Slate’s Mickey Kaus and Troy Patterson sum up David Gregory’s presense as the new anchor of Meet the Press aptly.
Kaus:
Gregory seems not straightforwardly dull, but somehow goofily hollow.
It probably makes no difference to the show’s content, but the new face of Meet the Press wears a contented smirk.
John Dickerson seems about a day too late in offering the conventional wisdom about the American reaction to the show-throwing incident:
At the very least, I suspect a spark of patriotism will kick in when some Americans watch the tape or see al-Zaidi heralded in the streets as a hero. Hey, you can’t throw shoes at our president, they might say. Only we can throw shoes at our president.
That was my first reaction certainly – but most other people seem to have either looked on the Iraqi journalist with sympathy or merely commenting on Bush’s dodging ability as was evident the day after the show-throw. And in the case of Iraq – and Bush’s insouciant, “So, what?” in response to Iraq’s lack of weapons of mass destruction – it’s hard to blame one an Iraqi for wanting to grievously insult our president.
Can we really be outraged that the man threw a shoe in anger when Bush invaded his country under untrue pretenses and so botched the aftermath of the war? I can’t.
Philip Bobbitt in the New York Times:
Preventing any attacks on the United States since 9/11 is something for which the Bush administration must be given credit, but credit must also go to the American public, which decisively rejected offshore penal colonies, spurious rationalizations for warfare, secret torture chambers and contempt for the constitutional and international laws that would forbid such practices. Indeed, by selecting a former law professor as its new president, the country has thoroughly dismissed the notion that law is an obstacle rather than a guide to achieving security.
[digg-reddit-me]Kathleen Parker, who since breaking with Republican orthodoxy and criticizing Sarah Palin with her obvious flaws, has been a writer I pay attention to found time to comment on the mini-scandal of a former Holy Cross alum:
One day, Favreau was the golden boy of silken tongue. The next, he was just another dimwitted dude acting dumb…Feminists groups such as NOW and The New Agenda are outraged that Clinton – or at least her image – is being treated disrespectfully by the boys. Conservatives are outraged that there’s not enough outrage, as would be the case were the party boys Republicans…
Only Hillary Clinton has made light of the “incident,” hereinafter known as Night of BBB (Boys Being Boys). In an e-mail to The Washington Post’s Al Kamen, a Clinton adviser wrote: “Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon’s obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application.”
Hear, hear. Nipping nonsense in the bud is an essential skill for a secretary of state and Clinton used her shears deftly. If anyone recognizes a little harmless male sport, it would be the bride of President “Is.” One thing is harmful; another thing isn’t…
Puritans and prohibitionists would adore our brave new world of shutterbug infamy. The fact is, no one’s having fun anymore, especially in the nation’s capital, where one can’t afford to let the tongue slip or risk being caught in the cross hairs of a cell camera.
Of course, Parker had the good sense to see Sarah Palin for what she was – a dazzling media phenomenon with little substance. People like Amy Siskind and Campbell Brown couldn’t see beyond Palin’s ovaries – defending her and blaming “the boys” in the McCain campaign for holding her back.
Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News & World Report manages to look beyond sexism to the more fundamental issues involved.
The trifecta of a lack of privacy, a disappearing sense of humor, and a zero-tolerance attitude regarding offenses real and perceived will leave us dysfunctional: We’re all human, after all, and make mistakes. Show me someone who has never in their life done something embarrassing, inappropriate, rude, or regrettable and I’ll show you someone either too inhuman to work in a position of power or someone who was fortunate that a camera phone wasn’t around when they erred.
Amen. That’s exactly the argument I made last week.
Categories
Dripping With Contempt
Dahlia Lithwick observing Justice Scalia at oral arguments on Iqbal v. Ashcroft:
Scalia then points out that the ability of the attorney general and FBI director to do their jobs should not be dependent on the discretion of a district court judge. He pronounces district court judge the way you or I might say serial wife-beater.
There’s a reason she’s my favorite writer on legal issues.
[digg-reddit-me]Dear Ms. Tina Brown:
I just read Amy Siskind’s characteristically sharp blog post explaining why recent happenings in Obama-land demonstrate that we’re “back in 1950s.” Yes – Obama – by appointing women to three of his top national security posts – is demonstrating the kind of chauvinism that imbued the 1950s. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry Truman combined only had one woman serve in their cabinets in the 1950s – Oveta Culp Hobby. She was Eisenhower’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare for two years. Barack Obama will nominate Hillary Clinton, a woman, to the most powerful cabinet position, Secretary of State; he will nominate Janet Napolitano, a woman, to be Secretary of Homeland Security; he will nominate Susan Rice, a woman, to be the Ambassador to the United Nations – and will raise the position back to cabinet-level. In contrast, the only woman of real influence in the Bush cabinet was Condoleeza Rice – as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State. But Siskind values sheer numbers over influence and power it seems – as she praises Bush for having more female cabinet members than Obama (so far.) Bush appointed women to head departments dealing with environmental issues (Christie Todd Whitman and Gale Norton), agriculture (Ann Veneman), labor (wait – Bush had a Department of Labor? yes, and it has been led by Elaine Chao, a woman!), education (Margaret Spellings), and transportation (Mary Peters.) Of these departments, the only one Bush seemed to care for were the Interior (including the EPA) in which Bush-Cheney wanted obstructionist heads of the departments (which is why Whitman soon left). Obama has yet to announce his appointments to these positions in which Bush had women appointed.
Yet another indication that we are back in the 1950s is that prospective Treasury head Timothy Geithner does not want Sheila Blair to remain head of the FDIC. Siskind characteristically gets to the heart of the issue by ignoring issues altogether:
So now, Geithner wants to silence a woman that disagrees with him. Sound familiar?
Yes it does. I don’t know the reason why Geithner wants to replace Blair – but based on Siskind’s “analysis” it’s clear that it’s simple misogyny. At the same time, Siskind points out, a woman, Brooksley Born, warned Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan about the dangers of derivatives. Siskind doesn’t need to explain what this implies. But I will: yes – men and women both warned of these dangers, and men and women ignored these warnings (in fairness, mainly men were in charge) – but what is significant – and like the 1950s – is that a woman was “ignored” by men. Just because Warren Buffet was also ignored by men when he called derivatives “weapons of mass financial destruction” doesn’t make the “silencing” of Born any less proof of sexism.
The final incident discussed by Siskind is the infamous assault on Hillary Clinton. Yes – it was only a cardboard cutout. But the fact that this was made of cardboard means that it could not give consent, making the groping non-consensual by definition. Siskind calls again for Favreau to be fired and for the “all boys club” atmosphere to be ended. She shows the photograph again – although this time blurring out the actual woman in the photograph of the “all boys club.”
Ms. Brown – I guess my point is: I too can make analogies to historical time periods that bear no relation to reality. Maybe I should be writing for the Daily Beast as well. Here’s a few sample headlines I’m working on:
- “Sarah Palin’s Church Set on Fire – Back to the Age of Bill Ayers and the Weathermen”
- “White Supremacist Attacks Synagogue – A Second Holocaust Looms”
- “SNL Insults Eyesight-impaired Governor – Back to the Time of Sparta“
- “Amy Siskind: The New Joe McCarthy?”
And there are plenty more where these have come from. So hire me, please.
Respectfully,
Joe Campbell
</sarcasm>
P.S. Discussions of sexism and gender bias are ill-served by voices like Amy Siskind’s. I’m not trying to silence her. She can talk all she wants – and as long as she is provocative enough, the “Freak Show” that is our current media-political environment will pay attention to her. But the issues she claims to support are drowned in the idiocy of her commentary. Back to the 1950s? – c’mon. Fire someone for a Facebooked photograph? – let’s be serious. Has this woman seen the sexism and misogyny in fifties sitcoms or as portrayed in Mad Men?
On a technical note: It’s not clear to me that Favreau’s hand is actually on the place where Ms. Clinton’s cardboard breast would be. And he could be just as easily holding the cardboard cutout up as pretending to fondle it. It’s less fun to look at the photo that way – and with the booze and the other guy in the photo, the slightly scandalous version seems more interesting. But it just goes to show how ridiculous these puffed-up claims by Siskind and her like are – as they not only presume he is fondling the cardboard place where the breast would be, but that he is also pretending to assault the cutout.
Categories
Obama Throws a Snowball
From December 2007 before the Iowa caucuses made Barack Obama the front runner for the Democratic nomination.
(I found the photo here, but I’m not sure of it’s real provenance. Similar pictures were in the Boston Herald last December though.)
I listened to Leonard Lopate’s interview with Carrie Fischer earlier this week. Today, I just came across an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. She’s one interesting broad – to use an old term – and incredibly open about the troubles of her life. From the calls from Cary Grant telling her to stop taking acid to the breakup of her celebrity parents’ marriage to her job fixing up troubled scripts to the electro-shock therapy she now undergoes regularly (despite having lost four months of memories to it) to manage her manic-depression.
Categories
Caroline Kennedy
The possibility that Caroline Kennedy might be appointed to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate provoked a good deal of emotional responses. Ruth Marcus, writing for the Washington Post said that though she rationally should not want Caroline to be appointed Senator, her heart wanted Caroline be in the Senate to make for a kind of fairy tale ending to her story – of a father assassinated, a brother tragically killed in an accident, a mother dying young – and now, the young noblewoman, the only remaining survivor of her famous family, taking public office.
Richard Bradley writing for Slate, on the other hand, strongly opposes the possibility of Caroline Kennedy getting involved in public service. He mentions several times that he is biased in the matter – as he blames Caroline for trying to block the publication of a book he wrote about her late brother. But he insists his opposition to her is “more than personal.” Clearly from the piece though, it is at root personal. I was somewhat surprised that Slate published the piece at all as the tone struck me as a bit too cheap and personal. Some more editing might have improved the piece – but I thought Bradley’s personal bias came through rather strongly – and that it was based mainly on his perception of having been wronged.
Glenn Greenwald did not come out and specifically oppose Caroline’s appointment – but he wrote a post challenging our political culture of “nepotistic succession.” Although the piece was quoted and much discussed, I thought Greenwald missed the point here. He writes:
There are numerous factors that account for this artistocratization of our politics. Viewing political officials through the combined prism of royalty and celebrity naturally generates interest in, and affection for, their family members. The same deeply sad mentality that makes it worthwhile for celebrity magazines to pay many millions of dollars for celebrities’ baby photos is part of what makes so many people eager to vote for the sons, wives, and brothers of their favorite political star. Independently, a rapid worsening of America’s rich-poor gap stratifies the society in terms of opportunities and access and breeds a merit-deprived aristocratic culture.
I think Greenwald ignores the more mundane explanations for what he calls the “aristocratization of politics.” For example – you don’t need to bring up “the combined prism of royalty and celebrity” and “a rapid worsening of America’s rich-poor gap” to explain why any person is more likely to trust the son or daughter of a friend than a stranger. There is truth to the idea that knowing a parent helps us to know their sons and daughters. This is natural, human, and probably to the good. The important thing is to not assume the qualities of the parent are the qualities of the child – as the Bushes demonstrated. Bush was certainly his father’s son – but he rejected his father’s moderation and common sense in favor of radicalism and ideology.
As for Caroline Kennedy in the New York Senate – I’m not sure that she would be the best choice. But she would be a good choice. The Kennedy name is extremely valuable – and more so on her, given who her father was. She could be very influential solely because of her name.
I think it’s worth taking the chance.