margene, but she seemed to be sabotaging herself this week. Giving up her obviously vital role in Weber gaming? Rolling over to play “Mommy” for no apparent reason? What’s her damage? That kind of inconsistency gets her kicked right off the top of the heap. (Maybe she’d better contact the writer’s room. A little sweet talk about their prejudice ought to get her a juicy storyline or two.) But anyway, this week’s First Wife clearly lives outside the Henrickson homes. You could make a case for Rhonda , who’s denim-draped specter hangs over Roman, Sarah, and half the Lost Boys. When she actually shows up (next week!) there will be all kinds of hell to pay. Until Rhonda comes back, though, the crown clearly belongs to Lois . Even when Frank was about to kill her, she didn’t look scared: She just glared at him and choked out demands that he finish the job. (Cheers to Grace Zabriskie for conjuring that ice-melting glare.) And when she got an unexpected assist from another woman’s frying pan? Lois didn’t sit around wheezing. No sir. She barked orders until the next thing we knew, Frank was tied up and gagged in her living room. Fearless in the face of death, and cool-headed as she stares at her attacker’s helpless body: That’s power, y’all. That’s First Wife material. For more pop culture criticism and tomfoolery, join me at The Critical Condition
Originally posted here:
Mark Blankenship: Big Love Wife Watch!: Round Two (spoilers)
Nobody loves a baby more than I do. Don’t get me started on my own three grandchildren; I got the pictures and the videos to keep you a prisoner of love, my love, for an hour. But whenever I see a politician flaunting his or her progeny in the political arena I get a little queasy. In fairness to the babies of Ms. Kirsten Gillibrand, about whom I am going to say some unkind words, the mother, not the charming babies, I don’t even admire the kid parade of our new President’s progeny. Yes, they are gorgeous; they belong in the movies, but they don’t belong on the front page of the New York Times . And when I saw the newly appointed Junior Senator from New York waving her babies at the crowd - I had what I can only describe as my Sarah Palin epiphany. I thought dirty diapers. And then I saw beside her the former Republican Senator Al D’Amato - her longtime mentor - now a lobbyist; and I thought dirty politics which produces the same results as diapers. A bad smell and a need for a quick change. Governor Patterson, himself the inheritor of his office via the implosion of Eliot Spitzer, is a man of wit and intelligence. But in appointing the new Senator he allowed himself to become the Mr. Dithers of New York State. He so fumbled the Caroline Kennedy trial balloon for the Senate replacement of Hillary Clinton, first by insulting the citizens of the state by seriously entertaining the appointment of a woman whose outstanding quality for the Senate seat was her illustrious lineage, and then compounding that fumble by toying with that woman’s hopes for weeks and insulting her in ways she did not deserve. If replacing a woman with another woman was the goal, we had a trio of Carolines to choose from, the aforesaid Ms. Kennedy, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney; a true friend to the first responders after 9/11, a courageous fighter for the people of my city and a notable progressive; Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, the wise, watchful and caring, anti-gun advocate whose husband was shot dead in a maniac’s rampage, another worthy candidate; but Paterson turned to upstate Congresswoman Kirsten E. Gillibrand, an attractive, forty something NY congresswoman from a rural area as his choice for replacing Clinton. It was a dumb, John McCain moment, impulsive, yet corrupt, hoping to gain traction with the conservative wing of his party. This is a woman who represents the far right of the Democratic Party. Her political roots are deep in the Republican Party and its platform; her first instincts are Republican contrarianism. She votes the NRA party line, which means the hell with endangered city folks, she is/was against Gay Marriage, which means the hell with human rights, and she is a woman who voted against the bailout, which means the hell with the tanking economy. And her cozy relationships with former Republican boss Bruno, now under investigation, and D’Amato, a hack from way back, show that she was schooled by the old masters of sleight of hand politics. Governor Dithers has made a spectacularly stupid choice in Ms. Gillibrand that marks him as one of nature’s incompetents, and I cannot wait to cast my vote against him in any future primary. I note that Ms. Gillibrand is tap-dancing her way towards the center away from the far right but it’s a clumsy dance, needs more practice, and her presence in the Senate - supported by Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton - shows that self-interest remains the primary goal of New York’s politicians. For Schumer it means at last he has a younger colleague without a famous name who will not grab the mike and the camera from him as he lunges towards it for his drug of choice - face time with the public. For Clinton it means supporting a woman who supported her Presidential candidacy which appears to be the yardstick by which most politicians measure others. A sad day for New York when we have our own Sarah Palin in the Senate, a rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ kinda gal, a mom with a rifle. Not so fast my inner contrarian says, she went to Dartmouth, didn’t she? She’ll stand up to Katie Couric in ways that poor Sarah couldn’t manage. And she can learn, can’t she? But the old New Yorker in me believes she’d best serve the people by shooting Canadian geese over airports than repairing our Bush broken nation. What a dumb mess. Just when we need the best and the brightest we get the new Junior Senator from New York by way of Governor Dithers. Thank God I have my grandkids to make me smile.
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Sherman Yellen: Our Own Sarah Palin
During the question and answer section of the 2009 Miss America Pageant , held tonight, Miss New York was asked a question about former beauty queen, and Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin. The question was: “In Governor Sarah Palin’s campaign for vice president, the media made an issue of her having been a Miss America contestant. Is that fair?” Miss New York did not, in fact, find it fair. Watch her full answer below.
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Miss America : Sarah Palin Question Asked Of Miss New York (VIDEO)
President Barack Obama needs to take a deep breath, and then a long look in the mirror, and repeat to himself that Rush Limbaugh can’t hurt me, and anything that I try to do with Congress. Limbaugh has fast become a fringe, self-marginalized non entity. He’s got as much chance to wreck Obama’s legislative agenda as disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, maybe even less. The only person who can change that is Obama. He came close to doing that when in what was either a calculated move, or an over exuberant slip he evoked in vain the name of conservative talk radio’s numero uno gabber. Obama allegedly admonished wary GOP congresspersons to stop listening to Limbaugh if they want to get things done; meaning that Limbaugh is the stumbling block to them getting on board with his program. There was absolutely no need to toss out Limbaugh’s name to make that point. But by doing that, it did several things. It boosts his talk show ratings. It feeds his Grand Canyon size ego. It gives him a mountain of fodder to further puff himself up as “The I am somebody of talk radio”; the guy who can make or break politicians, including Obama. It puts a little steel in the spine of a handful of sore loser, obstructionist bent GOP house members and made them more likely to dig in their heels and take pot shots at anything Obama sends up to Capitol Hill. The most obvious is his economic stimulus plan. This isn’t the first time that a Team Obama member created and then flailed at a GOP straw man target. When Republican rival John McCain plopped Sarah Palin on his ticket, a top Team Obama member reflexively hammered Palin. Obama quickly realized that was a colossal mistake. He did the smart thing and simply congratulated her on being picked as McCain’s VP candidate and then went back to talking about the issues. He knew not to make her the issue. A candidate who spends inordinate time and energy trying to tar their opponent runs the same risk as an attorney or a prosecutor in a courtroom. They avoid at all costs being seen as too overly aggressive with a witness. It’s called witness badgering and that’s even more dangerous when the witness is a middle or working class mother as Palin is. Bullying her can stir juror sympathy, even anger toward the attorney or the prosecutor, and it could cost them their case. The Limbaugh quip is no different. He will use Obama’s reference to his name to further whip up the pack to nit pick, blow up any and every alleged slip or misstep by Obama, and concoct even more outrageous tales of supposed deceit about the Obama administration. By making Limbaugh bigger than life in American politics, it gives steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half truths, distortions, and flat out lies about Obama, liberals, and just about any other issue he bloviates on. Obama doesn’t need to create straw man Limbaugh for another reason. He already has kissed the ring of Republican leaders in Congress and made the requisite nod toward substantial tax cuts, and putting limits on spending, in his stimulus plan. This virtually assures him a near working majority in Congress behind the plan. This includes a significant number of Republicans. It also insures that he’ll get politically painless approval of his cabinet appointees. Limbaugh is irrelevant to any of this. The message to Obama, drop his name from your Rolodex. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Message to Obama: Drop Limbaugh from your Rolodex
President Barack Obama needs to take a deep breath, and then a long look in the mirror, and repeat to himself that Rush Limbaugh can’t hurt me, and anything that I try to do with Congress. Limbaugh has fast become a fringe, self-marginalized non entity. He’s got as much chance to wreck Obama’s legislative agenda as disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, maybe even less. The only person who can change that is Obama. He came close to doing that when in what was either a calculated move, or an over exuberant slip he evoked in vain the name of conservative talk radio’s numero uno gabber. Obama allegedly admonished wary GOP congresspersons to stop listening to Limbaugh if they want to get things done; meaning that Limbaugh is the stumbling block to them getting on board with his program. There was absolutely no need to toss out Limbaugh’s name to make that point. But by doing that, it did several things. It boosts his talk show ratings. It feeds his Grand Canyon size ego. It gives him a mountain of fodder to further puff himself up as “The I am somebody of talk radio”; the guy who can make or break politicians, including Obama. It puts a little steel in the spine of a handful of sore loser, obstructionist bent GOP house members and made them more likely to dig in their heels and take pot shots at anything Obama sends up to Capitol Hill. The most obvious is his economic stimulus plan. This isn’t the first time that a Team Obama member created and then flailed at a GOP straw man target. When Republican rival John McCain plopped Sarah Palin on his ticket, a top Team Obama member reflexively hammered Palin. Obama quickly realized that was a colossal mistake. He did the smart thing and simply congratulated her on being picked as McCain’s VP candidate and then went back to talking about the issues. He knew not to make her the issue. A candidate who spends inordinate time and energy trying to tar their opponent runs the same risk as an attorney or a prosecutor in a courtroom. They avoid at all costs being seen as too overly aggressive with a witness. It’s called witness badgering and that’s even more dangerous when the witness is a middle or working class mother as Palin is. Bullying her can stir juror sympathy, even anger toward the attorney or the prosecutor, and it could cost them their case. The Limbaugh quip is no different. He will use Obama’s reference to his name to further whip up the pack to nit pick, blow up any and every alleged slip or misstep by Obama, and concoct even more outrageous tales of supposed deceit about the Obama administration. By making Limbaugh bigger than life in American politics, it gives steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half truths, distortions, and flat out lies about Obama, liberals, and just about any other issue he bloviates on. Obama doesn’t need to create straw man Limbaugh for another reason. He already has kissed the ring of Republican leaders in Congress and made the requisite nod toward substantial tax cuts, and putting limits on spending, in his stimulus plan. This virtually assures him a near working majority in Congress behind the plan. This includes a significant number of Republicans. It also insures that he’ll get politically painless approval of his cabinet appointees. Limbaugh is irrelevant to any of this. The message to Obama, drop his name from your Rolodex. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Message to Obama: Drop Limbaugh from your Rolodex
Sarah Palin sure loves an excuse to wear a corsage. We first spotted that unmistakable cluster of flowers, ribbon and baby’s breath on her wrist at the Alaska Anniversary Ball in mid-November. Then she brought it back — only bigger and badder — for Thursday’s State of the State address. But when we reached even further into the archives (or as far back as our photo wires go for the governor, which is 2006), we discovered a longtime predilection for the style. Is this an Alaskan tradition? (Even though they do not appear to be Alaska’s state flower, The Forget-Me-Not .) Does anyone out there know? At Thursday’s State of the State address: At the Alaska Anniversary Ball November 14th, 2008: It’s a family affair at the gubernatorial inauguration December 4, 2006:
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Sarah Palin’s Corsages Through The Years (PHOTOS)
Sarah Palin sure loves an excuse to wear a corsage. We first spotted that unmistakable cluster of flowers, ribbon and baby’s breath on her wrist at the Alaska Anniversary Ball in mid-November. Then she brought it back — only bigger and badder — for Thursday’s State of the State address. But when we reached even further into the archives (or as far back as our photo wires go for the governor, which is 2006), we discovered a longtime predilection for the style. Is this an Alaskan tradition? (Even though they do not appear to be Alaska’s state flower, The Forget-Me-Not .) Does anyone out there know? At Thursday’s State of the State address: At the Alaska Anniversary Ball November 14th, 2008: It’s a family affair at the gubernatorial inauguration December 4, 2006:
Continued here:
Sarah Palin’s Corsages Through The Years (PHOTOS)
I don’t even watch The View . When it was new, I loved it. Let’s say I might have been close to addicted. Then I moved to France, and when I come back to visit, I don’t have time nor do I want to see it anymore. Has The View run its course? The show became less interesting for many reasons-Elisabeth Hasselbeck being a prime one. Now, really, I only see clips of The View on the Internet–and that’s enough. Hasselbeck was and is The Token Conservative on the show, and maybe The View should have one–if it wasn’t her. What does Ms. Hasselbeck add? A shrill and poofy, often misinformed bouncy ball of commentary (which is really too big a word to use for her) pinging off the more substantial walls of Joy, Whoopi, and Barbara. I can’t speak about Sherry, who seems to be a more or less a convivial member of the group. But I don’t believe the hype that they all really get along. Ms. Hasselbeck was truly cartoonish during the election, and by that, I mean in a Cruella de Ville sort of way–trying to promote the Republican ticket and to slap down the uppity Democrats. One TV show clip after another revealed her. Now, even after the election, when Ms. Hasselbeck’s own Sarah Palin (evidently her feminine ideal of brain and power) lost, and she has been muzzled, more or less, by the overwhelming public support and power of the Obama Era, she continues to irritate. Even when she’s defending, Michelle Obama. Here’s the clip . Is The View ’s Republican girl trying to improve her likability here? During the election hullabaloo, when she was at her most Hasselbeckiness, Barbara must have told her to straighten up and fly right. On this particular show: “Hasselbeck said, ‘I think, look, if this is the media’s attempt at trying to be objective as we move into the next administration, they’re moving in the wrong direction.’” How hilarious coming from her! Am I wrong? Does anyone like her better now?
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Beth Arnold: Elisabeth Hasselbeck Is Still Annoying
President Obama looked dignified in a black overcoat and thick burgundy tie. Michelle Obama wore tailored layers of butter cream. The adorable first daughters were chic in J.Crew. And the two million people who gathered on the Mall were gussied up in clothing fit for arctic exploration. The hot accessory of choice? The hand warmer! The toasty treats made a comeback that we haven’t seen since the Aspen ski season of ‘98. “They’re appealing to people of all ages,” said a young woman donating a pair to a child whose exposed hands were turning an anemic gray. “And their neutral color is all the rage for 1.20.09.” Another must-have for the zillions of blue-lipped citizens sandwiched between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial was the proper topper. And by proper I certainly don’t mean the debonair top hats of inaugurations past. The trend this season was a massive lump of bumpy wool that covered head, ears and eyebrows. The fashion-forward folks that traveled from across the nation showed that America is happy to color outside the lines when it comes to style. The snow hat with a scarf tied around it and a hood layered on top was an extremely popular trend in the jumbotron section. Many quoted “old man winter” as the inspiration behind the layered look. Another noticeable trend was any item that helped to find your lost and panic-stricken peers, like American flags roped to your cranium or matching electric tangerine hats. The kiddy leash and the formation of the unbreakable human chain also made unexpected comebacks. In fact, leaving the Mall was akin to an extremely challenging game of Red Rover. One accessory that was noticeably missing this season was the beverage. “I haven’t had a drink since noon on January 19th,” said several dehydrated Obama supporters when asked where the Evian was. Many said they preferred a head rush to “crowd surfing to port-a-potty row.” As expected, accessories printed with the words “hope,” “change,” or the faces of the first family proved very popular, but many style mavens have been waiting with bated breath for the declaration of this season’s inauguration “it” bag. Is it the “Yes We Can,” fanny pack? Or perhaps purses made out of discarded McCain paraphernalia? To the surprise of many fashionistas, this season’s must-have bag is…the sleeping bag! As I snuggled up nose to nose with patriotic strangers, I glimpsed a potpourri of sleeping bag patterns including stars and stripes and camouflage. “They’re just so roomy,” an older dame decked out like a human glowworm declared, sneaking her head out to watch the new president’s inaugural address. The popular bags, spotted in Hollywood blockbusters like “Into the Wild,” also have crossover appeal, with thousands of men on the Mall toting them under their frozen arms. But not everyone adhered to the “Greenland or bust!” code of dressing emphasized by the inauguration committee and anyone with common sense. On my cold walk down Constitution Avenue, I saw a frightening amount of inauguration fashion faux pas. I caught sight of many a pair of sky-high stilettos. I glimpsed fingerless gloves and inches of exposed neck. I saw women dressed to swirl cognac in a chalet in Chamonix. And yes, I even saw a “Sarah Palin 2012″ button or two. But the most abundant accessory of all on Inauguration Day? Tears. Buckets and buckets full of tears of joy. And I hear they never go out of style.
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Karin Tanabe: Inauguration Style on the National Mall
While in conversation with a co-worker regarding the anniversary of Roe v. Wade , a voice questioned me from behind. It was more of a rhetorical question though, “So you’re one of those?” Curious, I turned to face the middle-aged white man invading my personal space with my reply. What, teacher? Writer? Woman? “One of those pro-abortionists,” he confirmed his own opinion. Though I should not have been surprised given the topic, the way he framed his statement caught me off guard. Futile as it was, I tried to explain that I believed in free will and choice. He already had his answers set firmly in his head and did not listen to any of my words. Realizing that my energy was wasted on this man, I returned to the previous conversation I was having before we were interrupted. Instead of angering me (as they probably should have) his words amused me. As any person who supports pro-choice would know, there are always these conversations with these staunch anti-choice advocates whom leave no room in their minds for intelligent discussion. Those who believe so strongly against abortion-even in cases of rape, my high profile example: Sarah Palin . This man spoke as if I run through the streets screaming for women to have abortions, as if I chant a mantra to young girls. Ridiculous as this seems to me, do the “pro-lifers” believe that someone as me is pro-abortion? Yes, I do support a woman’s right to choose what happens or does not happen to her body. Yes, I am a feminist who believes in human rights, exercising empowerment through choice. Although “feminist” and “pro-choice” are not interchangeable, I know many women that are “accused” of being a feminist and/or pro-abortion just for speaking up. (At times, perhaps, just for being a woman.) In addition to the historical inauguration of President Obama, the holiday observing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this week also marks the anniversary of the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case, Roe verses Wade. Essentially, this outcome of this case upheld that most laws opposing abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy. Many eyes are focused closely on Obama as he steps up to the plate, what will he do, or undo, first? In numerous blogs and online sources I find a majority of the people want to know, will Obama be a “pro-woman” or “feminist president” and exactly where/how will he stand on family planning and abortion services? The Christian Right (anti-choice) has already voiced fears about changes that Obama will make. Any person moving into the White House during the current economic crisis and general state of affairs in the US would have difficulty cleaning up the “mess” that the Bush Administration has made of women’s and reproductive rights issues. Such as the last minute Health Care regulation Initiative , the Hyde Amendment , or the Gag Rule, which is described below. As we all speculate what Obama do, I wonder what his first action will be considering the many compelling tasks he faces as the new president. As in the past, the presidential inauguration coincides with the anniversary of Roe v Wade, thus, sparking the continuous political tug of war over the Mexico City Policy (which determines who-NGOs-and how much federal funding is granted for reproductive health service agencies). Since President Reagan initiated the Gag Rule in 1984 the consequent presidents have exercised their power by treating this policy as a game. After Reagan, Clinton amended the “Global Gag Rule” to celebrate Roe’s anniversary in 1993, only to be promptly reinstated in 2001 by G. W. Bush only hours into his first day on job. Supporters of the Obama Administration hope that the policy will once again be lifted. My uninformed co-worker never brought the issue up with me again which works for me. Though I rarely voice my political views at work, (unfortunately) I am even more careful now, because you never know who is listening over your shoulder. Now that Obama’s Administration moved into the dugout, let the game begin.
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Jenna Henry Hansen: Notes from a "Pro-Abortionist"
As the tech community poured over the new whitehouse.gov site, one of the first subterranean changes noted was that of a file most people would never notice called robots.txt . This file serves as a notice to search robots informing them of what files they should or shouldn’t survey. Upon seeing the new version of the file, some noticed that it only had two lines of code excluding robot searches vs. the former whitehouse.gov robots.txt that had nearly 2400 lines of exclude lines by the end of the Bush administration, sparking excitement and controversy over what the change means in terms of government transparency. The text from the new robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: /includes/ A sampling from near the end of the previous file: Disallow: /president/text Disallow: /president/waronterror/iraq200404/text Disallow: /president/waronterror/photoessay/text Disallow: /president/winterwonderland/iraq Disallow: /president/winterwonderland/text Disallow: /president/world-leaders/iraq Disallow: /president/world-leaders/text Disallow: /president/worldunites/iraq Disallow: /president/worldunites/text Cory Doctorow, Editor of Boing Boing and Former Outreach Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation was one of the first to report this finding, with just the facts followed by a bunch of commenters asking for explanations. Proponents of the belief that the move to the vastly smaller file was a statement about transparency claimed were ecstatic. According to Patrick Thibodeau of ComputerWorld , New York blogger James Kottke “thinks that by eliminating the Bush disallow list on its first day in office, the Obama administration was sending out a symbolic message.” Kottke, in his post on Tuesday, alluded to the “huge change in the executive branch of the US government.” In e-mail to Thibodeau, Kottke wrote: “One of Obama’s big talking points during the campaign and transition was a desire for a more transparent government, and the spare robots.txt file is a symbol of that desire.” Presenting an alternate view, Declan McCullagh of CNET News pointed out that the Bush whitehouse.gov robots.txt file followed the letter of coder law for the most part in terms of what to disallow with the exception of a few incidents that were corrected. McCullagh brought to attention the idea that perhaps the new robots.txt file is actually too short. “It doesn’t currently block search pages , meaning they’ll show up on search engines–something that most site operators don’t want and which runs afoul of Google’s Webmaster guidelines .” While most of the technical experts weighing in suggest and expect that the robots.txt file should grow, most of them explain it as just a normal process a website undergoes over time. Andy John, a search developer for DeepDyve, puts it like this: “robots.txt is just a request. Robots can do whatever they like anyway.” He then went further to describe what that means. “For example, there is a program “wget” (web get). You give it a URL, it downloads it and saves the file… You can tell it to download an entire site. It honors robots.txt by default. But by just adding these parameters you can tell it to ignore robots.txt and get everything: wget — erobots=off whitehouse.gov. As to why those who developed the new whitehouse.gov site would want to code it this way, Jaelithe Judy, a Search Engine Optimization specialist and political blogger says “Google does generally encourage webmasters to use disallows to keep from having their search pages spidered; this is to help keep a Google search from returning a whole page of search results from other sites’ internal search engines, instead of relevant original content. However, in some cases a search result from a site is a meaningful result. For instance, when you are searching for ‘DVD recorders’ and the Amazon search page for ‘DVD recorders on Amazon’ pops up, that might actually be useful to most users.” She added that “Google is still trying to work out how to sort annoying search-generated page results from the useful ones. The Whitehouse.gov ones may lean toward being useful. For instance, if you are a middle school student doing a report on the First Ladies, and you get a Whitehouse.gov search page for First Ladies, that has all sorts of different links to different sorts of information, that might actually be useful.” The bottom line about robots.txt? John says, “It’s really more of a serving suggestion.” Cross posted from techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum .
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Sarah Granger: Code Warriors Debate Whitehouse.gov Robot Commands
Millions turned up to Washington to witness history. HBO exclusively broadcast the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial with acts like U2 and Mary J. Blige . And record numbers tuned in on inauguration day to CNN for exclusive coverage like, “Obama wipes his nose” on the parade viewing stand. And millions more watched the live feed. We can’t remember Washington ever being so cool. What follows are our most unforgettable moments from the inauguration festivities in honor of the 44th President Barack Hussein Obama . Wyclef Jean doing backflips on the stage of the Green Ball and playing his guitar Jimi Hendrix style. Despite the event name, there were no hippies in sight. It was the future of environmentalism, from press kits on USB drive to an appearance by Treehugger founder Graham Hill . Attending all the same balls as Hayden Panettiere . She was accompanied by Whaleman Foundation founder Jeff Pantukhoff , and D.C.’s Senator Paul Strauss . If given a spot in Obama’s cabinet, Hayden told us, “I would probably choose a position that dealt with environmental causes.” But the Heroes star won’t complain if our new Prez doesn’t get to it tomorrow: “I hope that people also take into consideration how much he has on his plate.” D.C. Fashion. We never tired of seeing variations of the same flammable tiered gown worn by at least 18 women at each ball. We asked one woman where she got hers: Macy’s. Sarah Silverman telling us backstage at the Declare Yourself party that she’d like to be Obama’s barber. “Because his hair is easy, and it’s always a good time to talk. And shockingly, because I have bad hair, I enjoy doing others.” Norman Lear , shushing all the chatterboxes in the crowd so he could speak. The world premiere of Keith Carradine’s song, “I am a born again American.” The original Declare Yourself spoken word poets following Jamie Foxx ’s beat-boxing. John Legend playing “Redemption Song.” Congratulating Senator Al Franken ! N.B.S. telling us they wanted to redecorate the Whitehouse with Gucci and Louis and Vuitton. Cash Warren telling someone backstage, “You should meet my wife.” Watching the Maroon 5 set from stage left. A crowd surrounding the DJ booth to take photos of Samantha Ronson , instead of dancing. A pouty Lindsay Lohan sipping a Red Bull in a corner. Giftbags full of sponsorship opportunities. View image Every man in the room using the line, “I don’t want to brag, but I’ve met Obama,” to hit on chicks. A man claiming he was the one who introduced Ben & Jerry to Obama . . . although he had no idea about “Yes, Pecan!” Carrie Fisher dipping her hand in the white chocolate fountain at the Pajama Ball, licking it off, then going back for more. Throwing glitter in everyone’s faces. Dancing with Mo Rocca , who was wearing ducky pajamas with matching slippers. View image OBAMA HEADQUARTERS on every streetcorner! Makeshift shops selling official(?) inaugural swag. Witnessing a hundred young people who decided to attend Do Something’s social action bootcamp instead of sleeping in on the MLK National Day of Service. Tobin Van Ostern’s , founder of Students for Obama, keynote speech, revealing the secrets behind the Obama Facebook launch. Chasing the Jonas Brothers around the Huffington Post ball at the Newseum. Meeting the amazing Michael J. Fox and his son Sam (they have matching glasses!). Sting rocking out with will.i.am , and Marisa Tomei leaning over the balcony and singing along. The fact that nobody appeared to be liveblogging in a room full of bloggers. Arianna making sure to say hello to everyone. A New Years countdown to the new era complete with party hats and noisemakers. Seeing protesters throw their shoes at a giant inflatable effigy, complete with Pinocchio nose, of George W. Bush in Dupont Circle. Drinking limited edition Hennessy 44 at the Hip Hop Ball. Griff Jenkins wearing a paisley tuxedo. Bouncers throwing out two kids onto the street who snuck in to take pictures of T.I. Being picked up by a taxicab with a cardboard cutout of Obama riding shotgun. Realizing that because we failed to get up at 4:30 AM on swearing-in day, our tickets to the Inauguration were worthless . . . or maybe not? A cop who failed to let us into the stands advised us to sell our tickets on Craigslist: “They’re going for four grand, at least.” The camaraderie in the crowd on Capitol Hill. The crowd joking that Dick Cheney threw out his back while destroying boxes of files. The Google Bash lit by fluorescent lights. Sergey Brin hiding in the VIP section. Partygoers liveblogging and twittering and facebooking all night long. YouTube founder Chad Hurley posing with fans. Rihanna congratulating Shakira on “playing that thing,” at the Feed America concert. That thing would be a harmonica. After shelling out for tickets to the official balls, having to buy your own drinks. . . and even worse, having to stand on line to buy tickets before queuing up a second time to buy said drinks. Carnival prices: one ticket for a coke…four for a champagne. Couldn’t they get a sponsorship? The obligatory prom glamor shots in front of an Inaugural background. You could get yours framed for $120. Hawaiian Jack Johnson proclaiming this to be the first concert he’s performed in a suit, and the third concert he’s played wearing shoes. Millions waited in the cold for a glimpse of our new Presidential couple, and yet when they came out on stage, they watched the whole speech behind their camcorders. Michelle whispering to Barack at their Home States Ball, “You’re a great dancer. He leaned in and saying, “You’re better.” Michelle for smiling when we screamed, “You’re a lucky man, Barack Obama.” And for shaking her head no when we shouted “Dip her!” Joe Biden thanking Hawaii and Illinois for “producing Barack Obama.”
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Ariston Anderson: Obama’s Inauguration: What You Didn’t See On TV!
Americans fought an eight-year war of liberation against not only the most powerful monarchy on earth in 1775 but against monarchy itself. Yet once the dust settled and it was time to write a Constitution compromises left America a legacy of monarchy now gone from most of Europe. Among the kingly powers still residing in the American presidency are the pardon, the veto and the title Commander-in-Chief. Add to that list the Inaugural celebration we are about to witness in Washington, DC. None of this has any place in a democracy. Unlike in Europe, whose time for Empire has come and gone, the United States combines the practical power of head of government with the symbolic power of head of state. It is a frightening combination. But that is the point: to instill fear. It is part of how rulers rule, how leaders manage populations. A mere mortal, albeit one with mortal power over other people’s lives, is transformed through ritual and ceremony into a super-human figure who is not to be messed with. As the chief executive he holds in his hands the state’s monopoly on violence — both domestic and foreign. That fear of potential violence buffers an American president from criticism. It takes courage for someone — a cabinet official, a journalist or an ordinary citizen — to stand up to a president while he’s in power. Only now we are hearing from a judge who says Bush was a torturer. The threat of violence is hidden. It’s always there in the background if the foreground strategy fails: the obedience-inducing symbols of power. It all kicks off with the Inauguration. Any American president’s legitimacy — including Obama’s — should ideally rest on his performance alone, not his branding in ceremonies reminiscent of enthronements. In 1727 George Frederic Handel wrote four anthems for the coronation of King George II. Now we’ve got Bruce Springsteen. In a parliamentary system real power resides with the prime minister who is not glorified in ceremony, title and song. He is also more accountable to the people. A major screw up and a vote of no confidence can bring a new government at any time. If the people still need some parental like figure ruling over them better that person be stripped of political power — like the kings, queens and ceremonial presidents of Europe today — than the man or woman who can still command armies in the field. In a representative democracy we want our leaders to be as much like us a possible — not in the Sarah Palin sense of dumb as the average common denominator. No, smarter than the norm but remaining among us — not set apart. A speech on the steps of the Capitol should be enough. Tell us what you are going to do and then drive — or walk — down Pennsylvania Avenue and start doing it.
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Joe Lauria: Inauguration Shouldn’t be a Coronation
Americans fought an eight-year war of liberation against not only the most powerful monarchy on earth in 1775 but against monarchy itself. Yet once the dust settled and it was time to write a Constitution compromises left America a legacy of monarchy now gone from most of Europe. Among the kingly powers still residing in the American presidency are the pardon, the veto and the title Commander-in-Chief. Add to that list the Inaugural celebration we are about to witness in Washington, DC. None of this has any place in a democracy. Unlike in Europe, whose time for Empire has come and gone, the United States combines the practical power of head of government with the symbolic power of head of state. It is a frightening combination. But that is the point: to instill fear. It is part of how rulers rule, how leaders manage populations. A mere mortal, albeit one with mortal power over other people’s lives, is transformed through ritual and ceremony into a super-human figure who is not to be messed with. As the chief executive he holds in his hands the state’s monopoly on violence — both domestic and foreign. That fear of potential violence buffers an American president from criticism. It takes courage for someone — a cabinet official, a journalist or an ordinary citizen — to stand up to a president while he’s in power. Only now we are hearing from a judge who says Bush was a torturer. The threat of violence is hidden. It’s always there in the background if the foreground strategy fails: the obedience-inducing symbols of power. It all kicks off with the Inauguration. Any American president’s legitimacy — including Obama’s — should ideally rest on his performance alone, not his branding in ceremonies reminiscent of enthronements. In 1727 George Frederic Handel wrote four anthems for the coronation of King George II. Now we’ve got Bruce Springsteen. In a parliamentary system real power resides with the prime minister who is not glorified in ceremony, title and song. He is also more accountable to the people. A major screw up and a vote of no confidence can bring a new government at any time. If the people still need some parental like figure ruling over them better that person be stripped of political power — like the kings, queens and ceremonial presidents of Europe today — than the man or woman who can still command armies in the field. In a representative democracy we want our leaders to be as much like us a possible — not in the Sarah Palin sense of dumb as the average common denominator. No, smarter than the norm but remaining among us — not set apart. A speech on the steps of the Capitol should be enough. Tell us what you are going to do and then drive — or walk — down Pennsylvania Avenue and start doing it.
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Joe Lauria: Inauguration Shouldn’t be a Coronation
(Do Something reporter Ariston Anderson, Sarah Silverman, and yours truly giving my mirror-practiced hungry model face at the Declare Yourself “Rebirth of Citizenship” Inauguration Kick-Off Party in Washington, DC) Sending a text message, look up and there’s Stevie Wonder in touching distance, walking by with his entourage. Welcome to Americaville–Washington DC inauguration week. The usually lively 7th Street, near the National Mall, has been turned into a nicer Times Square, a market of bartering over buttons, beanies, t-shirts, framed Obama campaign door-hangers, and authentic Civil Rights memorabilia, like an original record of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. You bump into famous people, hear different accents–French, Southern, Astorian, run into people you haven’t seen in a while, fall into conversations with complete strangers. And the most striking thing about it all–everyone is being so nice. Even Stevie’s handlers waved on the fans who spotted him walking through Washington’s Convention Center, encouraging them to snap pictures and shake his hand. Last night I went to Declare Yourself’s inauguration kick-off party in the Renaissance Hotel. Declare Yourself founder Norman Lear, the television genius who gave us All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and Good Times, is now bringing us the Born Again American campaign, capturing America’s renewed patriotism and responsibility. Check out this moving Born Again American music video featuring a diverse group of musicians–from country singers to a Harlem choir–and sign the Born Again American pledge: I am a born American. I am my Country’s Keeper. My President and my Congress report to me. And so– I will stay informed and involved. I will make my voice heard. And not just at election time. I can make a difference. I matter. I am an American, born again Last night’s party was star-studded. David Corn! Of Mothers Jones, of course. He had just come from Maureen Dowd’s, which he said was jam packed with culturati–David Geffen, Larry David; it was so packed Tom Hanks couldn’t physically get in. I chatted with soon-to-be Minnesota Senator Al Franken who said he’s almost officially in and that soon he will get to work (helping Obama save the world–my words not his). That led me to chant Gay Marriage! Gay Marriage! as a hint to what he should check off his list first. It should be so easy! Just check it off then get to the hard stuff. “If you’re not for gay marriage, you’re ridiculous,” is what Sarah Silverman, who I also accosted, had to say about what she would fix first if she were President Obama. John Legend and Maroon 5 performed at Declare Yourself, making the packed house go crazy. Maria Shriver and Ben Affleck chatted closely, intently by the stage. Samantha Ronson did a DJ set looking like a burnt-out smurf (I’m sorry, she’s still attractive, but she did). Lindsay Lohan sat behind her looking pinched and tense and too skinny. The crowd just gawked and flashed pics with reckless abandon–it was very uncomfortable. On the way out ran into Adam Levine of Maroon 5 in the elevator bank. Nothing interesting there, just the fact that DC is burning with excitement and fun right now, something I thought only my older sister who interned for the Clinton White House got to experience. By the time I interned in DC, all the interns had Trent Lott comb-overs. Hopefully those days are behind us. Far, far behind us. Far, far! Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Let freedom ring!
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Andrea Chalupa: Are You A Born Again American?
(Do Something reporter Ariston Anderson, Sarah Silverman, and yours truly giving my mirror-practiced hungry model face at the Declare Yourself “Rebirth of Citizenship” Inauguration Kick-Off Party in Washington, DC) Sending a text message, look up and there’s Stevie Wonder in touching distance, walking by with his entourage. Welcome to Americaville–Washington DC inauguration week. The usually lively 7th Street, near the National Mall, has been turned into a nicer Times Square, a market of bartering over buttons, beanies, t-shirts, framed Obama campaign door-hangers, and authentic Civil Rights memorabilia, like an original record of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. You bump into famous people, hear different accents–French, Southern, Astorian, run into people you haven’t seen in a while, fall into conversations with complete strangers. And the most striking thing about it all–everyone is being so nice. Even Stevie’s handlers waved on the fans who spotted him walking through Washington’s Convention Center, encouraging them to snap pictures and shake his hand. Last night I went to Declare Yourself’s inauguration kick-off party in the Renaissance Hotel. Declare Yourself founder Norman Lear, the television genius who gave us All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and Good Times, is now bringing us the Born Again American campaign, capturing America’s renewed patriotism and responsibility. Check out this moving Born Again American music video featuring a diverse group of musicians–from country singers to a Harlem choir–and sign the Born Again American pledge: I am a born American. I am my Country’s Keeper. My President and my Congress report to me. And so– I will stay informed and involved. I will make my voice heard. And not just at election time. I can make a difference. I matter. I am an American, born again Last night’s party was star-studded. David Corn! Of Mothers Jones, of course. He had just come from Maureen Dowd’s, which he said was jam packed with culturati–David Geffen, Larry David; it was so packed Tom Hanks couldn’t physically get in. I chatted with soon-to-be Minnesota Senator Al Franken who said he’s almost officially in and that soon he will get to work (helping Obama save the world–my words not his). That led me to chant Gay Marriage! Gay Marriage! as a hint to what he should check off his list first. It should be so easy! Just check it off then get to the hard stuff. “If you’re not for gay marriage, you’re ridiculous,” is what Sarah Silverman, who I also accosted, had to say about what she would fix first if she were President Obama. John Legend and Maroon 5 performed at Declare Yourself, making the packed house go crazy. Maria Shriver and Ben Affleck chatted closely, intently by the stage. Samantha Ronson did a DJ set looking like a burnt-out smurf (I’m sorry, she’s still attractive, but she did). Lindsay Lohan sat behind her looking pinched and tense and too skinny. The crowd just gawked and flashed pics with reckless abandon–it was very uncomfortable. On the way out ran into Adam Levine of Maroon 5 in the elevator bank. Nothing interesting there, just the fact that DC is burning with excitement and fun right now, something I thought only my older sister who interned for the Clinton White House got to experience. By the time I interned in DC, all the interns had Trent Lott comb-overs. Hopefully those days are behind us. Far, far behind us. Far, far! Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Let freedom ring!
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Andrea Chalupa: Are You A Born Again American?
In what he hoped would be the capstone to his eight years as President, George W. Bush today signed an executive order repealing the English language. Scrawling his name on the official document, Mr. Bush said that in abolishing English he had vanquished his “greaterest enemy.” For Mr. Bush, the executive order represents the realization of a longstanding dream that began in 2001 when he declared an official War on Grammar. The president followed up that declaration of war in 2003 when he signed an executive order canceling the agreement between nouns and verbs. Mr. Bush’s decision to repeal the English language could complicate matters for his successor, President-elect Barack Obama, who is scheduled to deliver his inaugural address tomorrow, presumably in English. But thoughts of Mr. Obama seemed far away during today’s jubilant Oval Office ceremony, which Mr. Bush summed up in four words: “I can has legacy.” Mr. Bush’s executive offer also drew high praise from a fellow Republican, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska: “Being that the English language can and has been used in confusing and also too in harming ordinary Americans, knowing that it no longer can or will be used in doing that is something positive that this is doing also.” Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times , and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com .
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Andy Borowitz: In Last Official Act, Bush Repeals English Language
Wyclef Jean, the star of Sunday night’s Green Ball, tells Fox News’ Greta van Susteren that even though he’s a big Obama supporter he has a lot of respect for Sarah Palin’s “swagger.” Watch:
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Wyclef Jean: Palin "Swagger" Impresses Me (VIDEO)
Welcome to my episode review of Big Love’s new season! Because the show’s in its third year, I’m assuming we’re all familiar with its major characters and plot arcs. If you’re a newbie (or if you need a refresher course), then the official site can bring you up to speed. Also, along with every episode review, I’ll be posting a bonus feature called “Wife Watch,” where I crown the week’s most powerful wife. Look for the first installment tomorrow! And now, away we goooo… —- It’s been almost eighteen months, but it’s finally time: Welcome back to Big Love , y’all. How do you like your crazy? Familial? Political? Surprisingly multi-ethnic? Whatever your flavor, they’re serving it up in “Block Party,” the season three premiere. Did you notice that reference to diner food? That’s appropriate, since out of this episodes’ three thousand plotlines, one of the snakiest involves Ana, the Serbian waitress who was slipping Bill some pie in season two. (Literal pie. Don’t be gross.) You may remember that Margene liked Ana, too, and she was stoked about Bill taking a fourth wife who could be her ally against Uno and Dos. But Barb? Barb was not having it. She didn’t want a fourth. At least until her cancer returned. After a quick family scene, we start the season with Barb in the hospital, getting a regular post-cancer screening that appears to go poorly. And as it did with Nicki, the disease softens Barb’s resolve against new wives. Suddenly, she decides that Ana must join the family (albeit on her terms.) Various shenanigans ensue, and by the final scene, Ana, who has resisted thoughts of polygamy, appears on the doorstep, tentatively ready for sister wives. For me, that moment captures why this episode is so queasily fascinating. Because even though no one physically drags Ana to Casa Henrickson, she still gets badgered into joining up. For the entire episode, people use borderline-abusive tactics to break her down, like when she tells Margene she can’t see Bill anymore. Margene’s response? “No. I can’t accept that. Do you know how much you mean to him?… You are meant to be in this family.” That’s creepy. She might smile and wear pastel sweaters, but Margene won’t be denied. She talks about “freedom” and “destiny” and “choices,” but she’s pushing Ana toward a single, narrow result. Join the family, she says, or you will never be happy. Their confrontation is like the entire episode in miniature. Almost every character is out to control someone, but they’re selling control as free will. Take Bill and Margene’s meeting with Native American mogul Bill Flute (Robert ” Chakotay ” Beltran) and his Israeli wife Ladonna (Noa Tishby.) Margene convinces the Flutes to let Weber gaming run a casino on their Indian reservation by making cultural references to peace and understanding. But obviously, those squishy buzzwords are just means to her end. That’s a pretty standard business ploy, but the trend in this episode goes deeper. When Heather imagines being college roommates with Sarah, she describes all the ways they can “be together,” but thanks to Tina Majorino’s performance, it’s clear Heather isn’t just talking about hanging out after class. She wants to possess Sarah. (That was clear last season, too, when she kept peppering her with various religious ideals.) And then there’s the stuff with Juniper Creek. Lois is furious with Bill because he didn’t take control of the council, and she says it’s because that would have restored her family’s dignity. But that would also mean pushing Bill into a life more isolated than the one he’s living. Meanwhile, Adaleen wants to kill her own son because, among other things, he’s trying to overthrow his father. She talks about Roman’s honor, but that honor means keeping Alby in his subservient place. This could all be tiresome if the characters who propagate these oppressive worlds weren’t also desperate to escape them. In this episode alone, we see Alby trying to wrap his hands around the commune and express the homosexuality the commune won’t permit. We see Bill lord his will over his entire family, even as he chafes when his own parents do the same thing. And really, that’s the conflict at the core of this show: Everyone’s trying to escape one thing or another, but what are they escaping to? Is there any world that doesn’t impose restrictions on their ability to be themselves? If you break out of Juniper creek, you get Bill’s houses, with their tight schedules and stern paternal authority. If you break out of Bill’s houses, you get a neighborhood community that blacklists you for not going to church. The nature of “the suburbs” are especially important in this episode because we realize that the neighbors aren’t judging the Henricksons for being polygamists. Most of them don’t even know. They’re judging them for being “inactive’” in the Mormon church, or in Nicki’s case, for being related to someone they don’t approve of. And this is supposed to be the “outside world,” where things are wild and free. It’s interesting how rarely this show depicts or even discusses the space beyond Mormon country. Sarah has made vague statements about moving to Idaho, but so far, that’s not real. In this episode, the only places outside Utah that get concretely referenced are the polygamist compounds that were raided last year. In other words, the current universe of Big Love is almost entirely hermetic. Like in a mafia movie, you can dream of leaving Mormonism, but there’s no place you can go. The claustrophobia makes me deliciously uneasy. With all this energy in such a tiny space, something is going to blow. One of these closed-off communities will either open up or get totally decimated, or else the show’s going to get so limited that it will get stale. Heading into episode two, I’m wondering who will lead us into new, non-Mormon terrain. Will it be Sarah, or will she get pulled back in like Michael Corleone? Will it be Ana, or will she leave her old world behind forever? I don’t know, but I’m ready to see some serious disorder. Episode Grade: A- (Points off for the scene where Bill and Don Embry talk really, really specifically about the way they control their wives. It’s like they’re saying, “Hey audience! Here’s some forced insight into the writers’ perspective on our world!”) For more reviews and videos, go to The Critical Condition
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Mark Blankenship: "Big" Review: Big Love Season 3, Ep. 1. (Spoilers!)
Not Sarah Palin. Not John McCain. Not the Republican Party. No. The biggest loser is Clarence Thomas. Watch him as he sits but a few feet away from Barack Obama at the swearing in ceremony. Watch the furious, suppressed envy in his eyes. The hatred. The jealousy. In his small, simple brain he thinks: Him? That should be me taking the oath of office. I’ve done everything they wanted. Before Barack Obama was elected President, the highest-ranking black person in the government was Justice Clarence Thomas. He knew it and acted thusly. The arrogant, wrinkled sneer of his lips said everything about him. Lifetime tenure on the highest court in the world. One of nine. He was a king, and he thought, eventually , the Civil Rights establishment would come and kiss his ring because he could never be eclipsed; no one would ever outrank him. There was but one little bitty problem with his grandiose scenario… Barack Obama. Justice Thomas has created the Clarence Thomas Story — a narrative , equal parts facts and fiction, and full of anguished victim logy. Born po’, picked myself up, worked hard, overcame racism, lifted myself up to a college education, shocked to find I got into Yale Law under affirmative action, couldn’t get a job after law school because no one believed my grades were earned, but continued to lift myself up working in government, and earned a seat on the Supreme Court. Bootstraps. Did it myself with no help from the dreaded preferences. Once on the court, I rail against those evil racial preferences, citing Booker T. Washington. Lift yourself up by your bootstraps. Don’t be stigmatized. Look at me. I’m the paradigm. I did it!! And so on and so forth… In an appearance at Saddleback Church with Pastor Rick Warren, Barack Obama pierced this largely fictional narrative by saying that Clarence Thomas was not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. Narrative up in flames — paper tiger, exposed. Not qualified . Obama did not mention his ideology. He did not have to. He compared Clarence to Justice Scalia, whom he completely disagreed with, but said Scalia was qualified to be on the court: Thomas was not. And make note, Barack Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review. He has been around brilliant jurists and lawyers his entire professional life. Not qualified. Thomas has developed a brilliant and effective defense against the attacks on his right wing sellout ideology. “I have a different ideology. I don’t have to subscribe to your (the Civil Rights Establishment ) thinking. I think for myself.” Blah, blah, blah. “Not qualified.” It must have been like acid was poured on Thomas. And what was left exposed was that the emperor was not wearing any clothes at all. He was the ultimate bad affirmative action hire: no qualifications for the job, in over his head, and could not be fired. When George Bush One announced his appointment, he said, “Thomas is the most qualified man for this job.” Huh? Let’s take a look at this most qualified man and his narrative . Clarence attended Holy Cross in the sixties when Holy Cross, like other elite universities, was aggressively recruiting Black students. Yes, the tar baby of the right, Affirmative Action, is the reason this heretofore, 99% white elite Catholic University admitted Thomas. Further, Yale Law, where Thomas was accepted also was aggressively recruiting Black students in the sixties. Why? Because the Civil Rights Struggle moved them to inclusiveness; that same Civil Rights struggle that Clarence Thomas has repeated demeaned and belittled. Yes, this hypocrite owes his education at these elite institutions to Black people who got their heads cracked open and died. First bootstrap pulling–the Civil Rights Movement. In Clarence’s narrative , he says he was “shocked” to find that he had been admitted under AA. He wasn’t the least bit shocked. He knew. And once there, if he were “shocked,” what stopped him from earning selection to the Yale Law Review? Surely that would have been a way to prove his worth everyone. No, he did not make Law Review. Surely, to prove his worth he finished 1st in his class, or won one of the moot court competitions. Surely, his legal writing was so brilliant that it was published in some other law journal somewhere. No. Surely there must have been something that this brilliant law student did to distinguish himself at Yale… No. Contrast that to Barack Obama who became not just a member of the Harvard Law Review, but became President , the first African American in history. See the difference. The Clarence Thomas narrative turns into pure fiction after law school. Po’ Clarence, one of a handful of black students from Yale Law School, supposedly could not get a job at any of the big law firms because they didn’t believe he earned the grades he got at Yale . Oh really. Please note that not one of the other black students who graduated with Clarence has come forward to say that he or she could land the job of their choice after graduating from Yale. Not one. So Clarence began his career in government working under Missouri Attorney General, John Danforth, the first of many appointments. After a brief stint in the private sector, he then came to Washington as a legislative assistant to now Senator Danforth. Another appointment. A few years later Clarence was appointed to head the EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, pushed by hissponsor, Senator Danforth. It was in this position that he harassed Anita Hill (one of them lying; guess who). A few years later, after his right wing ideology had been fully on display at EEOC, and he had proved himself “brave” enough to condemn the Civil Rights Movement, he was rewarded with an appellate judgeship. Yet another appointment. He served there for approximately a year before being nominated to the Supreme Court. Note, in that year on the appellate bench he never authored a single important opinion. Not one. There are now, and have always been, federal judges who are so brilliant that the Supreme Court cites them in their decisions. There are federal judges who fill up Law Journals, write landmark legal books, many of them legal scholars, moving the law with their brilliance. Not Clarence. No published writings. No books. Nothing. He wrote a couple of inconsequential opinions that no one cared to publish. He was in over his head on this appellate court. Not once, did anyone ever use the words “brilliant” and “Clarence Thomas” in the same sentence. He would have stayed there and ended his life in mediocre obscurity, rocking back and forth in oral arguments, lost. However, Thurgood Marshall died, and George Bush One was President. The circus that was his confirmation followed. The rest, as they say, is history. If one looks at Clarence’s career, it is mediocre by any measure, a few minor jobs in government, an important job, EEOC, which gave him a platform to exhibit his contempt for the very movement that created that position, a year on the appellate court dazzling no one, and then boom — appointed to the Supreme Court. Clarence did not pull himself up by his bootstraps; his sponsors did. He didn’t earn anything. It was all given to him on account of his race/ideology. If a white man with this meager background of minor government bureaucrat, an undistinguished lawyer, unpublished legal writer, not a legal author, never even appeared in federal court, had been put up for the Supreme Court, there would have been outrage. Except that he was Black. The right wing proved once again by his appointment, that it cares nothing for qualification, only ideology. And Thomas learned early on that if he parroted right wing policy and condemned the very people and movement that provided him his opportunities, he would be rewarded handsomely. The pay for selling out your people is always good. But, all the lying, the fiction, the selling out that Thomas used to gain this position has come to naught. Yes, he is still on the court, but his extremism has moved the other justices away from him. Even Scalia, no liberal, has derided Thomas’s refusal to honor stare decesis. Clarence’s law clerks are picked for him by a conservative legal foundation. They write his opinions for him; the few he is ever given to write that is. He’s an embarrassment. But fortunately, Thomas has been diminished, and rendered a nullity because another black man, elegant,brilliant, beautiful, a man who loves black people as much as Clarence hates them, leapfrogged over him. And this ascendancy by Barack Obama moved even Black Republicans to tears: Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Juan Williams. Did anyone hear Clarence cry? And Thomas, angry, bitter and unqualified will have to look at this man who revealed him for the fraud that he is for the next 8 years. Once a year at the State of the Union, Thomas will sit just a few feet from Obama. He will have to watch him and listen to him, his eloquence, his command. That will be difficult for Clarence. It will be so painful that Thomas may actually implode; he may even explode. We could only hope… Anyone who thinks that Thomas’s envy and hatred is conjecture, or a mere fantasy, need only look at Clarence’s December attempt to push one of those frivolous Obama citizenship cases on the Supreme Court docket. This is after Justice Souter had already turned it down. Yes, the Silent Justice, as he is called because he rarely opens his mouth during oral arguments, sprung to life on this one. He got excited about the chance to send Obama back to the Senate, vitiate a landslide election, and remain the black king in Washington. It didn’t matter that every single court, in every jurisdiction, at every judicial level, had rejected these silly suits. What Clarence did by trying to get this foolishness docketed after another member of the Court turned it down,never, ever happens on the Court. Clarence Thomas’s frustration, anger, and bitterness, and jealousy had now bled into his not-so-nimble brain; it affected his already risible judgment. Can you imagine what that conference was like? Clarence had to look at Souter, liberal, but respected even by the right wing of the Court, who rejected this petition, and his fellow esteemed qualified jurists, and try to sell them on accepting this utterly frivolous petition. He only needed three other votes to put it on the docket. Trust me, no one in that room even flirted with the idea of accepting this petition. Those justices must have looked at Clarence with a combination of pity and disbelief. Or, maybe they looked at him more benevolently and thought: Clarence has become insane. But he is not crazy, he’s just… Clarence; Uncle Remus wearing a robe: an embittered, eclipsed, forgotten Negro — outted by the most admired man in the world, the first African American President, a Black man who earned his way to the top, a self-made man, not an appointed man, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and never forgot or rejected his people. And Clarence Thomas? Once a footstool of the right wing, now just a footnote, He will be known now and forever for what he really is: The Uqualified Justice. Thank goodness Obama has pulled that robe off, and laid bare this pathetic little man who thought himself a king, but was and is, only a pawn. And Thomas knows only too well that the real king resides down the block.
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Gregory Allen Howard: The Biggest Loser
Certain kinds of bad political behavior are passed from parents to children. My mom told me bitter stories from her girlhood of run-ins with Republican kids, the worst being when FDR died. Neighborhood kids taunted the Democratic families’ houses with chants of “The cripple is dead.” Of course, in her telling me these stories, my own outlook was being hardened: Republicans are thugs and bullies. And now that I have kids I have a choice about passing this view down to them, or finding a way to pull back from it. It hasn’t helped that for decade after decade, republicans have often played politics mean and dirty; conservatives’ claims notwithstanding, no serious, well-funded analog exists on the left for such hate-mongers as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. No, even at their most extreme, Keith Olbermann and Al Franken do not come close. And even the most hardball-playing Democratic political operatives — the Carviles of the world — pulled up way shy of the nasty slash-and-burn of Karl Rove. Still, I want my kids to have a chance at being bigger than all this. Somebody has to break the cycle. As in the Middle East, the barely submerged hatred that liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans have been passing down for each other, generation to generation, are similarly fed on a growing body of stories that are at once historic, political — and personal (like my Mom’s). It may not be anything close to the Arabs and the Jews, but this mutual hatred is nonetheless a homegrown American noxious weed, a toxin that can kill kindness, cloud clear thinking, and poison the body politic. As the saying goes in school rooms across America: “I don’t care who started it, I want to know who’s gonna stop it.” Barack Obama seems hellbent to be the one to stop it. In the kind of symbolic move that is designed to unite and inspire Americans, Barack and Michelle Obama and Joe and Jill Biden rolled through the Northeast Corridor yesterday, waving at citizens and making speeches, smiling and shaking hands, and generally sending a message of positivity and hope. The feeling one got, and that Obama worked hard rhetorically to convey along the way, was this: we’re all riding this train. We’re all rolling into DC together on one mighty American engine. And we all have work to do, together, to perfect our troubled union. Clearly, Obama has been saying for years now, one of the most important ways to perfect our union is to stop bullying each other. We will let it go unsaid that there has been one bully and one bullied, for the most part, for the past 30 years — even when Democrats had the White House (Grand Inquisitor Starr, anyone?). False equivalency is the price we may have to pay. No matter. The dynamics of the schoolyard are instructive, since politics really is the schoolyard writ large. In the schoolyard, it is usually up to the bullied party to disarm the bully — either through a return of superior brute force (which would have been the HRC model) or through an example of moral suasion so powerful that the community turns and shames the bully into behaving (the emerging Obama model, and one with roots in the Civil Rights Movement). The biggest way the right has treated everyone else like dirt for lo these many years is to question their patriotism, and doesn’t it get exhausting being lectured by these people. Team Bush worked with a deck of cards that consisted of 52 Patriots of Clubs. Coulter and Savage frame liberalism as akin to treason at every opportunity — cha-ching! Sarah Palin played that card when she spoke of the “real America” that loves its country, as opposed to the rest of us. Michelle Malkin and Coulter, among many others, have had a field day with the decontextualized Michelle Obama comment about being proud of her country. I feel like my patriotism — and my very definition of that commodity — has been on perpetual court-marshall for decades. But you know, there’s something about a train whistle to drown out all that noise. And a crisis. And a calm manner. And an outstretched hand, even for the George Wills and Wiliam Kristols and Rick Warrens and the John McCains and Lindsey Grahams of the world. Something about the way Barack Obama has not even had to utter the utterly false Bush mantra of 2000 — “I’m a uniter, not a divider.” He walks the walk without talking too loud or wearing a big cowboy hat. So we all get to ride this train, if we want to. And, to return to the question of what kind of America my daughter and my son get to grow up in, their formative years will be the Obama years, and I’m looking for eight of them. And if Daddy can bite his tongue, the cycle of nastiness in our family might just end with my Allie and Miles. My fervent hope is that my kids can come of age considering themselves part of a patriotic family — one that protested the Iraq War before it began, with 4-month-old Allie in tow. One that worked for Kerry, worked for Obama. One that counts as a grandfather a blacklisted writer and one where Mom worked for Michael Moore both Mom and Dad have worked for Democracy Now! and where Dad blogs for the Huffington Post. We wake up today and miraculously find that no one with any power can make questions of our brand of patriotism stick anymore. Come Wednesday, I have no doubt, it’ll be business as usual with the Limbaughs and the Coulters, the Savages and the Hannitys inveighing in full-throated rage against us and our extremely popular new President. The question is this: will the ditto-heads crank it right up for this “counter-insurgency” and all the other overheated, angry rhetoric that goes with it, or will people put aside the stories we’ve been telling each other in outrage for decades now about our sworn enemies across the aisle or across the backyard, and get on board this train? I’d like to leave this off with the words of Bruce Springsteen, in hopes that he’ll play this song at today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial. No single song captures what I’ve been feeling this week like “Land of Hopes and Dreams.” Grab your ticket and your suitcase Thunder’s rolling down the tracks You don’t know where you’re goin’ But you know you won’t be back Darlin’ if you’re weary Lay your head upon my chest We’ll take what we can carry And we’ll leave the rest Big Wheels rolling through fields Where sunlight streams Meet me in a land of hope and dreams I will provide for you And I’ll stand by your side You’ll need a good companion for This part of the ride Leave behind your sorrows Let this day be the last Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine And all this darkness past Big wheels roll through fields Where sunlight streams Meet me in a land of hope and dreams This train carries saints and sinners This train carries losers and winners This Train carries whores and gamblers This Train carries lost souls This Train, dreams will not be thwarted This Train, faith will be rewarded This Train, Hear the steel wheels singin’ This Train, bells of freedom ringin’ This Train carries broken-hearted This Train, thieves and sweet souls departed This Train carries fools and kings This Train, All aboard
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Pete Cenedella: This Train: Barack Obama and the Revival of American Patriotism
When Crash won the Oscar for best picture, I was half-drunk at a party in Seattle but sobered up quickly. I had to. I’d promised my editor at MSNBC that if the unthinkable did happen, if Crash won best picture that night over Brokeback Mountain , I’d write a piece about it . I finished it at 10 a.m. the next morning. It included diatribe, head-shaking and a quiz. It included everything but a culprit. Now we have one. In the Jan. 19 issue of The New Yorker , regular contributor Tad Friend writes about Tim Palen , co-president of theatrical marketing at Lionsgate, the studio responsible for, on the one hand, Fahrenheit 9/11, 3:10 to Yuma, The Bank Job and Gods and Monsters , and, on the other, the Saw films, The Punisher (both recent versions), Good Luck Chuck and Witless Protection . These two hands are obviously my hands, critical hands, hands that divide quality from crap. They would not be Palen’s. Friend drops a bomb early: Publicity is selling what you have: the film’s stars and sometimes its director. Marketing, very often, is selling what you don’t have; it’s the art of the tease. That’s great, insidery detail but it feels like it’s missing the point. Yes, marketing, in this sad age, is selling what you don’t have. But how is that a tease? A tease is offering what you do have but not following through. Selling what you don’t have? The rest of us call that a lie. Sometimes we call it a felony. In Hollywood, they brag about it. “The most common comment you hear from filmmakers after we’ve done our work is ‘This is not my movie,’ ” Terry Press, a consultant who used to run marketing at Dreamworks SKG, says. “I’d always say, ‘You’re right — this is the movie America wants to see.’” Nice. Apparently Hollywood isn’t dream factory enough. Apparently Hollywood filmmakers aren’t offering enough wish fulfillment. That’s where marketers come in. They lie to us about the lie. If the film is crap, they figure out ways to get us to eat it. Palen is one of the best at this. He entices us into the restaurant, gets us to sit down at the table, gets us to chew. By the time we realize what we’re eating, he’s gone. And, yes, he’s the one responsible for the bad taste in our mouths the morning of March 6, 2006: Paul Haggis, the writer-director of the 2005 film “Crash,” says, “I came in thinking Tim was doing everything wrong. He made the poster Michael Peña screaming over his daughter, rather than selling Brendan Fraser or Matt Dillon or Sandra Bullock. I worried that the trailer, a mood piece about how people have to crash into each other to feel alive, was going to seem like overly significant claptrap. Then Tim and Sarah” — Sarah Greenberg, Palen’s co-president, who handles publicity — “came to me and said, ‘We’re going to go for an Academy campaign.’ I really, really thought they were crazy: this was a little six-million-dollar film.” For the cost of three full-page ads in the Times, about two hundred thousand dollars, Lionsgate sent more than a hundred thousand DVDs of the film to every member of the Screen Actors Guild–pioneering a now common saturation technique. In a huge upset, “Crash” beat “Brokeback Mountain” and “Munich” to win Best Picture. Remember how polarizing that battle was? That’s Palen’s specialty. The article opens with the premiere of Oliver Stone’s W. , a Lionsgate film Palen has to sell, even though, particularly for a Stone film, it’s actually, unfortunately, kind of fair. Palen can’t use that. “From the marketing perspective,” he says, “we needed some teeth .” Later, Friend writes: “Palen has always believed in being polarizing, always been willing to alienate much of the audience in order to motivate his core.” Dots aren’t connected, but one can’t help but be reminded of someone else who sold us a W . It’s a sad article, a wag-the-dog article that is more effective for Friend’s restraint. Marketers now run the show: Oren Aviv at Disney; Marc Shmuger at Universal . “Marketing considerations shape not only the kind of films studios make,” Friend writes, “but who’s in them.” Why are stars disappearing? This is part of the reason. Why so many niche movies? This is part of the reason. Why do films no longer bind us together but keep us apart? This is part of the reason. It’s a must-read. Palen, whose mother was assistant to a cheese manufacturer, tends to use the word “cheese” to describe what he’s selling. “America likes cheese,” he says of Good Luck Chuck . “[It's ] straight out of the America-loves-cheese playbook,” he says of an upcoming Gerard Butler trailer. That’s a kind word for what he’s selling. Don’t bite like the Academy did.
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Erik Lundegaard: The Man Who Sold Crash to the Academy
When Crash won the Oscar for best picture, I was half-drunk at a party in Seattle but sobered up quickly. I had to. I’d promised my editor at MSNBC that if the unthinkable did happen, if Crash won best picture that night over Brokeback Mountain , I’d write a piece about it . I finished it at 10 a.m. the next morning. It included diatribe, head-shaking and a quiz. It included everything but a culprit. Now we have one. In the Jan. 19 issue of The New Yorker , regular contributor Tad Friend writes about Tim Palen , co-president of theatrical marketing at Lionsgate, the studio responsible for, on the one hand, Fahrenheit 9/11, 3:10 to Yuma, The Bank Job and Gods and Monsters , and, on the other, the Saw films, The Punisher (both recent versions), Good Luck Chuck and Witless Protection . These two hands are obviously my hands, critical hands, hands that divide quality from crap. They would not be Palen’s. Friend drops a bomb early: Publicity is selling what you have: the film’s stars and sometimes its director. Marketing, very often, is selling what you don’t have; it’s the art of the tease. That’s great, insidery detail but it feels like it’s missing the point. Yes, marketing, in this sad age, is selling what you don’t have. But how is that a tease? A tease is offering what you do have but not following through. Selling what you don’t have? The rest of us call that a lie. Sometimes we call it a felony. In Hollywood, they brag about it. “The most common comment you hear from filmmakers after we’ve done our work is ‘This is not my movie,’ ” Terry Press, a consultant who used to run marketing at Dreamworks SKG, says. “I’d always say, ‘You’re right — this is the movie America wants to see.’” Nice. Apparently Hollywood isn’t dream factory enough. Apparently Hollywood filmmakers aren’t offering enough wish fulfillment. That’s where marketers come in. They lie to us about the lie. If the film is crap, they figure out ways to get us to eat it. Palen is one of the best at this. He entices us into the restaurant, gets us to sit down at the table, gets us to chew. By the time we realize what we’re eating, he’s gone. And, yes, he’s the one responsible for the bad taste in our mouths the morning of March 6, 2006: Paul Haggis, the writer-director of the 2005 film “Crash,” says, “I came in thinking Tim was doing everything wrong. He made the poster Michael Peña screaming over his daughter, rather than selling Brendan Fraser or Matt Dillon or Sandra Bullock. I worried that the trailer, a mood piece about how people have to crash into each other to feel alive, was going to seem like overly significant claptrap. Then Tim and Sarah” — Sarah Greenberg, Palen’s co-president, who handles publicity — “came to me and said, ‘We’re going to go for an Academy campaign.’ I really, really thought they were crazy: this was a little six-million-dollar film.” For the cost of three full-page ads in the Times, about two hundred thousand dollars, Lionsgate sent more than a hundred thousand DVDs of the film to every member of the Screen Actors Guild–pioneering a now common saturation technique. In a huge upset, “Crash” beat “Brokeback Mountain” and “Munich” to win Best Picture. Remember how polarizing that battle was? That’s Palen’s specialty. The article opens with the premiere of Oliver Stone’s W. , a Lionsgate film Palen has to sell, even though, particularly for a Stone film, it’s actually, unfortunately, kind of fair. Palen can’t use that. “From the marketing perspective,” he says, “we needed some teeth .” Later, Friend writes: “Palen has always believed in being polarizing, always been willing to alienate much of the audience in order to motivate his core.” Dots aren’t connected, but one can’t help but be reminded of someone else who sold us a W . It’s a sad article, a wag-the-dog article that is more effective for Friend’s restraint. Marketers now run the show: Oren Aviv at Disney; Marc Shmuger at Universal . “Marketing considerations shape not only the kind of films studios make,” Friend writes, “but who’s in them.” Why are stars disappearing? This is part of the reason. Why so many niche movies? This is part of the reason. Why do films no longer bind us together but keep us apart? This is part of the reason. It’s a must-read. Palen, whose mother was assistant to a cheese manufacturer, tends to use the word “cheese” to describe what he’s selling. “America likes cheese,” he says of Good Luck Chuck . “[It's ] straight out of the America-loves-cheese playbook,” he says of an upcoming Gerard Butler trailer. That’s a kind word for what he’s selling. Don’t bite like the Academy did.
The rest is here:
Erik Lundegaard: The Man Who Sold Crash to the Academy
…must begin with an ‘a’ and end with a ‘hole.’ Politico brings us the latest — now he’s complaining that Obama is getting sworn in with his middle name, Hussein: The congressman says he doubts Obama’s sincerity when he explained that he chose to use his middle name so as to be historically consistent with past inaugurations, when America has heard the full names of its presidents echo from the inaugural stand. “Whatever his reasons are,” King said, “the one he gave us could not be the reason.” He continued: “The society is a little strange about this. If you’re speaking the truth and in an effort to be objective, there should be nothing off limits in a free society, [but] there are many biases building and clearly a double-standard.” When the GOP wonders why it has sub-zero approval ratings, they need look no further than clowns like King. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, Obama took 44% of the vote in King’s district, compared to 54% for Palin-McCain. Those numbers are thanks to Swing State Project .)
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GOP Rep. Steve King’s middle name…
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Coming off her final and triumphant “Saturday Night Live” season, Amy Poehler says she’s looking forward to switching gears in a new NBC comedy. Poehler told a meeting of the Television Critics Association that she’s excited about the idea of being able to “turn the volume down a little bit and sit with a character.” In the mockumentary-style comedy, Poehler plays a mid-level bureaucrat in an Indiana city parks and recreation department who’s looking to get ahead. The still-untitled series debuts 8:30 p.m. EST April 9. Poehler’s portrayal of Hillary Rodham Clinton opposite Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin on “SNL” was a highlight of the show last year. The new series isn’t intended as a satire on national politics but instead offers a comedic take on how government works in an American town, said Michael Schur, who’s executive producer along with Greg Daniels (of “The Office,” NBC’s other mockumentary-style comedy). Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, finds her love of the democratic process tested as she faces defensive government workers, selfish residents and real estate developers. Poehler was asked if she has any hard feelings about the attention being lavished on Fey, both for the Palin impersonation and for “30 Rock,” Fey’s Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning NBC comedy. Does Poehler ever want to say, “I’ll show her”? “Then I turn around and wake her up and we have breakfast together,” Poehler responded, with a smile. Poehler, who co-starred with Fey in last year’s movie “Baby Mama,” had a baby last year with husband Will Arnett _ an event that earned a musical tribute from her “Saturday Night Live” castmates. Poehler called the gesture “awesome” and recalled watching it from her hospital bed the October night her son was born. “He was conveniently born at 6 p.m. so I could watch it live,” Poehler said. Her reaction: “Uncontrollable sobbing.” ___ On the Net: http://www.nbc.com
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Amy Poehler: Ready For Sitcom, "Sobbing" At SNL Tribute
Excellent news on the “electing more better Democrats” front: New Hampshire Governor John Lynch will not challenge Senator Judd Gregg in 2010. Lynch, a Democrat, acknowledged speculation in political circles that he might challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg. He said he plans to focus on budget issues here in New Hampshire. “I can tell you that although I don’t know what I’ll be doing in 2010, I’m not going to run for the United States Senate. So, that shouldn’t be a distraction as I continue to work on the budget.” Fall on your knees in gratitude at if you care about electing strong, progressive Democrats. Although Lynch is a popular governor (in late October, per Rasmussen , he had the same overall approval as Sarah Palin, though the excellent vs. good distribution was different), he has been anything but a forceful advocate for his party or its ideals. His withdrawal of his name from the candidate pool clears the way for either of New Hampshire’s members of the House — Carol Shea-Porter in the first district or Paul Hodes in the second. Brownsox has argued (and I tend to concur) that Hodes would be the better candidate from an electoral perspective. The only poll available (which is lamentably from ARG) supports this sense. But both knocked off Republican incumbents in 2006 despite being given little chance going into their races; Shea-Porter again defeated former Rep. Jeb Bradley in 2008, while Hodes drew a weak opponent in part because of the strength of his position. There are few distinctions to be drawn between their voting records in the House, both have taken consistently solid stands on the issues, and both endorsed Obama. Either would be a candidate to be proud of, and as of yesterday, it’s that much more likely that one of them will be the Democratic nominee and then a senator.
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NH-Sen: Lynch Won’t Run
On the night before Barack Obama is sworn in as the nation’s 44th President, his inaugural committee will host a series of dinners honoring public servants it deems champions of bipartisanship. To be feted are Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Colin Powell, and John McCain, whom Obama vanquished last November. At the McCain dinner, the GOP senator, who managed to suppress his bipartisan tendencies during the hard-fought 2008 campaign, will be introduced by one of his closest Senate confidants: Senator Lindsey Graham. But McCain’s No. 1 booster during the last year will not be among those hailing McCain. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, his controversial running-mate, will not attend the dinner, Bill McAllister, a Palin spokesman tells Mother Jones.
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Palin Skipping Obama Dinner In McCain’s Honor
When Reverend Rick Warren handles the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration next week, the day after we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, many Democrats will be disappointed and hurt, even with the recent announcement that the progressive minister Sharon Watkins will give the sermon at the national prayer service on the day following the inauguration. When Obama selected Warren, an outspoken social conservative — who supported the campaign against gay marriage in California and has made numerous disparaging comments about homosexuals and women — to give the invocation at the inauguration, many of Obama’s supporters were furious. To select a person whose views stand in such contradiction to progressive Democratic principles seemed an affront to what this campaign was about. The invocation is just a symbol, but symbols matter in politics, and this one does not sit well with many Democrats. There was another reason that many of Obama’s supporters were hurt by the decision. This was a slap in the face to many activists given that Obama’s victory benefited from a dramatic mobilization by progressive religious leaders and organizations to bring back the religiously faithful into the Democratic camp — to separate the notion that there is an inevitable connection between conservatism and religion. Making that separation has been difficult. Since the 1970s, conservative religious organizations and leaders dominated national politics. The Religious Right tapped into a tradition of political activism, most famously rooted in the fundamentalist attacks on Charles Darwin and evolution in the 1920s, and connected themselves to the Republican Party. While religious conservatives often felt that they were ignored by Republicans after the elections were over, they stuck with the GOP. They became an important source of electoral support for the party. Not only did evangelicals move solidly to the Republican fold, but formerly Democratic groups like Catholics did as well. This election cycle, desperate to stimulate enthusiasm within the base, John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his candidate because of her ties to this community. But in the 2008 election, the strategy didn’t work. Polls show that many religious Americans did not automatically move toward the right. Although most evangelicals refused to budge, younger evangelicals turned out for Obama. Catholics moved back to the Democrats and Jews and mainline Protestants voted for Obama in very high numbers. The disillusionment with the Bush administration, and the conservatism that he represented, has left some religious Americans scratching their heads and rethinking their political affiliation. The mobilization of Democrats through organizations devoted to winning back the religious vote, such as Matthew 25, proved to be effective. While much of the press was focused on Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his polemical sermons in Chicago, there was much less attention paid to the dramatic emergence of new liberal religious organizations who were pivotal to Barack Obama’s campaign. The history of liberal religious activism is nothing new and the current generation of leaders would do well to gain a better understanding of just how deep this tradition is. Frank Lambert’s Religion in American Politics is a perfect starting point. The book traces the connection between religion and politics since the founding of the nation. Lambert provides some fascinating analysis of moments when liberal religious figures were influential. When some American groups started to fight against the institution of slavery in the nineteenth century, religious leaders were pivotal. A host of religious organizations drew on Christian theology to attack slavery. Churches split along regional lines as early as the 1830s. Some northern religious leaders accused southerners of privileging the “Slave Power” over God. Religion was also an engine behind social reform during the progressive era. The Social Gospel Movement was composed of religious leaders who railed against the social conditions that many working and lower class Americans faced in industrial and urban America. Liberal Protestant and Catholics as well as Reform Jews were at the forefront of the campaign to combat the blight found in urban America. One member of the social gospel movement, Charles Brown, told Church leaders in 1904 that “Jesus would found the social order on the basis of human brotherhood in the service one another” rather than capitalist profit. During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, religious leaders were some of the most progressive voices on issues of war, social justice, and civil rights. The national Council of Churches, formed in 1950, preached the need for religious pluralism and tolerance. The Federal Council of Churches issued a statement in 1946 opposing America’s decision to drop the Atomic bomb, proclaiming that “As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb.” Black churches and preachers, such as Martin Luther King, headed the civil rights movement that transformed America and culminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They drew on religious wisdom and rhetoric to explain their cause. There were many Jewish leaders and Jewish college students who marched with African-Americans in the South. Even as civil rights moved leftward, the clergy continued to participate. There was a small cohort of black ministers who formed the National Committee of Black Churchmen, which broke from the National Council of Churches, who said: “Black Theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the black condition in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievement of black humanity….” The possibility for a revival of religious liberalism is very real. Warren no longer has to be the face of religion in American politics. The election showed there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly in attracting evangelical voters to the Democratic Party. But the changes that we have seen among religious Americans are significant and the emergence of leftward religious organizations has altered the political landscape. The leaders involved in this shift would do well to look back at their own history, traced so well in Lambert’s book, to draw ideas and wisdom from previous moments when conservatism did not have a lock on this relationship. More soon from the academy…. Julian E. Zelizer is professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s” (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books. For more information, see www.julianzelizer.com
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Julian E. Zelizer: Zelizer’s Book Corner: Frank Lambert’s Religion in American Politics
Public Policy Polling’s latest finds Democrat Robin Carnahan as the frontrunner, if just barely, in the upcoming Senate race in Missouri to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Kit Bond. Carnahan leads all three of the opponents polled against her - Congressman Roy Blunt, former Senator Jim Talent, and former Treasurer Sarah Steelman. Public Policy Polling . 1/10-11. Registered voters. MoE 3.3% (No trend lines) Robin Carnahan (D) 45 Roy Blunt (R) 44 Robin Carnahan (D) 47 Jim Talent (R) 43 Robin Carnahan (D) 47 Sarah Steelman (R) 36 There are a couple ways to look at these numbers. On the one hand, Carnahan leads all challengers, including the state’s former Senator. That’s never a bad thing, especially for non-incumbents. On the other hand, her leads hardly look safe, especially over Blunt, and 2008 was a banner year for Democrats - if the political climate gets worse for her party, which it very likely will, Carnahan’s leads could evaporate overnight. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of reason for optimism from this poll, as PPP’s guys note, largely due to the fact that Carnahan’s lead among black voters is far thinner than one would expect: Carnahan is probably further ahead of her opponents than the numbers might indicate. Her lead among African Americans over Blunt and Talent is only 54-30. Early polling tends to underestimate black support for Democratic candidates. For instance when PPP first surveyed the Gubernatorial race in Missouri, back in July, Jay Nixon led Kenny Hulshof only 52-27 among black voters. According to the exit poll, Nixon ended up taking 90% of it to Hulshof’s 7. It seems reasonable to think that Carnahan will end up performing similarly with African American voters, which means she’s running pretty close to 50%. A key advantage for Carnahan is her strong standing among white voters. Carnahan trails Blunt by only a single point with whites, is up two among them against Talent, and has a six point lead against Steelman with that demographic. Any Missouri Democrat who can run roughly even with white voters will coast to an easy victory when the party’s overwhelming advantage with black voters is factored in. If Carnahan can maintain her standing among white voters, she should win in November 2010. As we’ve written before, almost every recent statewide race in Missouri has been close (with the exception of Democrat Jay Nixon’s cakewalk victory in the Governor’s race last year). Carnahan enjoys the best favorability numbers among any of the candidates polled, at 45/36. Oddly enough, her strongest opponent, Roy Blunt, has the weakest favorability numbers (at 40/43). It will be a very exciting race, without question; it’s already looking as though it will be one of the most competitive of the current cycle.
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MO-Sen: Carnahan holds slim lead over Republicans
I spent much of last fall at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy. While there, I researched issues related to journalistic trust and credibility - and in particular what role emerging social media might play in addressing those concerns. One of the most prominent online social networks, of course, is the seemingly ubiquitous Facebook. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who created the platform as a Harvard student along with roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, was unavailable for comment, as was Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. But Randi Zuckerberg , who is part of the network’s creative marketing organization “where she regularly interacts with media organizations to discuss ways they can partner with Facebook,” did agree to a recent email interview — the first in a series of posts on the topic of trust and journalism. - Rory O’Connor ROC: With slumping public approval, journalism is facing a crisis of trust. We’re looking at how people can find and share credible news and information in hopes of regaining this trust. Do you think Facebook plays a role in this process at all? If so, how? RZ: The concept of “the trusted referral” is integral to the success of content sharing on Facebook. We’ve found that it is tremendously more powerful to get a piece of content — an article, a news clip, a video, etc — from a friend, and it makes you much more likely to watch, read, and engage with the content. People will always want to consume content from experts and they will always look to trusted news sources and journalists for important news and current events, but the market has become so oversaturated that it is now just as important to rely on one’s friends to help filter the news. When you get a news clip from a friend, they are putting their own personal brand on the line, saying “I recommend THIS piece of content to you out of all the content that is out there,” — just as they would recommend a restaurant, or a movie. We are beginning to see journalists and news/broadcast companies creating a significant presence on Facebook to engage with Facebook users and help facilitate this notion of the trusted referral to assist with the viral spread of content. When journalists can really engage with this audience and enlist Facebook users to market and share their content, that is such a powerful way to share credible news and information and tap into the implicit trust that people have with their friends. ROC:The conventional wisdom in academia is that social networks do the opposite, they serve as polarizing echo chambers where users reinforce their own views rather than being persuaded to listen and perhaps agree with others. Why or why not does Facebook fit this mold? RZ: This is a great question. I think this greatly depends on where you look within a social website. If you are looking at a user profile, you’d probably be correct in that people use that real estate on the site to build their own personal brand. They post photos of themselves, write about their view points, and tell their friends what they are doing and what they are thinking. So yes, if you look at only the profile, you might believe that social media is just a place for a one-sided posting of information about oneself. However, if you only looked at the profile, you’d be ignoring a tremendous amount of activity that takes place, on Facebook and other sites. Facebook users join groups to discuss issues, topics, and activities that are important to them. They become “fans” of celebrities, brands, public figures, and businesses. They use applications to see photos of their friends traveling the world, read their friends’ blog posts, and keep up to date with news and content. And most importantly, people use Facebook to learn new things about their friends and the world around them. Our mission as a company is to encourage people to share information that is important to them with their friends. Through the news feed on a user’s homepage, Facebook users see what their friends are doing, thinking, and talking about. They discover new books, new articles, new videos, new places to visit, and new people to become friends with. I can’t even begin to tell you how many new things I have personally discovered through Facebook and how my Facebook friends have broadened my horizons and introduced me to new things I never would have discovered before. On many days, I hear about the current events because my Facebook friends will post articles and write thoughts about it… even before I discover it from a news site. I have discovered new places in the world to visit, have been introduced to new and incredible people, have discovered new music and bands to follow, and have had my views challenged on everything from politics to taste in Broadway musicals. ROC: Journalists are using Facebook in unanticipated ways. What are some of the main trends you have noticed? Are you surprised at these novel applicaitons? Can you give us details about your interaction with ABC in the past and where you hope to take things in the future? What has your interaction been with other media outlets and individual journalists? RZ: I think journalists are only beginning to discover what a powerful tool Facebook can be for their content. In my discussions with many mainstream media companies, I constantly hear them talk about why they are squeamish about posting their content on other sites - their content is their lifeblood, it’s all they have… why would they give it away for free on other sites? However, I see more and more media companies understanding the importance of allowing people to consume content anywhere they want to consume it on the web, not just at the media company’s website. As I mentioned before, I don’t think expert journalism will go away - people will always want a trusted, expert opinion when it comes to news, politics, current events, and important topics - but people would rather get that content on a site they are already on, like Facebook, rather than traveling off to another site if they are already on Facebook engaging with friends and doing other things. When we worked with ABC on the presidential primary debates, we built a really powerful tool together in the “US Politics Application.” In this area on Facebook, we allowed users to consume ABC News content and set up special pages for the reporters who were on the campaign trails where they could blog about their experiences and engage with Facebook users. We also strove to make this area extremely interactive, by turning almost every article, piece of content, and question into a “debate/discussion topic” where Facebook users could post their viewpoint and see what all of their friends thought about a specific issue. This information helped power some of the pundit commentary for a high-profile, televised primetime presidential primary debate for the New Hampshire primary. Understanding that there is still a struggle in which media companies prefer to keep their content on their own site, we recently launched a product called Facebook Connect, which allows companies to incorporate Facebook’s social tools into their website. Facebook users can log into other sites with their Facebook login and see what content their friends are consuming and activity their friends are taking on that site. Companies like CNN and CBS have done a great job implementing connect and this is clearly only the beginning. ROC: Do you agree that Facebook is increasingly becoming a sort of conveyor belt for the mainstream media’s news products? Do you have metrics showing how often and what type of news stories are posted and disseminated on Facebook? RZ: I would agree with your initial question. We have an incredible tool called Lexicon, which shows trends and insights into what Facebook users are talking about. Around the presidential election, it was fascinating to look at terms such as “Obama,” “Palin,” “voting”….even “Tina Fey!” to see trends in Facebook user discussion as election day got closer and closer. Lexicon allows you to look at the buzz around a certain word or topic on Facebook, and even allows you to drill down to see exactly where in the United States people are most talking about that topic. As this data becomes more and more refined, I think you will start to see this becoming a really powerful way to show the type of news that is posted and shared through Facebook and how often Facebook users are discussing certain topics.
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Rory O’Connor: Facebook Journalism
All right, Governor Palin, I’m going to hell. And do you know what really hurts? You don’t care. A God-liking lady such as yourself should have some compassion, no? Here’s what you said to Ryan D’Agostino in this month’s Esquire: Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me….I’ll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News , they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig’s real mom….And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism. Bloggers are the vanguard of today’s media landscape. They do the heavy lifting, reporting the outlier stories folks wouldn’t otherwise get, the ones that metastasize into the warts-and-all truth of modern life. No one likes bloggers who lie, but you have not had a problem with lies being told about you. Quite the opposite. So church lady, you got some of that you-betcha God love to spare? I mean, come now guv. WTF? You’ve got zero Christian feeling for bloggers or anyone else who doesn’t share your worldview. We’re not all God’s soldiers. That’s the real issue. Sure, bloggers (and let’s not forget the tabloids) made fun of your handicapped child and questioned whether or not he was your kid. Sure, bloggers howled with laughter (and whooped it up on their sites) when you made those dumbass comments about Russia. And it’s true bloggers pretty much made Troopergate happen, figured out (then amplified) the whole you cheating on your husband thing, the abuses of power, hubby-as-proxy-guv, the lies , your habit of doling out sweetheart jobs to elementary school sweethearts, your teenage daughter’s pregnancy, the shotgun marriage, and God (really, don’t you think?) knows what else. Sarah, you big hottie, don’t be annoyed with bloggers. So they have no sense of decorum. Neither do you. Without bloggers you would not have such an excellent roadmap to a better you. Think about it that way. Some of us are meaner than others, but all we want from you is, well, for you to become a good person. Tall order, I know, but it’s the Lord’s truth.
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Beau Friedlander: Why Do You Hate Us, Sarah?
Unlike John McCain’s daughter Meghan , former GOP Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee doesn’t have a policy against talking about Sarah Palin. In an interview with A.J. Jacobs from Esquire released Tuesday, Huckabee refused to join Palin’s cabal against Katie Couric, saying the anchor was “extraordinarily gentle, even helpful” to the candidate. Read the excerpt on Palin below from the article. I ask him if she was treated fairly by the media. “There were a lot of unfair things. Sexist things that would never have been asked of a male candidate.” He pauses. “Now I must say I did not think that either the Charlie Gibson interview or the Katie Couric interviews were unfair. In fact, if anything, Katie Couric was extraordinarily gentle, even helpful. [Palin] just…I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it. It was not a good interview. I’m being charitable.” He pauses. “I think it was overpreparation. She’d been hammered by McCain’s aides, ‘Say this, don’t say that.’ ” Huckabee has met Palin a few times and talked to her backstage at the Republican National Convention. “Did you give her any advice?” “I didn’t figure that she was shopping for my advice.” “But she sure was shopping.” “Yeah,” chuckles Huckabee. Then stays quiet. I set him up for an easy spike, but he holds his tongue.
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Mike Huckabee On Sarah Palin: Katie Couric Was "Extraordinarily Gentle" With Her
“Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me,” says Sarah Appalling. Is she channeling Spiro Agnew? Or trying to? That’s some goal. Remember Agnew’s narcissistic and paranoid ravings? When this bilious Blagojevich antecedent attacked the media, as crooked and vile as he was, at least his gems were often studded with piquantly alliterative epithets, like: “nattering nabobs of negativism,” “pusillanimous pussyfooters”, and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history,” courtesy of White House speech writers Pat Buchanan and William Sapphire. Alas, Palin’s cheeky, anemic gibberish lacks Agnew’s panoply of pretentious pompous poetry. Pretty perfectly. The interminable election finally over, now we must endure the Alaskan pretender-to-the-throne’s braying and whinnying at the media and anyone else who didn’t buy into her brainless, gutless nonsense. And now I see that her Norma Desmond routine has expanded to include bloggers and anyone else who has questioned her abilities, sincerity, integrity yes, even the motherhood of her baby. But this bane of McCain, this Coultergeist so obviously in over her head in the election, even at the shallow end, isn’t saying what she means, and what she means is as obvious as a turkey being slaughtered just behind her, which she claims to be unaware of. It isn’t that “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers” lie, it’s that they vote. And this time they voted to send her back to Alaska. Among the many things she fails to grasp is that what she thinks of the media and/or bloggers, means as little to us, no less, than before most of us had ever even heard of her. Sarah, babe, history has marched on and left you behind. (At least you’ve got a new wardrobe.) Snap out of it. This Agnewesque raver still cannot seem to get over the fact that she lost. As for me, “bored, pathetic,” but not anonymous blogger that I am, I still cannot get over the fact that she ran.
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Erica Heller: Spiro Agnew Redux? Palin Blasts Bloggers
Finally, Some Hope for A Swearing In–Not Just the Usual Swearing At The breathless buildup to the Barack’nauguration is steaming ahead. Some of us who marched on Washington years ago are planning to party there next week in a spectacle funded, quiet as the contradictions are kept, by many of the companies the President-Elect banned from donating to his campaign. Still Progress? You betcha! Everything I would like? Hardly. Even amidst the new promises to cast out the old, Bushworld plots last minute damage with midnight regulations in their role, to use Tom Frank’s phrase, as ‘the wrecking crew.” The Repugs set out to destroy government’s capacity to serve people’s needs and have achieved much of it by undermining institutions, deregulating the economy, and defanging the Constitution. Thanks to Congressional inattention and media complicity, they have done to Washington, by other means, what the Israelis are doing to Gaza. Soon the whole mess will be in Barack Obama’s lap bringing to mind that headline in the ONION, “Black Man Given Hardest Job In The World.” Will he be able to reverse our economic decline, win two wars, and rebuild the country, and all before breakfast, in a country with no patience or attention span? I have been making a film with Videovision’s Anant Singh about the grass roots and internet campaign that actually won the election for Obama, although you would never know that happened by watching TV News or reading most news reports that focused on the surface aspects of politics. Wouldn’t you know it that a right wing producer is also doing a film on Obama’s victory blaming it on liberal media bias, natch. A Boston Herald writer compares Sarah Palin’s appearance in the doc to “Nanook of The North,” and sneers that she came out of her igloo to whine about the way the blogs dumped on her. Obama supporters have a very different critique. “I think the media missed what was the real story that was going to elect him, this grassroots empowerment over the Internet and they don’t understand this and there are late to it and they just don’t get it,” David Fenton a PR wizard and consultant to MoveOn.org told me:. “They missed it. I, and you know they’re use to a very centralized media system where the views of a few pundits basically create public opinion and that’s no longer the way it operates. They’re used to having the majority of the audience to themselves. Well their audience share has become very fractured and smaller. I think that there’s a built-in elitism that distrusts the notion of real democratic grassroots action. That’s not what these highly paid people tend to take seriously.” Obama didn’t build his campaign around being blessed by CNN or MSNBC. They wrote Fox off along with other TV outlets that have traditionally been the king makers and validators of candidates and the transmission belts for their campaign. Instead, he created his own new media apparatus, one that was interactive and empowered supporters to relay the campaign’s messages and create their own media like stunning art work or fun videos to support it. Andrew Rajiev of the Personal Democracy Forum was tracking all of this on his TechPrez website. He told us, “old media operates in an economy of scarcity. There is a limited amount of time and space. So, television can only show us a piece of the speech or the sound bite and sound bites create certain kinds of impressions of candidates but if a candidate can use the internet to put the entire speech on line. So that everyone can see it, now the full value of that speech can be heard and change peoples minds. Barack Obama’s speech on race, which is 37 minutes long, has been seen by 8 million people, watching it on their laptops. Now. If that doesn’t, ah isn’t a wake up call for the mainstream media about how things have changed I don’t know what is.” I asked someone high up in the mainstream media about this. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and NBC agreed, noting: “The Obama folks thought through the new media environment in a way in ways that the other candidates did not… And part of that strategy was a very new kind of media strategy, which sometimes would rely on press conferences and traditional media and interviews with traditional media. And other times would go around or over the heads of the traditional media.” So now what? How should progressives regard a candidate who seems to taking refuge in the center? I asked Jesse Jackson, who at one point was overheard saying he wanted to “cut Obama’s nuts off.” He now asks us to give him time: “Give him an opportunity. It’s too early to be making harsh judgments. Judge him by principles, priorities, direction and success. We should not try to mini-manage him in these early days. You take flowers out of a vase, a multicolored vase and you keep raising up to see is it growing, and you put it back. You kill the flower. Give the flower a chance to blossom and you can determine just whether or not it will or not in due season.” But also stay involved: if you worked for Obama, keep working for those changes you can believe in. Warns Fenton, “The health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel oil and coal companies, the financial industries, they are all going to be massively pressuring Obama not to do much of what he wants to do, and they’re going to be organizing public opinion and lobbying… You know there’s a famous story right after Franklin Roosevelt was elected for the first time a group of progressive leaders went to see him and said what they’d like him to do and Roosevelt turned to them and said I agree with you on everything now make me do it. So there has to be a continued, very strong grassroots lobbying campaign.” The Obama campaign built a ten million person email list with millions of phone numbers that can be texted. What a potentially powerful political resource if put to use. Hopefully, Obama will create an office to encourage ongoing community organizing. A Secretary for Popular Mobilization might be valuable too. As he presses ahead, hopefully, we will press him. It’s also important to remember what the insightful Virginia Montague shared with us while sitting in her living room in Harlem surrounded by autographed photos of our President to be: “Don’t make him the savior. Don’t think that he can say shazam and fix the world. And I believe that there are forces that want that appearance so that when he stumbles, or the appearance of stumbles, it will influence the reporters and the columnists and commentators and disillusion the people who support him. Listen. It’s all about news. They will tear him apart just as quickly, just as easily. And I believe that. So I’m saying that, so it’s all about the media. It’s all about the coverage. It’s all about the story.” This is a story still to be written. The question is: will he encourage his suppporters to write it with him? News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org and wrote PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books via Amazon.com) His new film is called “PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT” Comments to dissector@medichannel.org
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Danny Schechter: Media Time on the Potomac: Waiting for Obama, Pt. 2
Right now I’m listening to Sean Hannity. It’s not voluntary, but that doesn’t change my situation. I’m in a crappy hotel in the middle of Georgia and ditto head (I could use a much worse term) in the adjacent room is apparently watching Hannity of his own volition. The walls in this particular high-end hotel are Amy-Winehouse-thin and therefore I hear every last spittle-soaked word that pops into Hannity’s misshapen cranium. Here are things I’d rather do than listening to Sean Hannity bloviate: ⢠Have my entire body, including nether regions, waxed slowly over the course of a month while being sprayed with a citric mist. ⢠Be locked in a tank full of sting rays and electric eels until I’m able to explain “empathy” to Lou Dobbs. ⢠Ride over the Bermuda Triangle in an airplane piloted by Trig Palin. ⢠Eat tainted spinach out of John Madden’s mouth in a Turkish bathhouse. ⢠Be covered with sunflower seeds and dropped into an aviary filled with horny pterodactyls brought back to life with DNA found inside Ann Coulter. ⢠Be charged with cleaning Ozzy Osbourn’s feet with my tongue for the next 1,000 years. ⢠Receive a prostate exam from a blind doctor with two hook hands. ⢠Write the next Larry The Cable Guy film. ⢠Direct the next Larry The Cable Guy film. ⢠Have an intestinal parasite that itself has a horrible disease. ⢠Go on an 18-hour plane ride with Elizabeth Hasselbeck without access to duct tape, a ball gag, or large blunt objects. Okay, things just got worse as I sit tortured in an undisclosed hotel in a town that likely voted 112% for McCain. I’ve learned through the wall that Hannity’s panel tonight consists of Michelle “Bring Back McCarthyism” Bachmann, Al Sharpton, and Meatloaf. Of course judging by what you know of the quality of Hannity’s show, you may not be able to tell whether I meant meatloaf the food or Meatloaf the washed-up singer. But honestly, does it really matter? Either way, that’s one hell of panel Sean has put together. How could the real answers not come to light with that stellar group of political scientists?? Here are a few panels for Hannity’s show that would relay more useful information to viewers than the Sharpton/ Bachmann/ Meatloaf all-star team: ⢠Paris Hilton, Don Imus, and Ace of Bass ⢠Reverend Haggard, Connie Chung, and The Commodores ⢠Luke Perry, Joe Lieberman, and Naughty By Nature ⢠Verne Troyer, Warren Buffet, and a tuna casserole However, it’s up to you to decide which would make the best band. If you’ll excuse me, I have a burning bag of poo to leave in front of a hotel room door.
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Lee Camp: A List of Things I’d Rather Do Than Listen to Hannity
Let me start by saying that I am just as shocked as you are by the title of this post, as is my mother and probably every other family member, friend and political ally — I have ever had. But every now and then the truth is worth the risk of a little embarrassment. I can tell you that over the years I have found Ann Coulter’s statements about Martin Luther King, Jr., the Confederate flag, the 9/11 widows and just about everything else under the sun as offensive as most of you have. (And unlike a lot of you I have had to endure the gross misfortune of actually being forced to read one of her books for a job). It is for this very reason — the fact that there is so much to despise in this woman and her writing, that I am having a hard time understanding why high profile members of the media seem to have chosen to harp on one of the few legitimate claims she has ever made: namely that single motherhood has had some well-documented negative consequences in our society — and our culture’s increasingly laissez faire (liberal if you will) attitude has something to do with this. Now let me be clear. Yes I know that there are some wonderful single mothers (and single fathers) out there. I also know that one awesome mother is better than two, three, or even four inadequate parents. But as they say, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and if the village in your own home is bigger and sturdier then so is the foundation for that kid. Before the critics start inundating me with irate e-mails, comments or pelting me with tomatoes, let me just say off the bat that no I am not speaking as a parent myself, (I am not one); nor as a social worker (I am not one of those either). But I am speaking as someone who has watched the breakdown of the nuclear family decimate a significant portion of my community. I have written at length on this site about some of the jarring statistics regarding both incarceration and AIDS rates in the black community. While there are clear historical differences between black Americans and other Americans (namely slavery and segregation) there is also one significant cultural difference that has emerged in the last three decades. Though out of wedlock births have increased across the board, among black Americans they have skyrocketed to nearly 70%. If anything, Coulter’s assertion that single motherhood, not race is the real indicator when it comes to socio-political issues, like crime, may be one of the least racist things she has ever said. So why does her assertion seem to have people in such a tizzy? For one, the truth hurts. While Madonna, Angelina Jolie and others made single motherhood look easy and glamorous (before each settled down with their equally glamorous husband and male partner respectively) they had a support team of nannies, assistants — their very own self-financed village if you will — that most of us don’t and never will. (And to Angelina Jolie’s credit she opened her single-parent home to an adopted child, an act that is an important caveat to the “selfish” argument Coulter makes about single motherhood by choice; an argument that has some merit.) But even with an army of help we all know there are no guarantees. Just as there are no guarantees even when a child is born and raised in a two-parent household. As I have written before, I do believe that families come in all shapes and sizes, but as someone who is both pro-choice AND pro-family I dream of a day when every child born is a wanted child, a loved child and a child raised with every single educational and socio-economic opportunity that our country promises them. The sad reality is that the chance of a child realizing his or her full potential is not impossible when raised in a single-parent household, but it is tougher. As a promotional video for Amachi , the nonprofit mentoring organization founded for the children of incarcerated parents notes, “You’ve got to see a man to be a man.” That may be slight hyperbole, but there is no doubt that it can help. Critics of Coulter might be surprised to learn that her logic (who ever thought logic and Coulter would be used in the same sentence) puts her in some unlikely ideological company. In 1965 future Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan evoked criticism with his report titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Often referred to as the Moynihan Report, in it he speculates that poverty combined with an increasing dependence on a matriarchal family structure would have dire consequences on the future of inner city African-Americans. Today, with some of his predictions proved true, Moynihan now seems less controversial than clairvoyant. And even Chris Rock once joked in his stand-up special that he was sick of hearing women say, “You don’t need a man to raise kids… yes you can have a kid without a man. That doesn’t mean it is to be done. You could drive a car with your feet. That doesn’t make it a good idea.” Even my mom — once a single mother herself — has lamented the differences between single motherhood in “her day” compared to the cultural acceptance that has made it seem like no big deal for mother and child today. In addition to Jamie Lynn Spears, and Bristol Palin today, during my teen years she was horrified to discover the increasing number of adults who had begun to throw festive baby showers for expectant teen mothers and their girlfriends — as if this were really an achievement to celebrate. My point is that there is plenty to criticize Ann Coulter for. (Including her ridiculous insistence on referring to the president-elect by his middle name). So if we must be forced to endure her presence in the media (that is if she is not going to be officially banned ) then why not actually attack her for her ample crazy talk instead of making her look halfway sane by condemning her for those arguments which actually make sense, even when they make some of us uncomfortable. www.keligoff.com
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Keli Goff: Hell Has Officially Frozen Over… I Agree with Ann Coulter on Something
Governors have gone wild! Politics and scandal go together like champagne and caviar. From Richard Nixon’s Watergate to Ronald Reagan’s arms-for-hostages to Bill Clinton’s perjury on his adultery, the presidency has traditionally been a generous supplier of sex scandals and corruption. But in the last year or two, governors have been claiming their fair share of the action. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s senate seat appointment, made after his arrest for attempting to sell said seat to the highest bidder, marks the latest in a string of public relations fiascoes embroiling American governors. Post-arrest, Blagojevich defied calls from his peers to step down for the good of his party and state and instead appointed Roland Burris to the vacant senate seat left by President-elect Barack Obama. The appointment is legal. Although the Illinois State House of Representatives voted to impeach Blagojevich, to date he is still the governor of Illinois and continues to pardon criminals, sign bills into law, and conduct the day-to-day duties of the governor of Illinois. But Blagojevich’s actions make clear that if he’s going down, he’s taking some of the Democratic party with him. The appointment begs for a procedural fight, one that would conveniently distract from Blagojevich’s legal troubles. Simultaneously, his choice of a reputable African-American politician adds a patina of nobility, however cynical, to the appointment and inoculates it against a fight by Democrats needing the reflected popularity of the nation’s first African-American president-elect to solve the nation’s fiscal crisis. Better yet, Burris is a man with a distinguished career, but one who Illinoisans have rejected for public office the last three times he ran. That history, plus the tarnish of being appointed by a governor arrested for corruption, will be a generous gift to any Republican challenger in 2010 — and Blagojevich knows it. (Initially rebuffing Burris’s attempts to join the Senate, the Democrats, dreading an ill-timed procedural showdown and buffeted by fingers-crossed calls of racism by some Republicans, are heading toward admitting Burris to the Senate anyway.) For the moment, the ever-metastasizing Blagojevich story has overshadowed New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s. Conducting himself as the anti-Blagojevich, Richardson earlier this month withdrew as Obama’s choice for Commerce Secretary as a result of a federal investigation into “pay to play” accusations involving a state contract given to a company run by a donor to his political action committees. Then there are the antics of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, formerly known as John McCain’s choice for Republican vice presidential nominee. The cardinal rule of a VP nominee is: agree with the candidate at the top of the ticket, at least until the election is won. But Palin spent the last month of the campaign disagreeing with McCain’s position on a constitutional amendment on marriage, whether to continue competing for Michigan voters, removing North Korea from the list of terrorist nations, and more. She turned herself into a darling of the right wing of the party at McCain’s expense . . . during a presidential campaign. And none of us forgets former governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey and former governor of New York Eliot Spitzer — the operative word here being former. Both resigned from office amidst juicy accusations of abuses of power and/or blatant violations of the law. In August 2004, McGreevey was forced to resign after being threatened with a sexual harassment lawsuit by the man with whom he was having an extramarital affair and whom he had appointed homeland security advisor — a man who could not gain a security clearance from the U.S. government because he was not a U.S. citizen, but an Israeli. In March of 2008, Spitzer was caught paying for the services of a high-priced call girl. Of course, governors are not the only ones caught engaging in corruption or sex scandals. Idaho Senator Larry Craig quietly served out the remaining 17 months of his term after making the phrase “wide-stance” famous. Despite being freshly convicted of seven felonies, former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens nearly won re-election in October. Those who pursue governor and senator seats tend to be ambitious and ego-driven, not least of all because both seats are shortcuts to the White House. My bet is that governors will continue to go wild in 2009. Stay tuned!
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Midwin Charles: Governors Gone Wild!
Whenever a Kennedy runs for office, the tom-toms resound. Her uncles and cousins heard it. So did her father. Unqualified, inexperienced, starting at the top, impatient, dilettantish, haughty. Also inarticulate and afraid of work. Anti-Kennedy clatter has echoed for half a century. Can wealth and fame help Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg win any election, even in a one-vote electorate? As Sarah Palin might say, you betcha. Or as John F. Kennedy said in 1962, “It’s very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.” Major critics are from disparate groups, radio ranters and intellectuals. In the large Irish tribe of begrudgers, nourishing resentment is a highly valued skill. Thus, any tribesman whose head might bob above the mob is assured of swift retribution. Modern American technology has refined this ancient art. The begrudging Druids were born centuries too soon to find gainful employment on AM radio and cable television. When today’s yahoos reach full venting capacity, they denounce money, glamour and all dynasties, including those bums, the Adamses and Roosevelts. Intellectuals follow a narrower path. They resent the Kennedys because the Kennedys don’t need them. Academics and ideologues in both parties brandish questionnaires and litmus tests, which Kennedys usually ignore. So did Ronald Reagan when he ran for president in 1980. In the late 1950s, a predecessor to the Democratic party’s netroots blogosphere was a liberal group, Americans for Democratic Action. “Those people make me uncomfortable,” said JFK. The feeling was mutual. Many ADA members favored a third presidential nomination for Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, a dynastic figure himself, whose namesake and grandfather was elected vice president in 1892. JFK won the 1960 nomination. In the decades since, I have seen tire tracks across the foreheads of estimable politicians who opposed the Kennedy juggernaut. In 1962, a dynastic clash enlivened Massachusetts politics as Ted Kennedy announced for JFK’s seat shortly after his 30th birthday, the Constitutional requirement for the Senate. This was his only qualification, according to critics. “You never worked for a living,” Ed McCormack told Kennedy at a debate in South Boston. McCormack, a nephew of House Speaker John McCormack had served on the Boston City Council before being elected attorney general of Massachusetts. He was a civil libertarian and a solid liberal, but the reason McCormack was popular in Cambridge was that most Harvard professors were anti-Kennedy. In the statewide primary, Kennedy beat McCormack with 67 percent of the vote. In November, the 30-year-old candidate defeated another dynastic scion, George Cabot Lodge, and has won re-election easily ever since. In New York in 1964, Sam Stratton, an articulate three-term upstate congressman was the early favorite to take on Republican Sen. Kenneth Keating. Then, Robert Kennedy entered the race. “Reform” Democrats, led by Ed Koch of Greenwich Village, fiercely opposed RFK. On September 1, at the Democratic State Convention in the old 71st Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, I heard Stratton’s congressional colleague, Otis Pike, deliver a passionately eloquent endorsement of Stratton. Kennedy won 968 delegates to his opponent’s 153. Stratton’s strength, far from his Schenectady base, was in Manhattan. In the 1968 presidential primaries, many “Reform” Democrats favored the intellectual Sen. Eugene McCarthy over RFK. To this day, in some Manhattan neighborhoods, people cross the street to remind fellow Democrats that they were wrong about Bobby or Gene. The same passions and divisions attended the congressional races of Joe Kennedy in Massachusetts and Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island. The anti-Kennedy instinct, as opposed to any specific anti-Kennedy argument, is emotional and often fails a test of logic, in New York especially. The Empire State is a triumvirate uniting the House of Clinton, the House of Cuomo and the House of Paterson. Would reviving the Kennedy dynasty disturb this delicate ecological balance? The Senate seat that Gov. Paterson must fill has often been a dynastic totem since 1964, when New York elected RFK. In 1970, the Conservative Party’s James Buckley, brother of William F. Buckley Jr., won. In 1976, a marvelously meritocratic moment intervened. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, son of a saloonkeeper, won fame as US ambassador to the UN, and was elected to four fruitful terms. Moynihan’s retirement in 2000 led to another dynastic symbol, Hillary Rodham Clinton. All four senators were serving in their first public office and had no record of serving in local offices. If some New Yorkers prefer the local train to the express, their golden age was the senatorial career of Alfonse Marcello D’Amato. Public administrator of Nassau County, tax assessor in Hempstead, town supervisor in Hempstead, presiding supervisor in Hempstead, and vice chairman of Nassau County Board of Supervisors, D’Amato was proud to be called “Senator Pothole.” If Gov. Paterson appoints her, what political skills might Caroline Kennedy bring to the Senate? She writes books, which give a clue about her seriousness. In 1995, she co-authored with Ellen Alderman “The Right to Privacy.” Although the candidate’s interest in the subject derives from a childhood spent in the full flashing glare of paparazzi, the book’s hefty chapter on “Privacy and the Press” shows no sign of repealing the First Amendment. She also compiled “A Patriot’s Handbook,” a collection of poems and speeches about America. Listening to the audio version, I was impressed with her second and fifth selections, John McCain praising a fellow prisoner of war and Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell address. Anyone who shows that kind of political judgment is ready for a post-partisan America. As for a work ethic, it is useful to recall how much gumption infests the gene pool. In 1914, Joseph P. Kennedy, 25, became the youngest bank president in America. He went on to make so many millions that his children and grandchildren didn’t have to work. His descendants so far have focused on public service, not polo ponies. If old Joe’s granddaughter isn’t chosen, she’ll still have a life and the equanimity to live it. Diligence and ruthless determination were Joe Kennedy’s notable traits. He told his sons to compete at the highest level, but also to keep perspective. “Fight like hell to win,” he said, “but if you don’t win, forget about it.” ###
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Martin Nolan: An anti-Kennedy coalition: radio ranters and intellectuals
I have in the past, and will again in the future, launch deservedly vicious tirades against the stupid and ignorant, paid and unpaid, energy company denialist stooges in the International Anti Global Warming Conspiracy. But I realize that in addition to these braying idiots there are still a few genuine skeptics, people who really have tried to keep up to date with evidence as it floods in, and who remain puzzled by aspects of it, or believe that some findings are contradictory, or who think that the accuracy of some measurements might be questioned. Such approaches are in the best traditions of science, and lead to further advances in theories, further refinements of analysis or measurement. Perhaps the most common element of the world view of such skeptics is the proposition that climate has changed in the past, and that therefore the current changes are neither special nor, generally, of concern. Such people might also believe that if the current warming is just the latest bump in the roller coaster ride of world climates over hundreds of millions of years, then we can do little if anything to prevent it, but should act to adapt to the new conditions. This genuine set of beliefs has been cynically used by the denialists, but just because it can be misused, doesn’t mean that skeptics shouldn’t look at the world through such a prism. But because of the misuse, “the climate has changed before” gets lumped in with “global warming on Mars” or “urban heat effects” or “more ice in Antarctica” as just another part of the random word generator nonsense that makes climate change denialism the UFO affirmation of the 21st century. But I have gradually realized that this is wrong and self-defeating. By responding impatiently (”Yes, the climate has changed before. So?”) to skeptics and denialists alike we keep pushing together these reluctant and odd bedfellows. Trouble is, I think, we haven’t done a good job of explaining what we mean when we say the climate is changing as a result of global warming as a result of increasing CO2 levels. We don’t mean “the climate hasn’t changed before and now it is”. Nor do we mean “all of the changes in climate we see now are the result of global warming”. Nor do we mean “the only thing that influences climate is changing CO2 level”. But these seem to be the messages that the skeptics are hearing, and, rightly, disputing. And having, in their mind, disputed those perceived messages, they then think there must be something wrong with the science that has formulated them, and so they poke away questioning stuff that doesn’t, in fact, need questioning. So let’s clear the air (so to speak, ho ho). “Climate changes” is, yes indeed, a tautology on this old and complex blue dot on the outskirts of a galaxy. Ever since the planet stabilized enough to have a molten core inside and land (moving continents) and air and water outside, together with a variable and elliptical orbit around a variable star, etcetera etcetera, the average temperature and moisture regimes it has experienced have seen great swings and roundabouts, and the species human beings (and the ancestors of human beings) share this garden of eden with have appeared and disappeared like so many candles in the wind. There have been times when the climate was very much harsher than today, and (with or without the help of rocky visitors from outer space) great raft loads, enough to fill Noah’s Ark many times over, of species have been lost forever. Continents have moved through the latitudes, ocean currents have changed direction, large bodies of water have oscillated in temperature, mountains have risen, forests have been cleared. And human beings, since we evolved from the primeval ooze, have shivered through centuries of blizzards; tried to deal with drought through changes in agriculture; have seen glaciers wipe out villages; have walked across dry land bridges between land masses and been cut off when seas rose again; have painted pictures of creatures they shared the land with, now long gone; have developed clever engineering solutions to move water, or hold back sand dunes, or reclaim land from the sea, or make houses livable when baby it’s cold outside or when there is a tropical heatwave. So, no secrets there, the only certain thing about the climate of the Earth is its uncertainty. If you plot a graph of average temperature of the Earth it bounces around like a ball in an arcade game - up to the top, back down to the bottom, whoops, up it goes again, and down. A jagged line looking for all the world like the trace of vibrations from an earthquake. A climatic earthquake. But wait, there’s more. We have known for a long time that carbon dioxide can act as an accessory after the fact of climate change. Can (working in tandem with water vapor and even, Sarah Palin help us, methane), rather in the way that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, make times of high temperatures even higher. Nothing magic, not the work of Harry Potter or Al Gore, just fundamental physics and, for good measure, ice on the cake, the measurement of past carbon dioxide levels. Wouldn’t matter greatly, just another of those curiosities of this magnificently complex real estate designed for a billion or so people, except for one very inconvenient fact. Part of the ebb and flow of animals like dinosaurs and the trees they ate while waiting to provide transport for biblical humans is that they finished up being reduced to their carbon components which were then captured and stored safely underground. All of those once vibrant ancient communities, lush in biodiversity, vibrant in evolutionary potential, reduced to wet or dry black stuff forming some of the layers in the great layer cake of earth’s geological history. Safely buried until a particular species of wise ape discovered you could burn the damn stuff and do all kinds of neat things like providing heat and light and running Hummers. Oh, and adding carbon dioxide to the air - invisible, odorless, tasteless, disappearing into the sunset, gone and forgotten. And more. And more. And as it rises so it begins, inexorably, to push up that bouncing ball of changing climate. That choppy sea (to mix metaphors well beyond well beyond the capacity of anyone to control by pouring oil on troubled waters) with its millions of years of ups and downs is gradually forming into a wave as the ups become uppier. A big wave, threatening to engulf humanity and dinosaur descendants alike. Not just climate change, which continues on largely oblivious to the way it is being supercharged, but the mother of all climate changes, ready to unleash shock and awe, a weapon of mass destruction, on climate scientists and denialists alike. So if you are a skeptic, paddling around in the shallows, watching the little waves bounce up and down and saying, to your children, “see, the sea is always changing, always has, up and down”, then watch out for the tsunami just in sight on the horizon, doesn’t look much in the distance, but it is moving fast. And when it arrives you will hear the voice of Crocodile Dundee booming out “Call that climate change? THIS is climate change.” So if you have been a skeptic on the grounds that climate has always changed, nothing to see here, move right along folks, then it is time you came in from the cold. We weren’t talking about climate change, we were talking about CLIMATE CHANGE. And we need you on this side of the barricades, welcome any time, free pass, no questions asked, but please make it quick. Things are going to get a lot worse before (if) they get better. And the vicious tirades against the stupid and ignorant, paid and unpaid, energy company denialist stooges can still be found on the Watermelon Blog - no free pass for them.
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David Horton: The skeptic who came in from the cold
You probably guessed, since I’m a political blogger for Huffington Post, that I am a political junkie. I will proudly tell you I was raised that way; my dad wanted me to discuss politics with just as much depth and knowledge as I would baseball or The Beatles. Politics was a passion we both shared, and since I wanted to keep up with him I paid attention. But even I am getting battered by the onslaught of bad news. I thought after eight years of the Worst President Ever that we might get a good-news reprieve here; heaven knows we earned it. Instead every day brings more gloom than a spring day in Seattle — I lived in the lovely Seattle area for 21 years, and by spring you feel like the grayness has infiltrated every part of your psyche. That’s about how I feel these days. When Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is saying we’re on the verge of the 2nd Great Depression even a political junkie like me needs a break. Don’t get me wrong — I still want the politics. I just need a little humor to go with it. I don’t need a complete change of subject. Just a little diversion will do nicely. So for all of you despairing political junkies, I offer a few political diversions, politics to make you smile: 1. The Governor of Alaska. Oh, Sarah Palin, how do I thank thee. Let me count the ways. Just when I was getting down in the dumps you gave another interview and I laughed once more. In this one you actually said that Caroline Kennedy is getting a ‘free ride from the press’-unlike your poor beaten up little self- because of ‘class bias.’ Sarah, you maniac, you’re a laugh machine. Of course there’s absolutely no difference between Sarah Palin and Caroline Kennedy, so what else but class bias can explain her ‘free ride in the press’ (Sarah. My dear. Free ride? After reporters counted the number of times Ms. Kennedy said ‘you know’ and ran it as actual news ? Keep reading ‘all’ those papers, Sarah, you’ll find it). Caroline Kennedy and Sarah Palin: in one corner we’ve got a published author, Constitutional scholar, Radcliffe graduate and education reformer, and in the other corner we’ve got…Sarah Palin. Case closed! Please, Governor, keep giving interviews. Your country needs you in this time of crisis. 2. Michelle Obama’s Inauguration clothes. Oh, stop groaning. My friend Monica and I admitted to each other that this is one of the few stories these days that puts a smile on our faces. Here’s a sentence I’ve never said in my entire adult life: I can’t wait to see what our fabulous new First Lady wears to the Inauguration. I’m smiling just writing it. I love her sense of style and I love the way she shops: whether she buys from a designer or from Target, Michelle Obama knows great clothes when she sees ‘em. She’d be a kick to go shopping with… and I bet every politically savvy woman reading this article is nodding in agreement. And smiling. 3. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. Really? Sanjay Gupta? That handsome doctor who’s on television because he’s a handsome doctor? I don’t think he’s the right choice but I’ve got to smile because, well, we’re talking about The Surgeon General here, not Defense Secretary. Did you know Surgeon General’s are supposed to wear a uniform , which makes them look like an airline pilot? Really. I always thought it was C. Everett Koop’s idea but no, he just brought it back into style (’C. Everett Koop’ and ’style,’ now there’s two thoughts that usually don’t go together). Come to think of it, Sanjay Gupta might look really fine in a uniform; I’m smiling just thinking about that. While we’re on the subject, Mr. President Elect, if you think a television news doctor should become the country’s doctor, can you make Oprah the head of the Fed? She can do more to stimulate the economy with one trip to the Miracle Mile than Ben Bernanke’s done in the last two years. And her press conferences would be fabulous (”Every reporter in this room gets a free car!”). Did I make you smile? I hope so. We’re going to need those smiles, wherever we can get them.
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Marlene H. Phillips: Politics to Make You Smile
To speak with anyone who’s ever been in close proximity of Sarah Palin for any length of time, there is a constant thread in their commentary: she will say anything, lie about anything, if it is to her own benefit to do so. Much has been said or written about this during the campaign, particularly by The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan , so there’s no sense in going over any of this sordid record here. But just when you think that Palin can’t top herself–I mean the execution of a turkey in Wasilla is a pretty tough act to follow–here she comes again, seated down with a right-wing, self-promoting “filmmaker,” John Ziegler , taking cheap-shots at the likes of Caroline Kennedy and Katie Couric. The bitterness and envy and mean-spiritedness just ooze from her pores throughout the interview. While much has been made of the Kennedy and Couric comments, there was a troubling remark, largely overlooked, that Palin made about Barack Obama that was a flat-out, blatant lie–a typically Palinesque twisting of the truth intending, once again, to turn her into a victim and to make Obama & Co., along with the media, appear to be hypocrites. Here is Palin’s latest Big Lie: “When I heard Barack Obama state in one of his interviews on national television that his wife was off limits, meaning, family’s off limits– you know, ‘Attack me, I’m the public official, come after me, I can handle it and we’ll duke it out if need be, but family’s off limits’– I naively believed, OK, they respected that in him and his demand for that to be adhered, naively believing that must apply to all of us, right? But it didn’t apply.” In fact, Obama didn’t say that his family was off limits, he clearly said that Palin’s family was off limits when asked a question about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy: “I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.” He wasn’t protecting his family with that assertion, he was protecting Palin’s. And Palin lacks the basic grace, integrity and human decency to acknowledge Obama’s gesture. And then she twists the truth to make Obama seem selfish and the media unfair. And what about her claim that Obama’s wishes were “respected” about his own family? The right-wing press went after Michelle Obama relentlessly and so, too, did the McCain campaign. None other than Cindy McCain went after Michelle for comments she made about finally being proud of her country: “I don’t know why she said what she said. Everyone has their own experience. I don’t know why she said what she said, all I know is that I have always been proud of my country.” That seemed a little off-base coming from someone born with a silver-spoon in her mouth and who not only served as her husband’s connection to the Keating Five Scandal, but then later stole drugs from her own nonprofit organization to sustain her drug habit. But make that charge she did. So here again, Palin utterly distorts reality, fails to acknowledge Obama’s gesture, doesn’t acknowledge what her running mate’s wife said about Michelle Obama, and turns herself, yet again, into a political victim. Where is Ann Coulter calling Palin on her self-victimization? The silence is deafening.
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Geoffrey Dunn: Sarah Palin’s Big Obama Lie
NEW YORK — When community groups and the Board of Education were caught in an acrimonious dispute over an arts program, education officials brought in a fixer: Caroline Kennedy. The daughter of a president and niece of two senators listened attentively, asked probing questions and proposed various scenarios to resolve the dispute. Under her prompting, a compromise was reached. “People were pushing themselves back from the table and folding their arms,” recalled Stephanie Dua, chief executive officer of the Fund for Public Schools. “She was very good at defusing the situation. … She has a very easy style about her but she’s very sharp.” The episode is an intriguing glimpse into how Kennedy might fill the role of U.S. senator if she is appointed to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, friends and colleagues of Kennedy painted a picture of a reserved but intelligent and tenacious woman who writes her own speeches and who, despite her vast wealth, still takes the subway. Those interviewed did not provide an impartial view _ but, with several speaking publicly for the first time about their relationship, they offered a rare look inside the private world of a woman America fell in love with decades ago as she rode her pony over the White House lawn. ___ Much was made of Kennedy’s decision last January to support Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, but she is no stranger to politics. Paul G. Kirk Jr. remembers meeting her at the age of 16 or so, soaking in as much as she could while on the campaign trail with her uncle Teddy. She was “lively, engaged, inquisitive,” said the family friend and former head of the Democratic Party. “She might hear two or three people ask the senator the same question if he was in a forum. They’d get back in the car, and she’d follow up.” By the time she was in Columbia University Law School more than a decade later, her intellectual curiosity, and her studiousness, still made an impression. “She’s the A-plus student who does 110 percent,” said classmate, friend and eventual co-author Ellen Alderman. “We were nerds … the two Type A personalities who had worked very hard in school.” Inspired by some of their law school case studies, Kennedy and Alderman had a book proposal completed before they graduated. Soon they were traveling the country, interviewing people who had been caught up in civil rights cases for “In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action.” Kennedy was very good at putting their interviewees at ease, Alderman said. There was never any talk then of a political career, she said, but looking back she’s unsurprised. “For me now it seems very natural,” she said. “The most important part of the research we did was talking to people and listening to them. And she’s terrific on the legal end, on the analysis and the issues, and she’s terrific on the people end, on understanding how the law and government affects people every day.” ___ Kennedy had her first daughter, Rose, around the same time she graduated from Columbia in 1988, and her professional life took shape around her children. When Alderman became pregnant, she recalls, Kennedy became her “mommy mentor,” showing her what she needed to pack a diaper bag, and giving her advice on work: “You can still do it, you’re just not going to have eight, 10, 12 hours at a time,” Alderman recalls her saying. Kennedy had help around the house, but she never delegated parenting _ picking her three kids up from school and knowing who their friends were and where they were, said Esther Newberg, her friend and literary agent. Kennedy joined the board at her children’s school, and colleagues said she’d never attend a meeting if it meant missing a recital or another such event. Kennedy’s friends and colleagues talk about what a remarkably “normal” life she lives, but one could argue they’re not the best judges. After all, her circle includes famous authors, a co-president of HBO, a former head of the Democratic National Committee, senators and the president-elect. Kennedy’s finances _ estimated by some at more than $400 million _ never came up, Alderman said. The co-authors swapped who paid for dinner, and they flew coach. Kennedy has an assistant but does not use a driver, takes the subway around New York and books her own flights, friends said. Her six-room apartment is at an exclusive address on Park Avenue where a larger unit was recently listed for $13 million. Friends describe it as a low-key place covered with books and decorated with slip-covered sofas. Kennedy and her husband, museum designer Edwin Schlossberg, enjoy entertaining, frequently hosting buffet-style gatherings, Newberg said. Sometimes, he cooks. Like thousands of New Yorkers, the couple hosted a debate-watching party the night of the face-off between vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Talkative guests were shuffled into a separate room with a television so the true political junkies could hunker down in the den and hear every word. When she wasn’t playing hostess, Caroline Kennedy chose the den. ___ Compared to the sharp-elbowed style common among New York politicians, Kennedy’s personality in a series of recent media interviews has seemed quiet, soft-spoken. But those who have worked with Kennedy said her sometimes reserved demeanor could be misleading. More than one spoke of an instance where they had watched her listen carefully to each person’s point of view, then argue her point calmly but tenaciously until she achieved her goal. “If you aren’t as loud as I am, often people mistake that for not being effective and that’s just wrong,” said Elaine Jones, the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where Kennedy served on the board. “I know how able, substantive and tough-minded Caroline is. Now others have got to see that in her. And she may have to project it.” While she never practiced law, Kennedy did heavy-duty research before board meetings and contributed to detailed legal debates over which cases would be selected by the NAACP fund, Jones said. Kennedy also has been instrumental in selecting at least some of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award winners, who are honored for risking their careers to take a stand for their principles. For the 2000 honor, she persuaded the award committee to select a relative unknown, Hilda Solis, now the likely incoming secretary of labor, said Kirk, a committee member. Kennedy won the panel over with her argument that it was important to acknowledge lesser-known public servants so as to inspire others at every level of government. Kennedy writes all her own speeches, says another longtime friend and colleague, Heather Campion. Preparing for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, speech writer and strategist Bob Shrum recounted handing her a draft of her speech, only to see her rewrite it from top to bottom. Kirk said she seems to have taken to heart an oft-repeated family quote that she has included in her speeches again and again over the years: “Each of us can make a difference and all of us must try.” ___ After years of focusing on her young children, Kennedy began to look for an alternative to the books on which she had been working. “I’d like to work with people. Being a writer is a solitary job,” she told Campion shortly before she went to work for the New York City Board of Education in 2002. In her 22 months working three days a week at the agency, she was credited with raising tens of millions of dollars and revamping fundraising operations. Friends argue those fundraising skills would serve her well if she’s chosen as senator. Whoever is selected by Gov. David Paterson to fill Clinton’s seat would have to run for election to the seat in 2010, and _ if successful _ again in 2012. Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama for the Democratic nomination came at a vital moment in his campaign, and friends said she loved campaigning and seemed invigorated by it. “Presumably she could have had an appointment,” said Campion, who at Kennedy’s request broke decades of public silence about their friendship. “There are a lot of great ambassadorships,” Campion said she told Kennedy earlier. There seemed easier ways to contribute without thrusting herself into the intensive public scrutiny that would come with a Senate bid. However, Campion recounted, Kennedy was unconvinced by the warning. She said: “But I want to make a difference … and I love New York.”
The photographs of the current, future and former living presidents at the White House earlier this week were remarkable for the fact that such a meeting has not occurred since 1981. And because, for the first time, an African-American president-elect is present. And because, once again, there isn’t a woman anywhere in sight. Yes, this is self-evident: we know no woman has ever been elected president in the United States. Or, really, ever come close. For all of Hillary Clinton’s groundbreaking campaign, she was not even nominated. For all of the hand-wringing at the prospect of Sarah Palin being within a 72-year-old heartbeat of the presidency, she became the laughing stock of a ticket that went down to stinging defeat. Under the last two administrations, women have made significant breakthroughs, gaining access to previously unattainable posts, such as Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Transportation. However, even under Barack Obama, at least for now, some positions remain off-limits to women: Senate Majority Leader, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, and CIA Director, for instance. Is it a coincidence that in the world’s largest economy, whose military expenditure accounts for half the global total, the most senior posts dealing with money and war are still reserved for men? It is surely true that Clinton smashed one glass ceiling and Palin, in her own way, too. But those were hardly the last such hurdles on the way to the presidency. If even ostensibly progressive presidents such as Bill Clinton and Obama are skittish about putting women in charge of Defense, the CIA or the Treasury, what does that say about the political system’s ability to imagine a woman running all three, as President? True, no African-American had filled any of those posts either, and that did not prevent Obama from rising to the presidency. But do we really want to wait around for the type of confluence of events that happened in 2008 to reoccur? And for a woman with Obama’s near-outlandish political skills, and sense of timing to emerge? That is, in fact, part of the challenge. Before Clinton, no woman had seriously run for the presidency, and no woman appears to be doing so now. The situation is most dire on the Republican side because it is assumed that Obama will run for the Democrats in 2012. Republican women in Congress or statehouses are a dispiritingly dwindling group, which explains the ludicrous Palin selection. Once John McCain (or his advisors) decided he needed a woman on the ticket, the choice really boiled down to a group of eight Republican women Senators or Governors. Of those, only two passed the non-negotiable GOP presidential litmus test of being pro-life, Palin and Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who is older than McCain and so politically unskilled that she ended up losing her North Carolina reelection bid in a landslide. That left Palin, who may be trying to position herself for 2012, a testament to the Republican Party’s slim pickings among women. Never say never, but there is a reason Dan Quayle, who actually made it to the vice presidency and is more articulate than Palin, has remained ensconced in a comfortable life of private “work.” Among Democrats, there is both more time and more talent, but besides Clinton, no elected woman has emerged as a high-profile national political leader. Ironically, such public standing is often bestowed on those who have previously run for president, and lost (think Joe Biden or Al Gore, for instance). Senators such as Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota took a visible role in Obama’s campaign but, as so often, they were simply very effective surrogates for the male candidate. It is debatable if this positions them for a future run or dooms them to the supporting cast. There are others, of course, such as newly elected Sen. Kay Hagan (who blasted Dole out of the Senate), who could go the Obama route and leapfrog all those who have been patiently plodding their way to the top job. Even Democratic women face redoubtable challenges: they make up less than a quarter of their party’s members of Congress, and even fewer are Governors. Half the states have never elected a woman Senator, and half the states have never elected a woman Governor. The slow progress of women in American politics is best illustrated by the country’s dismal 69th place ranking in the percentage of women in national legislatures. This standing has deteriorated in each of the last ten years as women have gained more power in predictable countries such as Sweden or the Netherlands, but also in Latin America, Africa and Asia. These gloomy statistics are a powerful reflection of the United States’ plummeting civil rights leadership, Obama’s election notwithstanding: the country is falling further behind others when it comes to a whole array of rights for women, gay people and other minorities. Dozens of countries from Vietnam to Angola and Argentina now elect more women than Americans do. Dozens of countries from South Africa to Belgium to Colombia offer more rights for gay people than America does. And of course, the poor, workers, children, religious minorities have all seen their rights eroded, both relatively and absolutely, in the United States in the past decade. That we can always point to a horrifying although dwindling number of countries where women are considered chattel ( Saudi Arabia ), gay people punished by death ( Nigeria ), and children enslaved ( Cambodia ) does not mean the United States is not also failing to progress fast enough in these respects. Last year’s Democratic presidential primary was briefly the stage of a debate over whether sexism or racism were bigger impediments to election. The question is artificial, meaningless and impossible to answer. Artificial because it benefited neither of the leading candidates, but it did help their competitors, as was evidenced when the Republican nominee tried to wedge the issue of sexism between Democratic women and their male nominee. Meaningless because racism and sexism are hardly mutually exclusive. And impossible to answer because the statistical and empirical data can be manipulated to provide whatever answer is required. Leaving that pointless discussion aside, the bottom line remains: women have been shut out of the presidency in the many decades since they became enfranchised. Among the handful of women who are nonetheless hopeful for a shot at the presidency, even in the long run, Janet Napolitano should be near the top. She is breaking ground in Obama’s cabinet by taking over the Department of Homeland Security, a fairly recent creation that has been the preserve of men. Napolitano is a former US Attorney and the current Governor of Arizona, where she has, by all accounts, done a formidable job. She could surely be presidential material at some point. That, however, would require her to break yet more ground, as a single woman. After all, as Laura Bush said of Condolleeza Rice: she isn’t interested in being president “because she is single.”
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Paul Jenkins: Not A Woman In The Picture
Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen — fantastic faces, wonderful actors and the absolute kings of cool. They’re gone. They’re almost all gone. Leaving an empty hole and extra large snakeskin boots to fill for any other hepcat actors (which are few and far between. With few exceptions, are actors even cool anymore?), these kinds of guys (men, damn it ) not only rarely walk among us any longer but barely even flicker on the screen anymore. So, I have to ask, is Clint Eastwood the last man standing? The 78-year-old actor/director/icon (that’s right, he’s 78, and he could still kick your ass) Clint Eastwood is currently starring in Gran Torino , a movie he reportedly directed as his last starring role — something that puts me in varied extremes of raging wistfulness and bittersweet overload. The movie is weirdly lovable — not the greatest picture of Eastwood’s oeuvre (it’s not Unforgiven ), but then, so unique, daring, touching and personal that, well, maybe it is one of the greatest movies he’s ever made. The story of a Korean war veteran and recent widower (and ahem, proud Ford Torino owner , how could I not see this movie?) facing his own racism and general grumpy, growling demeanor while befriending his Hmong neighbors is oddly toned — disarmingly funny at times (who knew Eastwood was as cute as Sarah Silverman in the shock department?) — and then, overwhelmingly poignant. It’s Clint facing his own persona, poking some fun at it, apologizing just a little, but maintaining his realness while making himself absolutely mythic. It’s steadfastly American while being strangely exotic — there’s nothing like it. And there’s no one like Eastwood. I recently rewatched (for the umpteenth time) the great Sergio Leone Dollars trilogy (where Eastwood dominates as the “Man With No Name” or “Blondie” — next to Angel Eyes Lee Van Cleef, who of course is no longer with us, and who I also revere with almost sick intensity ) and was once again, awestruck by his less-is-more approach to acting (the jazz lover in him). Not surprisingly, Eastwood understands the art of the close-up (that grimace!) and what to do with your body (that oh-so-subtle swagger of his!), and he uses it to great effect in everything from his Dirty Harry movies to Every Which Way But Loose , a movie that, opening credits alone (that Eddie Rabbit song accompanying his workday kills me every time — and when he knocks on the window to the very happy secretary – why does this move me so?) simply proves how much he brings to jeans, a T-shirt and an old truck (not to mention great hair). And who looks cool hanging out with an orangutan? Clint does. So damn. Clint’s turning me into perpetual father/brother/mentor loser Brandon De Wilde from Shane here. Is Gran Torino really going to be his last acting appearance? Clint, don’t go! Tweaked from my MSN column Hollywood Hitlist . Read more Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun.
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Kim Morgan: Clint, Mon Amour
With the announced retirement of Missouri’s senior Senator, Christopher “Kit” Bond, who is prepared to hang up his spurs after four terms in Washington, the field is wide open for Bond’s potential replacement in both parties. The most prominent likely Democratic candidate - and probably the only person in either party who could clear the field in her primary - is Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. A 2010 race makes a lot of sense for Carnahan, daughter of Governor Mel Carnahan, Senator Jean Carnahan, and sister of Rep. Russ Carnahan. She gets a free shot at the race without having to abandon her current job, she’s one of the most prominent Democratic politicians in the state and she polled strongly even when pitted against Bond. Ben Smith at the Politico seems to think a Carnahan run is likely: On the Democratic side, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, daughter of the late Sen. Mel Carnahan, will likely be the nominee. One Democratic operative said she has already been preparing for a Senate campaign – even before Bond announced his retirement. Carnahan won more than 1.74 million votes statewide in 2008 — more than any other statewide Democratic candidate in Missouri history. If she doesn’t run, there’s a good chance her brother Russ will, and Kansas City Congressman (and former Mayor) Emanuel Cleaver might explore a run. State Auditor Susan Montee is another possibility, and there may be still others (perhaps an enterprising State Representative or Senator like 2008 Congressional candidate Judy Baker, or a former statewide elected official like Roger Wilson or Joe Maxwell). On the Republican side, however, it looks to be full-on chaos. Former U.S. Senator Jim Talent, still smarting from his 2006 loss to Claire McCaskill, looks poised to run: Two Republican operatives close to former Sen. Jim Talent say he is likely to run for the Missouri Senate seat of retiring Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.). One Republican operative close to Talent said that he has been “itching to run” since losing to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in 2006, and is eager to make a political comeback. He won’t be alone. Also apparently mulling a run: - U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, one of the more controversial figures in the state party. - Former U.S. House Majority Leader Rep. Roy Blunt. He’s been in Washington dog’s years, but he’s still only 58. - Former Congressman (and failed 2006 gubernatorial candidate) Kenny Hulshof. Hulshof got absolutely waxed in the governor’s race by Democrat Jay Nixon, so he may be persona non grata in the state party. - Former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman. She lost in the Gov primary to Hulshof (she would likely have been a stronger general-election candidate), and may want to get back in the game. - Current Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton. - Current U.S. Attorney and former House Speaker Catherine Hanaway. - U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson. I don’t think any candidate, including Talent, has the juice to clear the field, so it looks to get ugly. I think I’ve found the perfect GOP candidate, however. He’s young, handsome, and represents a fresh face for a divided Missouri GOP. He believes in “values”, which surely both moderates and hard-core righties can agree upon. He gained valuable political experience from a failed 2006 run in the Ninth District. His name even sounds like “Barack Obama”, so he could become a fearsome general-election candidate appealing to Democrats and Republicans alike. He is called Brock Olivo , and the Republicans should start recruiting him right away. I think it’ll work out swimmingly for the GOP and good old Brock. Seriously, though, the GOP is likely to have a pretty messy primary on their hands, while there’s a chance Robin Carnahan could clear the field on our side. This would be a very, very good outcome for the Democratic Party. But regardless of what happens, expect a tight race through November 2010. Consider the recent statewide results in Missouri: MO-Sen 1998: Kit Bond (R) 53%, Jay Nixon (D) 44% MO-Sen 2000: Mel Carnahan (D) 50%, John Ashcroft (R) 48% MO-Gov 2000: Bob Holden (D) 49%, Jim Talent (R) 48% MO-Pres 2000: George W. Bush (R) 50%, Al Gore (D) 47% MO-Sen 2002: Jim Talent (R) 50%, Jean Carnahan (D) 49% MO-Sen 2004: Kit Bond (R) 56%, Nancy Farmer (D) 43% MO-Gov 2004: Matt Blunt (R) 51%, Claire McCaskill (D) 48% MO-Pres 2004: George W. Bush (R) 53%, John Kerry (D) 46% MO-Sen 2006: Claire McCaskill (D) 50%, Jim Talent (R) 47% MO-Gov 2008: Jay Nixon (D) 58%, Kenny Hulshof (R) 39% MO-Pres 2009: John McCain (R) 49%, Barack Obama (D) 49% It’s a good bet this one will be fairly close.
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MO-Sen: Speculation Swirls With Bond Out
The seemingly invulnerable Sarah Pipeline has her first challenger at the plate: Democrat Bob Poe, the former Alaska State Commissioner of Administration and former CEO of Anchorage Economic Development Corporation, said Wednesday he will announce tomorrow that he intends to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Alaska. Poe is viewed as a serious, viable candidate by state Democrats, though there are some other candidates that could derail Poe’s bid to unseat Palin. Poe lacks statewide name recognition unlike a candidate such as Ethan Berkowitz, the Democrat who came close to defeating Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) this past November. It is expected, though, that Poe would run a centrist, pragmatic campaign as an alternative to Palin. Democrats feel that Palin’s vice presidential run brought to light more negative information about the governor than Alaskans had previously encountered, opening the door for a successful Democratic challenge. Still, they acknowledge that Palin’s still-unknown political ambitions on a national level are a key variable in the race. Berkowitz is more likely to try another House race (against a weaker candidate in scandal-plagued Don Young) than a race for Governor against Palin. All the polling for that race, from start to finish, showed Berkowitz beating Young, indicating how difficult a state Alaska is to poll. Palin’s favorables are still pretty high, last time we checked - 60% favorable, 38% unfavorable. So it’ll be a tough race for Bob Poe, and as we saw in 2008, even popular Democrats, like Berkowitz and Mark Begich, have trouble in Alaska, even against crooked Republicans like Young and Ted Stevens. It should be a fun one, though. The chances of beating Palin are very low, but it will be nice to have her in the media spotlight again in 2010. Even a victory for her in 2010 could damage her chances for 2012, if it’s not “convincing” enough. And it’s very inspiring to see that even after a somewhat disappointing year in 2008 (the election of Mark Begich notwithstanding), Alaska Democrats are serious about taking on the state’s most popular Republican. It’ll be a nice service to the rest of the nation if they can sting Palin just a little bit. By the way, if you’ve wondered what the Sarahcuda has been up to of late, check this out: I’m excited that we’ll still have Palin to kick around for years to come.
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AK-Gov: First Serious Opponent for Palin Signs On
It wasn’t all that long ago that the conventional wisdom had Democrats having to fight hard to hold their gains in 2010, but if Republicans keep retiring at the rate they’ve been at since November, the GOP is going to end up scrambling for a lot of open seats that used to have (R) next to the name. The latest GOP Senator to pull his hat from the ring is Kit Bond . High-ranking Missouri Republicans say Sen. Kit Bond plans to announce this morning that he will not seek re-election in 2010. Podiums everywhere will feel safer, knowing that they’re not going to be subject to Bond’s red-faced pounding. And the auto industry should automatically recover some viability, considering that they’re no longer going to be “protected” by the guy who referred to fuel-efficient vehicles as “clown cars.” Now the question is: who will be fighting for that spot in 2010? On the Democratic side, Robin Carnahan was far and away the leading candidate. Her upcoming duel with Bond had been anticipated and talked about even before she settled into her current spot as Missouri Secretary of State. The change of ticket on the GOP side could open up other possibilities, but Robin — generally considered the most effective of the political Carnahan clan — certainly has the inside track. But what about the GOP side of the aisle? 9th District Congressman Kenny Hulshof was crushed by Jay Nixon in the gubernatorial race, but he spent a lot of time and money establishing state wide name recognition that could give him a boost. GOP supporters kept Jim Talent on ice long enough to pull him back for his first Senate run, and he is still much believed in conservative think tank land. There’s a chance he could be thawed out again for a repeat. 6th District Congressman Sam Graves is a possibility. So is State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, who already had feelers out for a run against Claire McCaskill in 2012. Steeleman lost to Husholf in the primary for the governor’s race, but Husholf didn’t look very good through the general, and ran an ineffective campaign. Steeleman might well win a rematch. And of course there’s “I’ve done all I set out to do in one term” retiring Gov. Matt Blunt, who is fleeing Jefferson City in hopes that there will be less effort to unearth whatever skeleton he is hiding (and rumor has it this one is T-Rex sized) if he’s out of office. Having succeeded in burning enough email to disguise his actions, might he be tempted to jump back in the fray? He’s certainly made noises about a possible future run — despite approval ratings in the W territory. With any luck, all of them will run. Update [2009-1-8 12:0:57 by Devilstower]: Bond has delivered his retirement speech , and another candidate was in the stands. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, former speaker of the Missouri House, was on hand for the announcement. The Republican was the keynote speaker at the governor’s prayer breakfast in Jefferson City today. More discussion in kann’s diary on this topic .
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MO-Sen: Kit Bond out in 2010.
Rachel Maddow appeared on “The Daily Show” Wednesday night, where she and Jon Stewart discussed the MSNBC family, President-Elect Obama’s policy knowledge, and George Bush’s Blair House snub of the incoming First Family. Stewart opened the interview by telling Maddow hers is “a lovely voice to have out there on the air,” and then he compared MSNBC anchors to the Munster family. “Ever see The Munsters?” he asked. “Here’s what I think when I watch MSNBC: you’re Marilyn,” referring to the only normal member of a family of monsters. “But everyone else over there is **** nuts. I’m not gonna tell you who Herman Munster is, but I will tell you I believe Chris Matthews is the dragon who lives under the stairs.” “You know, I’m new there!” Maddow shot back. Watch: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Rachel Maddow Barack Obama Interview John McCain Interview Sarah Palin Video Funny Election Video Maddow explained that she doesn’t watch cable news because she doesn’t have a TV — “I watch you on the online machine,” she said to Stewart — but that she tries to stand out as a different voice from the “homogenized” landscape of cable news. The two then discussed Maddow’s debates with Pat Buchanan (Grandpa Munster in Stewart’s analogy) and her interviews with Barack Obama, who she described as “a policy dork.” “I don’t necessarily agree with him on everything on policy, but I want him to care,” she said of the President-Elect, adding that Bill Clinton’s policy-obsession was one of his most endearing traits as President. “I know this is a small thing,” Maddow then said, “but I’m insulted as an American, and a little bit embarrassed as an American, that a guy whose salary I pay, President Bush, has decided that the First Family can’t stay in the Presidential guest house.”
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Rachel Maddow On "Daily Show": "Insulted," "Embarrassed" By Bush, MSNBC Compared To Munsters
John McCain reached back into the presidential campaign on Wednesday to pull out a scientific critique that had first been made by his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, when she ridiculed funding for fruit fly research. In a late-October speech, Palin noted that the research was going on in “Paris, France” and added “I kid you not.” On Wednesday, McCain himself grabbed for the fruit-fly swatter at a press conference to unveil his new anti-earmark legislation. After a long takedown of research into lobsters by the University of Maine that involves a “Lobster Cam,” McCain, a Senator from Arizona, turned on the fruit flies, saying, “also, there’s one in Paris that — yes — $212,000 for Olive Fruit Fly research in Paris, France.” During the campaign, Palin’s criticism of fruit-fly research was heavily attacked by the scientific community , which argued that fruit flies, because of their brief life-spans, make up a cornerstone of scientific and medical research. In 1933, Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for his work with fruit flies, which showed how genes are passed on through chromosomes. Palin was considered at the time to have been scientifically freelancing, but McCain’s comments today indicate that the objection to fruit-fly research came from the top. The specific earmark in question was requested by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). The money was for a lab set up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Europe to study emerging threats from insects. “The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries,” said Thompson. “The research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the 1990s.”
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McCain Repeats Palin’s Attack On Fruit Fly Research
Cross posted from Salon’s Broadsheet For all the ink that’s been spilled on the Madoff investment scandal, I’ve read nothing about its impact on funding for progressive women’s causes — which is considerable. Simply put, only a small pool of foundations are funding litigation and advocacy work related to criminal justice or constitutional rights; the pool that supports related programs targeted to women is smaller still. With the recent shuttering of two of Madoff’s clients, the Picower Foundation and the JEHT Foundation, that pool has shrunk to a puddle. Picower was one of a handful of foundations willing to stick their necks out and significantly fund the three organizations that handle virtually all major reproductive rights-related litigation and legal advocacy in the United States. Now the Center for Reproductive Rights needs to make up a $600,000 shortage in 2009; Planned Parenthood is out $484,000; the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project is off $200,000. The economic crisis makes it particularly difficult to replace that kind of money. Meanwhile, there’s a backlog of bad new laws that need to be contested. It’s likely to grow this year with the popularity of mandatory ultrasound laws for abortion patients, one of the favorite new litigation strategies of antiabortion activists. (Seventeen states considered more than 30 ultrasound bills in 2007 alone.) Consequently, there’s a lot riding on the Center for Reproductive Rights’ recent challenge to Oklahoma’s law, the harshest in the country. It compels physicians one hour prior to performing an abortion to do an ultrasound on the patient and point out various features, while — per CRR’s press release — “preventing a woman from suing her doctor if he or she intentionally withholds other information about the fetus, such as a severe developmental defect.” (Translation: information that might influence a woman to terminate a risky pregnancy.) But who’s going to fund this very expensive suit? Or the challenges to similar laws that will pass while this case is in court? Women also stand to lose ground with the closing of the JEHT Foundation , one of the country’s premier funders of criminal justice reform initiatives, including drug policy reform. Both issues have particular resonance for women. Thanks to stringent mandatory sentences for even first-time, nonviolent drug offenders, women’s rate of incarceration grew by 757 percent between 1977 and 2006 — nearly twice the rate for men. Women of color, who are scrutinized, prosecuted and punished more harshly for drug-related offenses than their white counterparts, bear the brunt of these policies. JEHT, like Picower, was a rare grant maker in an already select field. It funded initiatives aimed at ameliorating the hardships women face as a consequence of their involvement with the criminal system, including grants to the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the Stop Prisoner Rape Project. Additionally, Sarah From, director of public policy and communications for the Women’s Prison Association, lauds JEHT for “being one of the few foundations to fund criminal justice policy reform.” (JEHT provided WPA with seed money to start its national Institute on Women and Criminal Justice .) “They addressed a real need in the field,” says From. “Now there will be fewer resources for this work overall, and we’ll have to work harder to convince new funders to take a look at our issues for the first time.” Vivian Lindermayer, CRR’s director of development, sounds uncannily similar talking about Picower. “They understood the critical role litigation and legal advocacy play in securing women’s equal access to quality reproductive healthcare. Picower’s closing will have a major impact on CRR and organizations like us.” The media’s obsession with wealthy individuals who have been ruined by Madoff and feel betrayed is understandable. But when that story wears thin, let’s hope the cameras will document the effect of the $42 million shortfall that progressive nonprofits will face in 2009 without funding from JEHT and Picower. We’ve only just begun to understand the implications of that loss for women’s health and human rights.
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Nancy Goldstein: How the Madoff mess hits women
On Monday night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart, during a segment entitled “Road to the Doghouse,” mocked CNN, and in particular host Anderson Cooper, for airing a ‘debate’ about the Obamas’ first dog featuring, yes, dogs. WATCH: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Road to the Doghouse - Puppedential Debate Barack Obama Interview John McCain Interview Sarah Palin Video Funny Election Video
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Jon Stewart Mocks CNN’s ‘Puppedential Debate’ (VIDEO)
Levi Johnston–who sired Sarah Palin’s first grandchild and in October told the Associated Press that he was quitting high school to work as an apprentice electrician for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation–” resigned” that job Monday, reports the Anchorage Daily News. Questions about Levi’s eligibility for the oil field job were raised by conservative Alaskan commentator Dan Fagan , as a high school diploma or GED is required by law in order to work as an apprentice. Last week Palin threw a frantic media fit, manically calling People Magazine, emailing the AP and contacting the Anchorage Daily News about her daughter and her boyfriend’s status (or not) as students. Supermom Sarah told People Magazine that she : wanted to be clear about their continuing work toward high school degrees because any suggestion otherwise “harms Bristol’s reputation and Levi’s reputation and their chances for good work opportunities.” Guess the media reporting the truth that Levi was a drop out did in fact “harm” his chance for “good work opportunities,” in Palin’s spin-filled world. But Levi was hired illegally, and once that was uncovered, he had to quit. Palin denied Fagan’s allegations that she was responsible for getting Levi his job, calling his remarks “a political pot shot taken at me.” And Levi’s dad Keith Johnson backs up Gov GILF, telling the Anchorage Daily News that the governor was not responsible for Levi getting the job, and in fact it was his influence. Keith Johnston works as an ASRC construction engineer. According to his father Levi will be returning home to finish his education. He felt it was the best thing to do to kind of calm the waters, so to speak In other words, the gig was up. Lisa Derrick is La Figa at Firedoglake.com
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Lisa Derrick: Quitter! Levi Johnston Leaves His Job
The mother of Sarah Palin’s future son-in-law pleaded not guilty to the drug charges against her today. A Palmer grand jury on Friday indicted Sherry Johnston on six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance relating to possession and sale of the prescription painkiller OcyContin.
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Sherry Johnston Pleads Not Guilty To Drug Dealing
Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal? Nixon: I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal! Frost: …I’m sorry? To try to put yourself in the environment of Frost/Nixon , imagine it’s 2010 and George W. Bush has decided to sit for his first post-Presidency interview as a twenty-plus hours exclusive taping with … Carson Daly, or somewhere halfway between Ryan Seacrest and that guy who does the sex predator busts for Dateline . Because that’s who David Frost was back in 1975 when he landed the interview — a 36-year-old lightweight pseudo-journalist more comfortable with the Brothers Gibb than with hard news. But Frost had an idea — secure disgraced former President Richard Nixon’s first post-presidency interview as a means of boosting his credibility, and pay whatever he had to do to get it. After a small bidding war with NBC and other outlets, Nixon’s price was $600,000 and 20% of the profits, and the interview was landed. Other than general parameters that each of the four 90-minute segments to air would focus on a different aspect of the Nixon record (Watergate, foreign, domestic, personal), there were no restrictions on any of the questions Frost could ask. And while Frost thought he could make a name for himself, Nixon predicted he could school Frost, filibuster when necessary, and use these hours to rebuild his legacy. As with many other films this season — Milk , Valkyrie and Marley & Me come to mind — the events of Frost/Nixon are part of the historical record, and any well-read person knows what happens to the elected tenure of Harvey Milk, whether Tom Cruise killed Hitler, whether anything happens to a dog while he ages and, yes, whether anything interesting happened between Frost and Nixon. (Hell, you can guess: tell me who’d want to see a movie about a Richard Nixon running circles around a naive playboy.) So I don’t know how much one can or should “spoil” about what happens in the movie, which sticks pretty well to the historical transcripts while on-set, to contemporaneous accounts of much of the rest, plus one dilly of an invented phone call towards the end that is entertaining as hell, and tells at least screenwriter Peter Morgan’s sense of the “truth” of Nixon, though anyone familiar with Rick Perlstein’s exegesis of the Franklin/Orthogonian dichotomy will feel comfortable with it. And it’s entertaining as hell, in a way neatly parallels one of my modern favorites, Shattered Glass , the way you spend that whole film waiting for Chuck Lane to kick Anakin Skywalker’s Paduan-lying ass from one end of the New Republic’s offices to the other. As many have noted , the film is structured as an intellectual boxing match, and the talking-head interviews along the way (perhaps, too many) make you really appreciate the knockout blow. The frustrating thing about Frost/Nixon , though, is that the climax to which it builds is, however dramatic, meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I spoil nothing to say that no matter what he says in the interview, Nixon doesn’t go to jail, though he doesn’t get rehabilitated, and that things worked out well for David Frost. So? Well, it’s still fun on its own terms, and Frank Langella (Nixon) and Michael Sheen (Frost) do own their characters well. More importantly, the film has one true insight that’s worth remembering, and it’s spoken by one of Frost’s research assistants, James Reston Jr., played by Sam Rockwell: You know, the first and greatest sin or deception of television is that it simplifies, it diminishes, Great, complex ideas, tranches of time. Whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. … David had succeeded on that final day in getting, for a fleeting moment, what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get: Richard Nixon’s face. Swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat, filling every television screen in the country. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist. Think about that claim for a second — that we really see truth from public figures in those interstitial moments, the pauses, the ums , the you knows , the little unconscious, unforced gaps in the script that we believe provide insight into character. It makes sense when you think about how we reacted to Sarah Palin, that it wasn’t what she said but how she said it that so aggravated our collective spidey-sense. We believed we knew who she really was based on those (unconscious?) winks as well. But these reactions can also be deeply unfair — think about the novice politician who says you know a lot just because he’s not trained in being on television yet, the error that’s just that, an error. Or, hell, Nixon himself, forever tarred with the sin of sweating during a televised 1960 debate because he was recovering from the flu, which folks took as proof of his untrustworthiness. Okay, so they were right about Nixon. So in thinking about this question, let’s do this: take a look at this two-minute clip from the actual interviews, and just watch Nixon’s reaction as Frost is asking the question. Watch the unconscious way he seems to dread having to answer the question, the little gulps he takes. Does that tell you everything you need to know, regardless of what he says later? The achievement of Frost/Nixon , and of the actors involved, is that you may not look at another political interview the same way … or, perhaps, may finally recognize how you’ve been subconsciously watching them all along.
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Frost/Nixon
You can start the New Year feeling indulgent and selfish by inspecting Jan. 12 Time’s ” Wasting our Watts ” and the Jan. 3-9 Economist’s ” Troubled Waters .” On land and sea, we appear equally our own worst enemy. Time’s treatise is less about conservation than it is the many technologies we could use to build more efficient cars, light bulbs, machines, you name it. The Economist lengthy special report is about the horrendous impact of our activities on the sea, whether it’s declining stocks of fish, the damaging of coral reefs (home to a quarter of all marine species) via too much carbon dioxide, too much discarded plastic everywhere. It’s estimated that 75 percent of marine fish are near falling below sustainable levels. One truly interesting heads-up in the Economist involves the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea; a topic rarely discussed on Sunday morning talk shows (or anywhere else beyond the UN, for that matter). Four months remain for nations worldwide to submit claims extending the traditional legal control of the sea beyond 200 miles from their shore. If a country has the proper scientific data, mostly involving how far the continental shelf extends beyond its coastline, they will be given rights over the natural resources on and under the seabed up to 350 miles from land. A huge land grab is imminent with the real prize minerals, not fish. Along with a host of other problems, this deeply-researched, quasi-academic analysis concludes that, “The possibility of widespread catastrophe is simply too great.” —But if you’re feeling guilty about contributing to worldwide ecological disaster, February Bon Appétit offers “50 Easy Ways to Eat Green” and “have a more meaningful impact on our environment. These include eating fair-trade and organic chocolate; filling up your freezer and using less energy; saving a species by eating it, possibly opting for bison meat to make your burgers; starting to eat sardines, rather than overfished tuna; roasting a whole chicken, leading to less processing and less waste, then using the leftover bones to make your own stock; signing up for a weekly email from Heritage Foods USA so you can be informed on preserving native American livestock; eating American cheese; eat more tofu; and biking to the market (oh, please, in a Chicago winter?!!!). There may be peace in the Middle East before a majority of these ideas find a truly significant audience. —There was precious little sex in the presidential campaign and most of it, real and possibly imagined, was confined to the John McCain campaign. There was the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter and, before that, a 3,000-word New York Times opus last February, strongly suggesting that McCain had sexual relations with a little-known telecommunications lobbyist during his failed 1999 campaign for the Republican nomination. Now National Journal’s estimable investigative reporter Edward T. Pound gives us ” Her Side of the Story ,” namely lobbyist Vicki Iseman’s categorical denial of any hanky-panky. Based on a series of chats, it comes just as Iseman has filed a libel suit against the newspaper, which maintains that it didn’t suggest there was definitely an affair but that McCain aides were convinced something of a romantic nature might well be going on. The early Vegas line on this litigation might be that one should expect an out-of-court settlement. —Despite the difficulty for journalists in reporting on the latest mess in Gaza, given onerous press restrictions, it’s an obvious topic for many magazines, with most suggesting more reason for fatalism ( Economist’s “Pummeling the Palestinians”) than for some hope (Jan. 12 Newsweek’s ” Will It Ever End? “). They tend to spread the blame, coming to various conclusions about the failure of eight years of Clinton-era diplomacy, when success seemed potentially at hand, and about the frustrations of a clearly Israel-sympathetic Bush administration. And in the Jan. 12 New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town,” editor David Remnick mulls the mayhem and, while especially bleak on the hopes in Gaza, hopes that Barack Obama does find some unavoidable imperative in the Talmudic notion of our having an “obligation to repair the world.” — National Review editor Rich Lowry uses the internet blogosphere to enter the political Blagosphere created by the ongoing soap opera in Illinois. His ” Devil in Illinois ” on National Review’s online site correctly captures the adroit cynicism of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, replete with the self-inspired mess facing U.S. Senate Democrats led by a paragon of political nepotism, Harry Reid of Nevada. “Enjoy Rod Blagojevich’s revenge while it lasts,” he writes. —” Is Silicon Valley Losing Its Magic ” is the centerpiece of Jan. 12 Business Week , with reporter Steve Hamm’s road trip concluding that there’s a lot more risk aversion among start-ups and the old war horses, like IBM, Intel, Apple and Microsoft showing more potential for taking on worldwide competitors exhibiting more innovation than we are. “Microsoft and Google will race each other to come out with cutting-edge Net technologies. And Apple seems likely to produce more hit products. But unless entrepreneurs and venture capitalists refocus on more ambitious tech projects—even though they take more time and money to incubate—the Valley’s and the tech industry’s contribution to the national economy is likely to wane.” —Conservatives will gag at “American Conservatism in Historical Perspective” in Early American Studies a full bashing of the anti-intellectual nature of neo-conservatism in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Zuckerman is less than veiled very early: “In French slang, the word con means jackass or imbecilic wuss. So when the néo-cons—the néo-cons as the French read the term—went ahead with the ill-considered invasion and imperialist occupation of Iraq, the French thought that this was just the sort of thing that néo-cons—incompetent fools, milksop morons—would do.” He concludes with what he deems the hypocrisy of neo-cons alluding to the Founding Fathers on various issues, finding scant links and scant conservatism among the neo-cons. —January Harper’s Bazaar briefly takes our mind off all the depressing realities of a poor economy and disastrous holiday performance of high-end retailers with a solicitous Scarlett Johansson profile, essentially pimping her new movie, in which she’s decked out in a $7,240 Roberto Cavalli sequined silk gown (can’t Cavalli round off the price to a mere $7,200?). And, like Washington telecommunications lobbyists, actresses can be the source of whispering campaigns, too, as a droll Johansson speaks of rumors of her not just having been pregnant but possibly even giving birth to sextuplets.
A Mat-Su drug investigator and the union representing Alaska State Troopers are alleging political meddling in the Sherry Johnston drug case, including a delay in serving the search warrant because of the November election.
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With Palin As Candidate, Troopers Delayed Drug Case Against Levi’s Mother: Paper
By Stephen C. Rose Yawn. This is how I feel about two gratuitous and ill-formed verdicts on Caroline Kennedy from Peggy Noonan, the same one who dissed Palin in private and had to pay for it in public. Noonan is a celebrated wordsmith for Republicans now in the pay of Rupert Murdoch. Here, regarding Caroline Kennedy, Noonan’s exceptionally near-sighted New Year’s verdicts: The difficulty of Caroline Kennedy’s hopes for appointment to the U.S. Senate is that she was in, or put herself in, a position demanding of more finesse and sophistication than most political veterans have. To succeed as a candidate for appointment, she needed the talents of an extremely gifted natural, which she’s not. She is an intelligent woman who has comported herself with dignity through a quarter-century of private life in Manhattan. She would never steal your money, indulge in dark political dealing, or growl, like Blago, into a tapped line, “I’ve got this blankin’ thing and it’s golden,” though let’s face it, it’s a little sad we’ll never hear that. But life is complicated. If you’re going to run as the princess of a dynasty, you have to act and be like a princess–something different, rarefied, heightened. Her problem in part has been that she spent a quarter-century trying to blend in and not call attention to herself. She made herself convincingly average–not distinguished. She has her parents’ dignity but not their dash. She radiates a certain clueless class. SOURCE First, not being a natural politician is what this year is about. The less Carolyn comes off as a skilled politician the better. Second, and this is the bigger zinger of the two, Noonan’s “clueless class” slur is a boomerang. It is Noonan, class or not, who is clueless. The clue that Caroline radiates is precisely what she said when she endorsed Barack. She has only felt as inspired in the past as when she was aware of the faith folk put in her dad. I am among those whose first vote was for JFK. I am not one who felt about JFK as I did about Obama. I was actually for Humphrey and then for JFK. As a student at Union Theological Seminary and editor of the paper there I almost got into trouble for revealing that the students were for Kennedy. But regardless of this, Caroline’s feeliings about Barack have the ring of an authenticity and raison d’etre that turns Noonan’s clueless screed into one of the tackiest verdicts of the New Year. PS: Kennedy will get the nod if most of the current vibes are accurate. The electorate does not think the way Noonan does. Caroline will be a popular choice and will do a bang up job telling the nation why Obama’s agenda makes the best sense. http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/
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Stephen C. Rose: Peggy Noonan Goes Myopic
2008 was kind of a rough year for American publishers, culminating in the bloodbaths of November and December which saw hundreds of firings, major restructuring at Random House, and a crisis at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt which may yet prove fatal. Industry professionals are understandably looking for a silver bullet to reverse the trend: a new blockbuster from Dan Brown? A trilogy of teen sorcerer novels from Jhumpa Lahiri? Saddam Hussein’s memoir, written from beyond the grave? But what if the answer lies not in finding the right book to publish but in finding the right book not to publish? That book just might be the memoir-in-progress by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. We all know the drill: disgraced Bush insider-cum-war-criminal licks his wounds for a year or two, then publishes a “tell-all” that either tells us what we already knew (cf. Scott McClellan’s What Happened , which shocked the world by revealing that the White House had lied about its justifications for invading Iraq) or blames everyone else for what happened (cf. George Tenet’s At the Center of the Storm , which excuses its author for his “slam dunk” comment by writing off its context as a mere “marketing meeting”). Prurient readers, believing mistakenly that they’ve breached the wall of executive secrecy, buy truckloads of the slimy documents, and the morally deficient scoundrel makes a ton of money and hits the lecture-and-talk-show circuit to make a ton more . The list is disgracefully long: Paul Bremer, David Frum, Ari Fleischer, Karen Hughes, Paul O’Neill, John Yoo, a parade of mediocres, ideologues, and dupes cashing in on their blindness and cowardice. In many cases the author has been applauded, and handsomely remunerated, for the “scathing indictment” of the administration and for the candor he has so courageously displayed now that he’s out of the administration and has absolutely nothing to lose (the main exception being Hughes, who still seems to see her former boss as a cross between John Wayne and Paddington Bear). We roll out the red carpet and fluff the seat cushions on Larry King , rather than measuring the writer for an orange jumpsuit and sending him off to a CIA black site for processing. And the trend is likely to continue after Inauguration Day, as more brave souls decide to blow the whistle now that the whistle has retired comfortably to Crawford. Donald Rumsfeld’s book is on its way, and Laura Bush is auditioning editors in the East Wing. Here’s the publishing industry’s chance to regain some dignity and credibility by refusing to give a platform to one of the administration’s most ardent bootlickers, a man who helped justify torture, undermined the Geneva Conventions, defended spying on American citizens, fired U.S. attorneys who wouldn’t toe the Bush line, presided over a thorough politicizing of the Justice Department, and repeatedly lied under oath to Congress. Gonzales has been a major player not only in an eight-year subversion of the American judicial and political systems, but in a war that has claimed the lives of 4,000 U.S. soldiers and half a million Iraqis, and led to the dislocation of several million and the detention without Habeas Corpus of thousands of others. And he has the gall to tell The Wall St. Journal , “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.” Leaving aside the question of what punishment is deserved by this man, we can all agree that what he does not deserve is a book deal. Whether to point fingers at others or defend his own rectitude, anything Alberto Gonzales has to say now can and should be said under oath. Now, I understand this is a tough pill for the publishing industry to swallow. Though some might believe that the industry’s mission is to produce and disseminate works of literary and/or historical merit, the truth is of course that its real purpose, like that of any industry, is to make money. Publishers can’t be expected to be guardians of the nation’s morality or taste any more than, say, pornographers or auto executives can. Why else would there be rumors of a $7 million advance for the memoirs of Sarah Palin, a woman whose every utterance is a calamity of both syntax and rational thought, and whose only true achievement has been to spend $150,000 on clothes? Why else is there already a book by Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. “Joe the Plumber,” a man whose keen insight into American values was honed while practicing a trade for which he was not licensed? The unpleasant truth is that there’s a market for this crap. People will buy just about anything that smells of controversy, and if the public wants to believe they’re learning something new or valuable or even remotely connected to the truth, it’s hard to begrudge publishers for reaping the profit. Still, there are limits, as when HarperCollins cancelled the publication of If I Did It , O.J. Simpson’s quasi-psychotic volume of filth about how he “hypothetically” could have murdered two people he probably did murder. Even Rupert Murdoch, never one to put ethics before profit, balked at this steaming turd; a month later Judith Regan, who bought the book, was out of a job. As horrific as O.J.’s deeds were, as nauseating as his public behavior in the years since, he can’t hold a candle to Fredo, as the President calls him, who has aided and abetted the torture of thousands and the murder of hundreds of thousands and can still ask, in apparent indignation, “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong?” Then there are the liars, the list of recent “memoirs” cancelled in the eleventh hour when they turned out to be hoaxes. Say what you will about Margaret B. Jones or Herman Rosenblat, at least they were never sworn in before Congress . So there’s precedent, and what I’m asking is that publishers stick to their guns (at the moment, no one has bid on Gonzales’s scribbles) and resist the cynical sirens in Sales and Marketing. In fact, how about a moratorium on memoirs by Bush insiders not currently residing in the Hague? The temptation is enormous, as the industry tries to find a parachute to stop its current freefall, and any potentially high-profile book looks like a ripcord. It’s counterintuitive to walk away from a potential goldmine. But every industry has to draw a line, and the publishing industry’s line should be drawn at mass murderers. Which brings me back to saving the publishing industry. Frankly, it’s a longshot. Publishers are in deep trouble, and it’s going to take a while to dig their way out. Dan Brown ain’t gonna do it, and neither are the hordes of reprobates scurrying off the decks of the U.S.S. George W. Bush. Focusing on blockbusters, to the detriment of America’s public discourse and literary traditions, is part of what got publishers into this mess. By racing to sign the author with the juiciest gossip, the dirtiest secrets, the most fantastic life story, without regard for the truth or for the consequences of validating the actions of criminals, the industry has cheapened its brand and endangered the loyalties of intelligent readers. Rebuilding their image as serious curators and promoters of our culture seems like a worthwhile way to spend their time in the wilderness. When they get out, they’ll be able to claim not just the public’s money, but its respect.
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Andrew Foster Altschul: A Challenge to Publishers: Say No to Gonzo
In January 2001, shortly after the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision which stayed the Florida recount and handed the 2000 presidential election to Barbara Bush’s ne’er-do-well eldest son, I was sitting in my weekly group therapy session for high-functioning gay men. Which was high-functioning in purely relative terms, since one of the participants had been busted for crack while turning a trick. Anyway, I hijacked the discussion for a half hour to complain at length about the election, the Supreme Court, and the forthcoming Bush administration, and, for good measure, San Francisco’s public transportation grid. I had an aching suspicion that all the rhetoric about compassionate conservatism would unravel at the “compassionate” part. And the whole thing made me feel unwelcome in the country. Fast forward to the present. Everyone I know has reacted in very personal ways to the miasmic stench (Latin root: stenchum cheneyium) of what we have all endured, as if we all lived in the Anbar province of Iraq. (Everyone except for one conservative bonehead in my hip hop dance class plus a few Orthodox Jewish family members, who think Barack Obama is the second Shabtai Zvi [meaning false messiah, and the only thing I remember from Hebrew school, and which probably underestimates the number of false messiahs]). Not to suggest that our suffering even comes close to approximating that of the Iraqis, but Americans have been fraying at the nerves for a long time. Here’s a quiz: how many people do you know who have not taken the last eight years very, very personally? Almost as if they had been psychically extraordinarily rendered. My grandmother used to render shmaltz to great effect, and now because of George Bush’s way of rendering, I no longer enjoy matzoh ball soup. It’s that bad. This nightmare has gone on so long that the battery finally died in my backward-Bush-counter (a clock which for five years kept me updated, to the 100th of a second, about how long we had to go before January 20, 2009). In situations like this, truth-and-reconciliation commissions can sustain a lot of healing. Under the threat of conviction if they fail to confess, the bad guys admit to what they have done. The public meditates on the crimes. A lot of former victims cry. Scholars write some books and hopefully get tenure. And then, after much deliberation, catharsis, argumentation and grief, society kind of moves on, at least a little bit, with a more sober sense of what has been allowed to pass in its name. Sadly, we are unlikely to muster the political will to hold such a commission in the United States. Three obstacles, in particular, come to mind. (1) The Democrats are spineless toads; (2) A big chunk of the electorate, including the 46.2% of the public who voted for Bristol Palin, doesn’t really care that much about what Bush has done; (3) It’s not unimaginable to believe that on his way out the door, Bush will pardon everyone in the country including himself who had anything to do with his administration. With the possible exceptions of Paul O’Neil and Chuck Norris. What we need is a national healing ceremony. My friend who has breast cancer came up with a ritual of her own. She’s writing down all her fears, aspirations and regrets on little slips of paper and then burning them in a boobie-shaped ashtray. Since her ritual poses a fire hazard, I propose the following resolution instead: Whereas we’re about as likely to get a truth-and-reconciliation commission as we are to see Condi Rice succeed at something; Whereas so many people need to heal from the Bush Years; Whereas Bush’s newfound avuncular reflections make me want to vomit on the life-sized inflatable Keith Olbermann who shares my bed (note to W: wisdom usually follows from trying to solve problems. So please ix-nay on the essons earned-lay): Be it resolved that Arianna et.al. organize a little next-best event on HuffPo, which would involve readers writing in to nominate the most odious thing that the Bush administration has done. The hideous accomplishment that gets the most votes could be spelled out in Texas barbecue sauce and showcased on the Colbert Report, maybe next to Bill O’Reilly’s picture. At very least, this would allow us to share our kvetches with each other and get a sense of what gave thoughtful people ulcers during the past eight years. If the HuffPo elders agree to this proposal, I’ll start things off with my vote for the single most odious crime that the Bush administration has committed. The obvious winner is John Yoo’s hack job on the Geneva Convention! But wait, what about the extraordinary rendition of Khalid El-Masri et al? Or the 600,000 dead Iraqis, and the looting of the Iraq National Museum? No, no hold on. I forgot about Kenny Boy Lay. And Ohio voter suppression in 2004. Yikes, what about the Federal Marriage Amendment, and Karl Rove’s face? And lying their asses off at every turn… Hell, since this is my idea, I get to vote for them all. I might even need a few more votes. I wish I had a friend at the RNC.
Christian religious extremism hits the American psyche when a fundamentalist church– Assemblies of God, which thinks Harry Potter is the gateway to Satanism, while facing charges of child abuse requests a $ 500,000 earmark from the federal government. Or when Sarah Palin is cleansed of witchcraft by a Kenyan Assemblies of God minister. This form of religious extremism when exported to Africa kills people and causes rampant child abuse. For decades, fundamentalist evangelical churches have sprung up throughout Africa. Some are affiliated with American congregations, while others are a bit more free form; all claim belief in Jesus. Many of them of share a common hysterical belief in “witchcraft.” “Witch” gets misinterpreted as anyone who is different, weaker, who can be scapegoated for one’s troubles. Heck Sarah Palin and her pals “prayed a witch” out of Alaska. And the prayer group gleefully recounted the results. In Akwa Ibom State, the center of the Nigerian child witch hysteria, the State Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, lamented: The church will torture children and some of the churches will pretend to use oil to try and remove witchcraft from a child. So far we have we have 165 children some of them are not up to 9 months old who have been thrown away by their parents because the church said those children will bring them misfortune. The Governor has taken a firm stance, declaring The churches are busy deceiving people in many aspects including avoiding deaths. We have to do something to re-strengthen the Child Right Law. We must fight against the abuse of children and ensure proper education for them. AllAfrica news service reports : Analysts trace the phenomenon to poverty which drags parents to Churches and other spiritual centres to seek prosperity…Further investigations show that such parents are usually ready to pay anything to the spiritualists to “deliver” their children from the “grip of the devil.”…In some cases, all that is needed for parents to begin to suspect their children of witchcraft, is a manifestation of certain “strange” behaviour. Others are “identified” any the presence of an “inexplicable” illness afflicting them. Strange behaviors for the Assemblies of God? Smoking Drinking Drugs Homosexual behavior Staying in room alone Dressing in black (fingernails, lipstick) Body piercings Demonic symbols on jewelry & clothes Music (Marilyn Manson, Godsmack, Korn) Books (Majick, Harry Potter) Unusual scars and burns on right hand Time to send Trey or Tiffie to Teen Boot Camp. Or time to crack down on “religious” abuse of children at home and abroad. Lisa Derrick is La Figa at Firedoglake.com
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Lisa Derrick: Christian Extremism: Witchcraft, Murder and Child Abuse
Gov. GILF spent the last day of the year emailing the Associated Press and the Anchorage Daily News and calling People magazine to counter the impression that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, Tripp’s 18 year old father, are high school drop-outs. In October, Johnston told the AP he had “left” high school to work as an apprentice oil field electrician. Previously Palin had said Bristol had taken high school correspondence courses as well as attending high school. As part of the statement issued by the Frost Lady of Alaska’s office in an transparent attempt to make Mommy Dearest look good, Bristol Palin said that she “obviously” discourages teen pregnancy. But whoa, check out the pro-contraception message: Teenagers need to prevent pregnancy to begin with — this isn’t ideal. But I’m fortunate to have a supportive family which is dealing with this together. Tripp is so perfectly precious; we love him with all our hearts. I can’t imagine life without him now. Read Sarah Palin’s statement on Levi and Bristol’s school status, and how she feels about Tripp here. Lisa Derrick is LaFiga at Firedoglake.com
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Lisa Derrick: Bristol Speaks as Sarah Spins
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hasn’t yet said anything publicly about her 4-day-old grandson, Tripp, but she does want people to know that Tripp’s parents - her eldest daughter Bristol and her fiancé Levi Johnston - are hard at work and keeping up with school. “You need to know that both Levi and Bristol are working their butts off to parent and going to school and working at the same time,” Palin told PEOPLE in a phone message Wednesday. “They are certainly not high school dropouts.”
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Sarah Palin: Bristol And Levi Are "Working Their Butts Off To Parent"