Month: December 2008

Hollywood Nepotism

By Patrick Appel
The end of this Ruth Marcus column is laughably bad:

What really draws me to the notion of Caroline as senator, though, is the modern-fairy-tale quality of it all. Like many women my age — I’m a few months younger than she — Caroline has always been part of my consciousness: The lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. The stoic little girl holding her mother’s hand at her father’s funeral. The sheltered girl, whisked away from a still-grieving country by a mother trying to shield her from prying eyes.

In this fairy tale, Caroline is our tragic national princess. She is not locked away in a tower but chooses, for the most part, to closet herself there. Her mother dies, too young. Her impossibly handsome brother crashes his plane, killing himself, his wife and his sister-in-law. She is the last survivor of her immediate family; she reveals herself only in the measured doses of a person who has always been, will always be, in the public eye.

Then, deciding that Obama is the first candidate with the inspirational appeal of her father, she chooses to abandon her previous, above-it-all detachment from the hurly-burly of politics.

I know it’s an emotional — dare I say "girly"? — reaction. But what a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.

The whole thing makes me cringe. As Clive Davis says, "Welcome to the nineteenth century."

Enough To Make Palin Blush

by Chris Bodenner
As Florida suffers from a $2-billion deficit, the governor sees Europe:

Gov. Charlie Crist took a pricey 12-day trip to Europe this summer, hitting taxpayers with a $430,000 bill amid a sagging economy, a newspaper reported. Crist flew to London, Paris, St. Petersburg and Madrid to drum up business in July on a trip that was supposed to cost $255,000, but the tab came in much higher, the Sun Sentinel reported today. Expenses included Crists’ entourage of more than two dozen, including a photographer and nine bodyguards, who alone spent more than $148,000 on meals, hotels, transportation and incidentals.

State money was not used to pay for Crist’s roughly $30,000 in expenses. Business executives who went on the trip picked up that bill – which included a $2,179 a night London suite, where he conducted meetings. First class tickets for about $8,000 round-trip, room service and minibar tabs of more than $1,300. And $320 on electric fans to keep him cool while giving speeches, the newspaper reported.

Crist’s fiancee, Carole Rome, and her sister also went along. The couple met Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles at Clarence House and sipped cocktails with the British Foreign Office minister.

No Way. No How. No Hayden.

By Patrick Appel
Greenwald reacts to news that Obama may keep on Michael Hayden as CIA Director:

If, less than 3 years later, Obama chooses as his CIA Director the very same Michael Hayden — who, during his confirmation hearing, justified Bush’s illegal NSA spying and said how proud he was to help implement it [to say nothing of his (at best) equivocations on torture] — then it should be quite . . . let us, for the moment, say "interesting" . . . to watch him and his most loyal supporters explain and justify that.

I don’t think it could be justified. Not when he has this in his past. Spencer Ackerman is skeptical of the reporting:

Floating Hayden is a way for a couple of people in or around CIA to plant this narrative in an audacious way. They know there’s no chance that Obama would actually pick Hayden. It’s a way of exploiting a division — whereas the meta-debate was that Obama needed to pick a CIA person to avoid alienating the agency, now he needs to pick Hayden specifically. It’s a cynical-but-clever way of boxing Obama in. (My understanding is that Hayden is seen by most in the agency as kind of meh.

Journalism Bailout

By Patrick Appel
Mark Pinsky wants one:

This time, the [Federal Writers Project] could begin by documenting the ground-level impact of the Great Recession; chronicling the transition to a green economy; or capturing the experiences of the thousands of immigrants who are changing the American complexion. Like the original FWP, the new version would focus in particular on those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media.

It doesn’t sound like a good idea for the government to decide what journalists should cover.

GOP Getting All “Hope And Change” On Us

by Chris Bodenner
Republicans heart the new congressman from New Orleans:

Boehner touted Cao as a symbol of the party’s future in a memo Sunday night.  In a release titled “The Future is Cao,” Boehner wrote that “the Cao victory is a symbol of what can be achieved when we think big, present a positive alternative and win the trust of the American people.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that Cao’s election represented a victory for a different kind of GOP politics…. “You now have the first Vietnamese-American occupying a seat that nobody would have thought he could win. This is the opposite of red-vs.-blue, base-mobilization politics.”

And this last bit is priceless:

After Hurricane Katrina, Cao’s rebuilt law office became a hub for community organizing and assistance to hurricane victims.

Someone should look into that.