Category: The Dish

Wolcott reviews the latest slew of books on the decline of manliness. Money quote:

Before we mourn the prospect of an army of sad sacks slouching to the exits as Empress Oprah reigns over the new kingdom of empathy, keep in mind that the odds still favor the penis-bearer. The passport privileges of being a man have hardly been revoked. If anything, they’ve been super-ratified for roof entry to the helicopter pad. In his informative, provocative guide to the “global power elite,” Superclass, David Rothkopf spells out the eight key rules for admission into the atrium of the Davos gods, among them “Attend an elite university” and “Get rich.” Topping the advisory list: “Be born a man.” “There is no group as disproportionately under-represented among the members of the superclass as women. On a planet where 51 percent of the inhabitants are women, the global power structure is still locked in the dark ages on this issue. Only 6.3 percent of the superclass are women.” Corporate boardrooms are still predominantly boys’ clubs—“As of 2007, there were only thirteen women chief executives among Fortune’s top five hundred, twenty six among the top one thousand”—and the numbers in elected office are not much better: “Around the world, women held on average only 17 percent of parliamentary positions in 2007. The U.S. Congress fell below the global average, with 16 percent female members in the House and Senate.

Roger Simon listens to Republicans acknowledging that white racism will help them this fall. I hadn’t seen this anecdote from Scranton:

Barack Obama’s campaign opened a downtown office here on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers — white volunteers — were greeted with racial slurs.

A faux $12,000 dollar dish:

Osetra, Sevruga and Beluga caviars, white alba truffles, 24k edible gold leaf, lobster, Kobe tartar, a Kobe burger, a Kobe hot dog, an ostrich egg, two kinds of foie gras – duck and goose, and a moose snout and drizzled with 100 yr old balsamic vinegar and doused with with Louis XIII Cognac and flambéed.

I’d rather have the dollar meal myself.

The Clintons’ douche debt is deep.

A neologism for the latest smear tactics against Obama.

It’s not just politicians; the bump exists for authors as well.

A qualified defense from Joe Klein:

Not that I have any illusions about Hamas. They’re violent, they don’t believe in the right of Israel to exist, they may not ever change.

BUT…they did win an election in 2006, an election we–not the Palestinian Authority and certainly not the Israelis–insisted upon. If the Bush Administration is going to push a "Freedom Agenda"–admittedly, a dubious proposition, especially the way that Bush has pushed it–then it has a certain responsibility to deal with the people who win the elections, no matter how odious.

Green fascism.

From Charles Franklin:

Now the key question is whether undecideds push her over a 10 point win, or whether increases in turnout by new "unlikely" voters raises Obama’s total.

…remember, since the polls don’t allocate undecided, both they and the trend estimates are leaving some 8 percent of voters on the table. They will go somewhere, and if they break disproportionately for Clinton you have a "huge win", while if they go overwhelmingly for Obama you have a nail biter or a dramatic come-from-behind win. In previous primaries, the "winner" has usually enjoyed a significant increase in support beyond what the last polls showed.

More interesting than Obama’s ten-point national lead and Bush’s continued unpopularity is this statistic:

A record number of Americans, 63%, now say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

The war remains the great issue of this campaign, as it has been the great issue of the past six years. Yes, McCain can and should argue that what matters is the future, not the past. We should judge the candidates based on what they propose to do about the many wars now percolating in Mesopotamia. But if it is Obama versus McCain, one candidate will have opposed this war from the start and one will have supported it. I think that will matter in deciding which path to take going forward.