Month: December 2008

I was struck by this story in the NYT this morning:

As the day wore on, the carefully maintained silence surrounding her campaign-that-isn’t cracked, then shattered under the weight of the intense public interest her bid has drawn. She declined any questions in Syracuse, grudgingly answered a few in Rochester, and then gave what almost felt like — but was not — a full-fledged news conference in Buffalo, joined by the mayor there, Byron W. Brown.

Remind you of anyone?

In fact, Sarah Palin was more qualified to be vice-president than Caroline Kennedy is to be a Senator. Both are celebrities, but Palin made her own way herself, winning election as mayor and governor without the kind of raw nepotism now on display in New York State. The model now, of course, is similar – finding a way to get elected without actually exposing your inadequacies. Hence the press shutdown. But Kennedy’s self-defense is even more painful than Palin’s:

“I just hope everybody understands that it is not a campaign but that I have a lifelong devotion to public service,” Ms. Kennedy said as she left the office of the Monroe County Democratic Committee in Rochester. “I’ve written books on the Constitution and the importance of individual participation. And I’ve raised my family.”

Good for you. But so have millions of others. And why do you get to parachute in to the Senate? Who do you think you are, a Clinton?

(Photo: Caroline Kennedy at the DNC in Denver, by Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty.)

Well, Mark Steyn will be happy.

Packer doesn’t want poetry at the Inauguration:

Judging from the work posted on her Web site, Alexander writes with a fine, angry irony, in vividly concrete images, but her poems have the qualities of most contemporary American poetry—a specificity that’s personal and unsuggestive, with moves toward the general that are self-consciously academic. They are not poems that would read well before an audience of millions.

Obama’s Inauguration needs no heightening.  It’ll be its own history, its own poetry.

I say: give her a chance. I guess at this point I’m grateful he didn’t ask James Dobson.

Why is the press so scared of the English language?

As Palin’s daughter, Bristol, prepares for motherhood, the mother of her infant’s father gets arrested on drug charges.

The record of Bobby Jindal – massive tax cuts, massive new spending, over-dependence on oil, and spiraling debt:

While the leading good-government group [in Louisiana], citing [oil] addiction, warned last May against the Legislature’s plan for a $360 million income tax cut, Mr. Jindal called the tax break “terrific news” and happily signed it into law as legislators cheered. Admonitions on fiscal prudence went unheeded, as they have so often here, and the bill is now due. Earlier this year there was an $865 million surplus; now Louisiana has a $341 million shortfall in its current-year budget, and next year the projected deficit is $2 billion.

Smells like Bush spirit.

Marc gives away his Christmas gift. Aaaarghhh!

Newsweek asked a few of its culture editors about art during the Bush era. Drum disagrees with their picks:

First off, there are the two TV critics, who practically bent over backward to avoid naming 24. I’m not saying that Battlestar Galactica and American Idol are bad choices, mind you, and I know that maybe it seems a little too obvious for guys who are paid to think nonobvious thoughts about this stuff, but come on: 24 is George Bush’s America. Case closed.

Agreed. Nothing symbolizes Bush-Cheney era like Jack Bauer. Some of Drum’s other suggestions are rather churlish (My Pet Goat as the fiction book that encapsulates this era?), but he’s right about 24.

Ambers pays tribute. It takes a certain amount of movementitis to accuse Ronald Reagan of betraying conservatism. But Weyrich believed with passion.