Compare and contrast

The New Neo Posted on by

Girls just want to have fun. And so do boys.

In Colombia.

And Italy.

And then again in Colombia (hmmm, is there something about the water?)

And now let’s segue into something a lot more fun:

Ah, the 80s!

Oh, and by the way:

The video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” made Lauper an MTV staple. The video ran constantly on MTV and featured the late professional wrestling manager “Captain” Lou Albano as Lauper’s father, and her real-life mother, Catrine, as her mother. Also in the video are her attorney, her manager and her brother, Butch.

And in other news, Dan Rather…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is still delusional:

Rather tried making his case in a 2007 lawsuit against his former bosses, but it was thrown out of court two years later. Nonetheless, he remains convinced that he did nothing wrong. “I believed at the time that the [Rathergate] documents were genuine,” Rather says, “and I’ve never ceased believing that they are genuine.

…as well as lying:

“The story we reported has never been denied by George W. Bush, by anyone in his close circles, including his family,” says Rather. “They have never denied the bulwark of the story, the spine of the story, the thrust of the story.” (In fact, Bush officials have indeed denied it, repeatedly. In a conversation I [the author] had with former White House director of communications Dan Bartlett in 2007, he told me, “We believe the story is inaccurate, both the general thrust of it and the questionable sources they used.”)

Rather is now 81, so maybe I should just let him be. On the other hand, 81 is not so very old (and it’s getting younger all the time, from my perspective).

[NOTE: The linked article is very long, and purports to go into the real story of Bush’s national guard service, if anybody cares anymore at this point. I haven’t read it—just the initial part about Rather’s new statements concerning the Rathergate documents—although I plan to try to plow through it some time.]

Obama charges Romney with being secretive

The New Neo Posted on by

Audacity, they name is Obama:

Mitt Romney handed President Obama a political gift this weekend, when his campaign announced that he would not file his tax return on time. Romney made the announcement at 5 p.m. on Friday ”” the time politicians usually put out bad news they hope no one will notice. Team Obama noticed all right. The president took a break from the Summit of the Americas in Colombia to criticize Romney’s lack of transparency, while Obama campaign manager Jim Messina declared that it “begs the question ”” what does he have to hide?”

“What does he have to hide?” will be a major theme of the Obama campaign in the coming months. Both a pro-Obama super PAC and the Democratic National Committee have videos up asking: “What’s Mitt hiding?” And Obama strategist David Axelrod has told Politico that the Obama campaign intends to make an issue of “Romney’s penchant for secrecy.” “Harkening back to my youth .”‰.”‰. there was a show called, ”˜I’ve Got A Secret.’ Increasingly, I think that would be the appropriate title for the Romney campaign,” Axelrod said, adding that voters need to ask themselves “Who is this guy? What does he stand for? What does he believe? What do we know about him?”

Seems to be the new meme, and it’s a puzzling one to me. Why would Obama, who lives in a glass house, want to throw this particular boulder? But perhaps Obama is correct in his assumption that the American public hasn’t noticed that all these charges hold true far more for Obama himself than for Romney.

That said, Romney should have been ready with his taxes, especially after he was widely criticized for dragging his feet on his tax releases during the debates. There has never been any question that this campaign will be as nasty as they come, and that the attack will focus on Romney as a fat cat capitalist pig (mixed animal metaphor there, but you know what I mean). Since Obama can’t use his usual m.o. of gaining access to an opponent’s sealed divorce records, it will just have to do instead to force Romney to reveal every single facet of his very complex economic life.

Class, gender, and the 100th anniversary of Titanic

The New Neo Posted on by

For the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic, I’ve written a piece that appears at the online version of the Weekly Standard. Here’s the link—but if you want to comment, you’ll have to do so here, since the WS doesn’t have a comments section.

[NOTE: You might also be interested in this previous article of mine, about the origins of the maritime tradition of “women and children first.”]

2012: referendum on Obama?

The New Neo Posted on by

I think these points by pollster Scott Rasmussen are true:

Now [that Romney is almost certain to become the Republican nominee] President Barack Obama moves to center stage and becomes the defining figure of the general election campaign. Now it’s about Obama, not Romney, as the election becomes primarily a referendum on his first term.

The most important indicator of the president’s prospects will be his job-approval rating…Obama’s ratings suggest we are heading for a potentially very close race. For the past 32 months, the full month approval ratings for the president have been remarkably stable, holding to a very narrow range of 44 percent to 49 percent. People seem to have formed an opinion of the president, and nothing can change their minds. Those who oppose the president tend to feel more strongly about it than those who support him.

True as far as it goes. They have not yet begun to fight, however.

The general voting public (as opposed to the politically-obsessed denizens of the blogosphere) hardly knows Romney at this point. Obama will try his very best to make sure that voters get to know the worst of Romney, or the caricatured and/or distorted version of Romney. Whereas—unlike in 2008—the public actually knows a lot now about Obama. Maybe not his past or his grades, but what’s far more important to them—his job performance.

So Obama’s approval ratings (barring some enormous game-changing event) are quite set, but Romney’s are not. That means that more of those who weakly support Obama could be moved to the Romney camp, whereas those who detest Obama are not going to be changing their minds about him.

One thing I don’t credit, however, is the oft-repeated idea that people lie on polls to say they approve of Obama more than they actually do, either because they don’t want to be thought racist or for some other reason. I don’t think that’s much of a phenomenon at all, for the simple reason that I remember it was much-discussed in 2008, and many people said McCain would do better than the polls had shown as a result. But he did not. In fact, the polls were fairly spot-on in predicting the election results.

I have long felt that 2012 would be a close election. I see no reason to change my mind now.

Another stay-at-home mother

The New Neo Posted on by

Wow, does time pass.

Yesterday in my post about Romney’s smarts, I wrote that in the photo of the young Romneys with their matching fisherman knit sweaters, Ann had “a bit of a Patty Hearst vibe going.”

That sparked a bit of reminiscence. It was in 1974, almost forty years ago (!!), that the Patty Hearst story unfolded with her kidnapping, although it wasn’t until 1975 that she was arrested, and 1976 till her trial began. I only vaguely recalled that her sentence had been commuted by Jimmy Carter and she was released early, and then finally pardoned by Bill Clinton, although I’d written about the Hearst story a few years ago here and here, at fairly great length.

I did remember that Patty had married her bodyguard Bernard Shaw, and gone on to live life as a mostly non-celebrity wife and mother (and Ronald Reagan admirer?) in the posher suburbs of New York. But I wondered what’s been going on with her lately, and when I searched I discovered that, in a rather remarkable achievement under the circumstances, she and her husband are still married. Their two daughters are all grown up.

Here’s one of them, highly successful model Lydia Hearst. She’s got a bit of a Patty Hearst vibe going, too, although far more glam:

Here’s more about Lydia, who led a rather unusual childhood that included her using the name “Shaw” rather than her given “Hearst-Shaw,” for security reasons. Unlike her mother, she doesn’t seem to shy away from the spotlight.

I’ve always defended Patty Hearst, as you can see if you read my posts on the subject (and before you take issue with me on that in the comments section here, please actually read them). It seemed clear to me she was a young and vulnerable kidnap victim trying to survive in a terrible and terrifying situation, who’d been brainwashed and then had also observed the country turn against her. Her life subsequent to her release has borne that out; she’s shown no indication whatsoever of radical or violent views.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Patty Hearst story is the length of her marriage to her ex-bodyguard Shaw, who in 2007 was reported to be the head of security for the Hearst Corporation. One wouldn’t have necessarily predicted the endurance of their bond. But part of the key may be this, which I wrote a couple of years ago:

My guess is that her husband (and former bodyguard) represents a figure of great stability and support to her, a person who bridges her former trauma and her present calm. It’s no accident she married her bodyguard, I would guess; he may have represented the one person able to protect her.

Because, when one actually thinks about it, no one else who should have protected her was able to do so: not her parents, not her boyfriend at the time, not the police, not the court system, not the expert witnesses, and not her lawyer (the best money could buy). In the end, she had to learn the hard lessons herself”“and one of those lessons was that many will never forgive her for what she did. But I think she’s at peace even with that.

Two smart candidates, they felt smart

The New Neo Posted on by

Another thing I noticed about that Fox News poll was question #11:

Which candidate do you think is smarter?

Barack Obama 42%
Mitt Romney 33%
(Both are) 6%

Putting aside the question of just how smart Barack Obama is, this shows me that a lot of people aren’t really familiar with Romney. Because he’s really smart. And his smartness includes the dimensions on which Obama is usually considered smart by his admirers (again, the point isn’t whether you agree with them): articulateness and academic credentials.

Romney is very well-spoken, and he seems to perform just as well without a teleprompter. What’s more, even though we don’t know Obama’s grades but only his degrees, Romney’s got the same top degree, only more so. Romney is a graduate of Harvard Law who earned a simultaneous MBA from Harvard Business School, a tricky and difficult feat that not many accomplish or even attempt.

Unlike with Obama, we even know quite a bit about Romney’s grades. Take a look:

Romney graduated in 1971 [from Brigham Young] with a 3.97 grade-point average. Because he ranked at the top of his class in the College of Humanities, he was chosen to speak on graduation day…Mitt decided to attend Harvard Business School, but his father thought he should obtain a law degree, so he enrolled in a joint program at Harvard Law School. In 1975, he graduated from Harvard Law cum laude and from Harvard Business School, where he was named a Baker Scholar and was in the top 5 percent of his class.

Back in December of 2011, the NY Times spotlighted Romney’s years at Harvard Business School:

Mr. Romney recruited a murderers’ row of some of the most distinguished students in the class. “He and I said, hey, let’s handpick some superstars,” said Howard Serkin, a classmate…

Mr. Romney served as a kind of team captain, the other members said, pushing and motivating the others.

“He wanted to make straight A’s,” Mr. Serkin said. “He wanted our study group to be No. 1.” Sometimes Mr. Romney arrived early to run his numbers a few extra times. And if his partners were not prepared, “he was not afraid of saying: ”˜You’re letting us down. We want to be the best,’ ” Mr. Serkin added…

Mr. Romney was in his element. His class performances were outstanding; his peers described him as precise, convincing and charismatic. He won the high grades he craved…If Mr. Romney melded with the school intellectually, he kept some distance from it socially. He was married and a parent. In the liberal precincts of Cambridge, he and his wife, Ann Romney ”” pictured wearing matching sweaters at a fall 1973 business school clambake, with their two sons on their laps ”” seemed like they were from “out on the prairies,” Mr. Brownstein said.

The future governor abstained from things many other students were doing: drinking coffee or alcohol, swearing, smoking…

I especially note this, in contrast to Obama:

Today, Mr. Romney does not speak much about his business school degree. But he remains quite attached to the star study group he put together all those years ago, faithfully attending dinners the men hold every five years…[H]e does not miss a chance to return to that setting. Mr. Romney even showed up the year he was put in charge of cleaning up the troubled 2002 Olympic games, stopping by for an hour before flying to Athens for a meeting of the International Olympic Committee…

The men gathered most recently in 2009, after Mr. Romney’s unsuccessful presidential bid. His old friends asked him about the experience, and he pointed out how much simpler decisions are in business than in politics. “You end up taking into consideration things that wouldn’t be important in a business decision,” Ronald J. Naples remembers him saying.

Not an unsmart man. Not at all.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, here’s that photo that appeared in the NY Times.

Almost hippies! Except for Ann’s collar and earrings. Otherwise, she’s got a bit of a Patty Hearst vibe going. And those matching fisherman knit sweaters are a little much. But that particular fashion was protean: it worked for preppies and it worked for the hip, depending on how neat or how raggedy the sweater was.]

Romney leads Obama in Fox poll

The New Neo Posted on by

You might say, “So what?”

And I’d be inclined to agree with you. Polls, especially this far ahead of the game, are not all that meaningful.

But I’m still drawn to talking about them, because they can indicate trends. And they’re all we’ve got to measure public opinion, other than anecdotal evidence culled from our own small circle of personal observations.

So on that score I’ll note that the Fox News poll (already invalidated, in the eyes of Obamaphiles, by its source) from 4/9-11 has Romney leading Obama by two points—which is within the margin of error—among registered voters. It’s got a few more interesting findings, including the fact that the voters think Romney would be better on the economy.

But there’s a huge flaw in the poll that leapt out at me when I looked at the numbers: it doesn’t give the breakdown of Republicans and Democrats. What it does is ask the respondents whether they were more likely to vote (or had already voted) in the Democratic or Republican primaries. This year, voting in the Democratic primaries is pretty much a meaningless act, and not many people are bothering. The Republican primaries, on the other hand, have been hard-fought, and have been drawing many Independents and Democrats as well. Of those interviewed, 41% said they were more likely to vote in the Republican primaries and 35% the Democratic, but that certainly doesn’t mean that was the proportion of Republicans to Democrats in the poll. But without knowing the actual proportions, the poll is even more meaningless than most polls.

Sigh.

The president of NOW forgets the first rule of holes

The New Neo Posted on by

Which is “when you’re in one, stop digging.”

But no:

Actually, it’s only Hilary Rosen and Terry O’Neill who have the experience and imagination to understand. I’m certain of it. They just don’t have the experience and imagination to change the subject at this point.

I think there are a couple of things going on here. One is that people on the left tend to move in a bubble where their views seem quite mainstream and uncontroversial. For example, to say “Ann Romney never worked a day in her life” would be the sort of thing that would tend to get sage nods of agreement all around if you said it in most liberal circles. And “everybody knows” that the Romneys are out-of-touch rich people who look like the cast of “Mad Men,” just as “everybody knows” that stay-at-home moms are wealthy (which doesn’t appear to be true; see this). So why not say it? It would appear to be a winner.

Not so much, it turns out—as the more-savvy Michelle and Barack Obama, as well as David Axelrod, seem to know, since they all quickly distanced themselves from Rosen’s remarks.

Another thing both Rosen and O’Neill did not seem to be aware of is that attacking Ann Romney in any way can only serve to help the Romney campaign. When I saw the Romneys in person back in January, it didn’t take but a moment to note that Ann Romney is probably the biggest asset of the Romney campaign. She’s a natural, a person I would think it almost impossible for anyone to dislike (although they’ll try, they’ll try). Smart, relaxed, confident, attractive, articulate, funny, warm…well, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. And now that the spotlight has been shone on her by her would-be detractors, she gets to shine a lot more than she had so far.

The war on women, by women

The New Neo Posted on by

This was rather predictable: Democratic “strategist” and DNC adviser Hilary Rosen was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper about the so-called “war on women,” and said the following about Ann Romney, “Guess what, [Romney’s] wife has actually never worked a day in her life.”

A predictable firestorm erupted, with not only Ann Romney, but even Michelle Obama and David Axelrod getting into the act to counter Rosen and to say that women’s choices—whether to work or stay at home—should be respected. Rosen, on the other hand, predictably doubled down; it sure doesn’t appear that any apologies will be forthcoming from her, to say the least.

The whole thing is merely one more salvo in the ancient battle between stay-at-home mothers and working ones and vice versa, a fight that’s been going on as long as I can remember and that has no chance of ending any time soon, if ever. Rosen also tried to give it a predictable (gee, I’m using that word a lot here, aren’t I?) class war spin, which has been part of the attack on Romney from the start from both his Democratic and Republican opponents.

I refuse to get pulled into the working/home battle, although I will say that I think Rosen’s comments were not only offensive but stupid “strategy” as well. My opinion on working mothers vs. stay-at-home ones? I think some of the impetus for the fight comes from envy and/or guilt, on both sides. I think that women are not all that gentle with each other, to say the least. And I think most people try to do their best to bring up their children in a world where money must be made and children must be raised. Sometimes that involves a decision to stay home, sometimes to work, and sometimes to alternate the two or do each part-time. As long as nobody abuses or neglects the kids, I’m with the program.

[ADDENDUM: I’m in complete agreement with this by Ann Althouse:

This is creating so much interest in Ann Romney now, shining a sudden bright light on her, and she is so ready. She’s a great persona, better than Mitt at talking to people and generating warmth.

Read the whole thing.

It’s not a good idea to attack Ann Romney; she’s a formidable opponent.]

[ADDENDUM II: Well, I guess the pressure was on, because Rosen did offer an apology—although not an especially good one:

“I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended,” Rosen said in a statement. “Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.”

The war isn’t phony, as I pointed out. It has a rather lengthy lineage. And if Rosen didn’t want to engage in it, why fire a shot?

I also always take note of apologies that don’t say anything about the act itself, but locate the focus of the problem in the perceiver, who is offended. This sort of apology is very common, and hardly limited to the left. “I’m sorry if you were offended”–you stupid over-reacting fragile flower, you.]

Worried about the deficit?

The New Neo Posted on by

If so, you can help Uncle Sam out.

I was doing my taxes, going over everything with a fine-toothed comb (and then some), when this stopped me in my tracks:

How Do You Make a Gift to Reduce Debt Held By the Public? If you wish to do so, make a check payable to “Bureau of the Public Debt.” You can send it to: Bureau of the Public Debt, Department G, P.O. Box 2188, Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188. Or you can enclose the check with you income tax return when you file. Do not add your gift to any tax you may owe…

TIP: You may be able to deduct this gift on your 2012 tax return.

I wonder how many of those they get a year. I tend to think of the whole 1040 as a gift to reduce the public debt, but I doubt any of it goes to that purpose at this point, although you could say it goes to keep the public debt from getting even larger than it’s already growing.

And somehow I don’t think that tax time is the right moment to touch on people’s spirit of government largesse.