Others have observed that the Carly Simon song “You’re So Vain” is an excellent description of Obama’s reaction to Bush’s Knesset speech.
But they haven’t gone far enough with the lyrics. I have attempted to fill that need: Continue reading →
The President “goes negative” (??)—and the Times goes fully insane…
…and completely in the tank for the glass–jawed Obama.
According to the outraged Times, Bush’s “shameful” and “damaging” “slash-and-burn politics” were demonstrated by his mentioning in front of the Knesset that appeasement of terrorists is a bad thing, although some people advocate it. Oh, the horror!
And what’s more to the point, this statement of Bush’s constitutes a “barely veiled attack” (there’s that “a” word again!) against wunderkind Obama and therefore is the equivalent of a stab in the back. Or the front. Or somewhere. Continue reading →
I left my jello mold in San Francisco
It may be a “distraction,” and no doubt the word “silly” could be said to apply, but I think it’s important to inject a bit of levity—and jello (preferably jello mold)—into life every now and then.
Not to mention beauty and creativity. And I have found a photo that fits the bill in every way.
What does it represent? The city of San Francisco made of jello, part of an installation at that city’s Exploratorium appearing in the spring of 2006.
Feast your eyes:
Everything is an “attack”—Obama is now officially beyond criticism
It has now become a low blow to strike any blow at Obama. It has now become officially an “attack” to campaign at all against him—or even to suggest opposition to something he may have done or may have said, whether you mention him or not.
Case in point: President Bush is not allowed to allude to appeasement as a bad thing without Obama (and many Democrats) getting into an outraged hissy fit about it. Continue reading →
Photoshopping gone wild: ah, but you should see the pictures!
There’s an old Jewish joke that goes something like this:
A Jewish grandmother walks down the street proudly pushing her new grandchild in a baby carriage [that’s how old this joke is; a carriage rather than the $1000 stroller that I hear is now de rigueur in Manhattan]. She stops near another elderly woman, who looks into the carriage and admires the baby.
“What a beautiful baby!” the other woman says dutifully.
“You think that’s beautiful? That’s nothing,” says the grandma. “You should see the pictures!”
And since life imitates art—as art (and artifice) gets further and further from life—I refer you to this Newsweek piece about airbrushing in fashion layouts. Continue reading →
Neocon copycats?
Sent in by a reader:
I guess you can’t accuse someone of copying what you’ve already stolen, though, can you?
Food for thought
In a piece by Cinque Henderson (an African-American supporter of Hillary Clinton) appearing in TNR, we find the following bit of insider information, which so far as I know has not been pointed out before: Continue reading →
The arguments Hillary hasn’t been able to sell
Hillary won big yesterday in West Virginia. Really, really big.
And it couldn’t matter less.
Once again, the press is filled with pleas for her to go. Now. Clean out her desk and her locker and turn in her keys, and quit ruining the fun for everybody else.
The math is clear; she is about to be eliminated. Nothing can save her short of a host of superdelegates charging over to her side, and why would they? Everybody loves a winner, a frontrunner, and in this case that’s the younger and more charismatic and even more politically correct (race trumping gender in the victim sweepstakes every time) Obama. Continue reading →
Disasters and “the forgetting”
[This is a slightly edited version of a piece that I wrote very early in my blogging career about the tsunami of January 2005. It occurred to me to reprint it in light of the horrific earthquake in China.]
We hardly hear about the tsunami anymore, although for a while it dominated the news. The tsunami was videotaped in a staggering variety of manifestations: from the tall towering waves of Japanese art, to rolling swells that almost resembled a normal tide coming in—except for the fact that this particular tide just kept coming and coming and coming. We viewed forlorn beaches where villages had once stood, and saw keening mourners whose anguish was almost unbearable to watch even on the small screen.
Over and over, newspeople, relief workers, politicians, and officials declared this to be an unprecedented catastrophe. Continue reading →
Does Bill Harbor Ill Will Towards Hill?
Today’s post can be found here.
To Hillary: oh please go gentle
Hillary Clinton’s become persona non grata to Democratic leaders and the pundits sympathetic to them, who’d like nothing better than for her to go away and make nice to the new nominee, Obama. Why oh why won’t she just fall into line like a good girl? (Here’s a typical rant on the “sad spectacle” of her tenacity; and here’s Gerard Vanderleun’s deep sociological analysis of the situation).
My own offering is a poetic one, a riff on the Dylan Thomas villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Continue reading →
