Ay, caramba

Steven Colbert on the GOP presidential race: "It's like a Mexican telenovela that wants to deport itself." Heh.

Fight Night in Vegas

An apt summary of last night's GOP debate in Vegas -- a largely substance-free event -- by POLITICO's Roger Simon: "At its 26th debate in the last 36 hours - - or maybe it has just seemed that way - - the GOP field showed America Tuesday night it was capable. Capable of fussing and fighting and feuding. The candidates also showed they were full of it: Full of sound and fury signifying nothing. ... 'Oooooo,' went the audience in the hall. 'Oooooo,' went the TV audience at home. (I am guessing.) 'Hahaha,' went the audience at the White House. (I am guessing.)" It's also worth mentioning that if you asked the average American about this GOP reality show, the response would be: "Debate? What debate?"

What part of no don't you get? - Ctd

In both life and politics, when a lady says no, she means no. But when Hillary Clinton says no, the political press insists she really means yes. Speculation is (again) running amok about her presidential ambitions. As in: Will she or won't she replace Biden on the 2012 ticket? Will she or won't she run for the nation's highest office in 2016? All of this of course is based on un-sourced "rumors." Clinton's answer has always been "no," a thousand times no. Yet, she was forced to say it again this morning. “I’m very privileged to have had the opportunity to serve my country,” Clinton said on NBC's "Today" show. “I feel I have made my contribution. I have done the best I can. But now I want to try some other things. I want to get back to writing and maybe some teaching, working on [issues affecting] women and girls around the world.” In other words, Hillary, 63, wants her life back. At the LA Times at least, the meaning of "no" seems to be sinking in: "As she has in the past, Clinton shut the door and drove heavy nails into the jamb on Monday." No kidding. Do the math. If Hillary ran and won in 2016, she'd be 68. If she served two terms, she'd be 76 when she handed the reins over to the next president in 2024. Alternatively, she could enjoy her grandchildren as well as life as an influential elder stateswoman. Option two is a no-brainer. But the press corps simply won't take no for an answer. Here's a suggestion, Madam Secretary: At your next TV interview, don't bother answering. Just whip out a can of mace -- and use it. You'll be doing the nation a great service.

Not buying what Herman Cain is selling

Time's Joe Klein has had enough of Herman Cain, a candidate he rightly regards as "phenomenally unprepared" and unworthy. Underlining this point, he writes: "I know what I’m about to say is impolite, but Herman Cain strikes me as something of a jerk and an ignoramus. He has made absolutely outrageous statements about Muslims, immigrants and homosexuals; he takes the most extreme position imaginable on abortion. Indeed, I have never, ever seen him acknowledge the idea that complexity exists in the world…or that an ability to weed through complex issues might be a qualification for the presidency." Going for the jugular, Klein asks: isn't it time for us to "acknowledge that this guy is a snake oil salesman? That he’s an embarrassment to the Republican Party? That his momentary strength is a four-alarm cry of Republican desperation?" Do tell. Finally, a mainstream pundit willing to plainly state what we're all thinking. Instead of focusing on the two viable (or semi-viable) candidates -- Romney and Perry -- the media is drowning us in a river of ink about Cain, the man who will never be the Republican nominee for president. Sorta speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Weak tea

Though it shouldn't come as a shock, the Tea Party's political influence is waning. In an upcoming Washington Monthly piece, Colin Woodard reports: "As 2010 drew to a close, the Tea Party looked like a truly national movement, racking up congressional seats and governor's mansions not just in traditionally red states like South Carolina, but in the Northeast and Midwest as well. And yet, twelve months later, the Tea Party's power seems to be melting away in much of the country. Tea Party-supported governors in states like Maine and Wisconsin find themselves beset by controversy over their radical agendas and incredibly unpopular with voters. Meanwhile the broader movement, once deemed unstoppable, seems to be running out of gas." If the GOP is decimated in 2012 (as I suspect it will be), then the Tea Party will ushered to history's ash bin like its nativist predecessors (see the American Know Nothing Party, among others). And if I'm right, Republicans should rejoice at the prospect because only then will they get their party back.

Progress is hard

In another powerful speech, this time delivered at Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial dedication yesterday, President Obama reminded the nation that progress does not happen overnight: "First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination." I just hope my good friends on the activist left got the message.

The Ethics of Voting

In an intriguing piece, Jason Brennan writes: "Voting is not like choosing what to eat off a restaurant’s menu. If a person makes bad choices at a restaurant, at least only she bears the consequences of her actions. Yet when voters make bad choices at the polls, everyone suffers. Irresponsible voting can harm innocent people."

The everyman conundrum

AP political analyst Shannon McCaffrey thinks Herman Cain's everyman image is resonating. Voters (i.e., "regular folks") are responding, she writes. Among others, she quotes 60-year-old physician Jimmy Hoppers as proof: “In the field right now, he’s the most like me,” said Dr. Hoppers. “He’s run a business and paid the bills. He’s authentic.” It's hard to believe that a presumably well-educated doctor would rank as a low-information voter. But there he stands in the flesh, complete with slackened jaw. Not all such voters are as politically neritic as the good doctor seems to be. Most of the time, the Huddled Masses at least use a healthy dose of common sense when selecting a president. Moreover, a president need not rank with Cicero in terms of intelligence and sophistication to govern competently (though it would be nice). Still, I've never understood why so many Americans deem it a virtue to have a president who's "most like" them. One could argue that Andrew Jackson, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush had much in common with the mores of regular folk. Though each man possessed admirable traits, each was nevertheless a near disaster in office. Jackson was pivotal in setting the stage for Civil War (he was a proponent of both slavery and Indian removal). LBJ gave us the nightmare known as Vietnam. Bush made a hash of the economy and foreign affairs (see the recession, Iraq, etc). Think how differently history might have unfolded had these presidents been more "thinking-man" than everyman. “I love him,” gushed truck driver James Bland about Herman Cain. “He doesn’t talk down to you. I think he gets the working man.” Bland's wife added: “And it makes me so happy that he’s put God back into things.” Now if God could only put "brains" back into things.

The skinny on Perry

Joshua Green cuts to the chase: "[T]he swaggering governor says he’ll do for America what he did for Texas. Is that a promise or a threat?" Green writes that the "basis of Perry’s appeal is the idea that he is an uncompromising conservative, sure of what he knows. And what he knows best is that America would be a lot better off if it were a little more like Texas. 'We’re gonna translate what’s happened in Texas to Washington, D.C.,' Perry says. But look closely at Rick Perry’s Texas and it seems less like an answer to Washington’s problems and more like a reflection of them—rising poverty and unemployment, too many people without health insurance, serious long-term challenges, and not nearly enough revenue to meet them. Texas, like America, has postponed this reckoning, and confronting it will take leadership and a willingness to prepare for the future."

Dog Days of October

Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, is a very big deal in journalism circles. Any big-wheel politicians or other Very Important Persons who dare to ignore this powerful lady do so at their peril. She's also a dog lover. In addition to being top dog at the paper, Abramson is also author of a new book: "Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout." It got a rave review from book critic John Grogan -- of the New York Times. Hmm. What's wrong with this picture?

printf ("Dennis Ritchie, dead at 70");

Dennis Ritchie, an unsung hero, died yesterday at 70. It's a good bet that you've never heard of him. That's a shame because none of the "insanely great" products by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter (to name a few) would have been possible without Ritchie. Even the fact that you can read this post is due in part to Ritchie, the quiet soul affectionately known as "dmr." He invented the C programming language and co-created Unix. As Salon's Andrew Leonard put it, our digital world is literally "built out of the tools that he created and their descendants." That includes Apple's Mac iOS, a variant of Unix. Steve Jobs deserves the plaudits he won after his death. But in my book, dmr deserves more. For unlike Jobs, he was not only a genius without a dark side, Ritchie was renowned for his "gentle wit and gentle ways." He had no fiery id to becalm, no super-ego to stroke. It was enough, as ZDNet noted, that his software "satisfied the intellect while freeing programmers to create their dreams." For Ritchie, like Hamlet, the play was the thing. And yet it is the mercurial Jobs who adorns Time's cover instead of the gracious Prometheus who made the Apple mogul possible. Life, alas, proves yet again that it is rarely fair.

Still, I'm certain Ritchie would appreciate this simplest of tributes:

#include [stdio.h]
main()
{
printf ("goodbye, world\n");
}

You may not understand the code. But dmr does. He was living proof that, in the end, nice guys do indeed finish first. Rest in peace, sir.

Cold with a chance of freezing temps

Contrary to popular belief, Hell does freeze over occasionally. It most often happens when Rush Limbaugh says something I agree with. Today, he told his audience that "Romney is not a conservative. He's not, folks. You can argue with me all day long on that, but he isn't. ... This isn't personal, not with what country faces and so forth. I like him very much. I've spent some social time with him. He's a fine guy. He's very nice gentleman. He is a gentleman. But he's not a conservative." Although Rush has no idea what true conservatism is (see the writings of William F. Buckley), he's essentially right. Mitt Romney is fundamentally a moderate who bends toward pragmatism (see his record as governor of Massachusetts, a blue state). Though he leans right of center politically, he is not an ideologue (he's too smart and rational for that). Unlike Rush and his dittoheads, Romney recognizes that shades of gray do exist in the color spectrum. The fact that Romney is reality-based (and would govern in that mode as president) is what scares Republican activists the most.

Piltdown Man of Politics

Esquire's Charles Pierce may have stumbled upon an inconvenient truth about Mitt Romney: "The Republican Party is simply never going to be happy with Mitt Romney. Granted, this is partly because a substantial part of the Republican Party is insane. Granted, this is because another substantial part of the Republican party is only marginally insane. But mostly, this is because a substantial part of the Republican party realizes, as does any sentient human being, that Mitt Romney is the Piltdown Man of American politics, a massive public hoax cleverly built from the dead bones of other campaigns. He's as perfectly manufactured a fake as ever has been handed to the American public."

Much ado about ... red cups?

Slate's Seth Stevenson: "A short while back I was walking through a grocery store when I noticed a radical development. The classic red Solo cup—a keg party staple for nearly four decades—had switched from a round to a square bottom." And so begins Stevenson's article about how this disposable drinking vessel became an American party staple. Ah yes -- the classic article about nothing. It must be Jerry Seinfeld Day. Heh.

Stick a fork in her?

So is Sarah Palin really over? Has her 15 minutes expired? Politically, almost certainly. Pop-culturally -- well, maybe. But at least one leading indicator -- book sales -- suggests the Wasilla Wonder is fading fast. According to Amazon's rankings, Joe McGinniss's The Rogue has nose-dived to 964 among top selling books; ex-Palin aide Frank Bailey's Blind Allegiance is at 25,105, and Geoffrey Dunn's The Lies of Sarah Palin is at 40,973. Book sales by Palin clan members are equally grim. Levi's Deer in the Headlights, last seen at 11,291, is definitely headed south. Bristol's Not Afraid of Life at 104,035, is also in free fall. And Palin's own tomes? Her latest, America by Heart, is at 22,622. Her previous book, Going Rogue, disappeared into a black hole long ago. It's currently languishing at No. 568,389, the worst of the lot.

The day the Genoan waded ashore

It's that time of year again, Columbus Day. Cue the tiresome (and increasingly irrelevant) debate about Christopher Columbus: He was a peerless explorer! He was a destroyer of worlds! He was not! Was so! Was not! ... and so on. On October 12, 1492, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea discovered an island in The Bahamas (the Arawak natives called it Guanahani, he called it San Salvador) after a 5-week voyage across the Atlantic. At daybreak, the Old World splashed ashore warily into the New World, formally setting in motion the forces that would reshape both worlds for better and worse. The tall, 41-year-old Genoan who stood on the beach that day almost certainly did not look like the portrait (by Sebastiano del Piombo) shown above. Signor Colombo was a fair-skinned (and therefore perpetually sunburned) Italian with graying auburn hair. On the day he "christened" Guanahani for Spain, his light hazel eyes beheld an exotic land (he later wrote) "full of trees of endless varieties, so high they seemed to touch the sky."

As the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María swayed in the rolling swells offshore, First Contact began quietly, peacefully and perhaps poignantly. It was of course a mirage. It only took hours for the Admiral of the Ocean Sea to dismiss the Arawak as easy prey to be "converted to our holy faith" -- by force if necessary. Already, he and his band of proto-conquistadors hungrily eyed the gold, the "little bits of this metal hanging at their noses." And so the great but bloody history that would ultimately lead to us began. The story of how Columbus came to be venerated (albeit falsely) as the Discoverer of America is, like most myths, a long and tortured one. His actual historic portrait bears little resemblance to the glamorized version of him. Laurence Bergreen (author Columbus: The Four Voyages) is among those who best sum him up:

Columbus was a vain, deluded, and Quixotic leader. And he was also a courageous and peerless navigator. He was not any one of these things; he was all of these things, many faceted and contradictory. The facts of his voyages to the New World are not in doubt—with the notable exception of the precise location of his first landfall—but interpretations grow more divergent all the time. For better or worse, or rather, for better and worse, he has left his improbable, indelible mark on the American spirit and on history.

Happy Columbus Day, warts and all.

I belong. Therefore I am.

Louis René Beres ponders the apparent withering of individuality:

“We are the hollow men,” announced T.S. Eliot, long before the advent of cell phones. Today, still, most of our “whispers” remain “quiet and meaningless.” Aside from rare emergencies and common daily chores, cell phone conversations or messages usually transmit only innocuous prattle, mind-numbing blather, or monosyllabic grunts. ... The known universe is probably many billions of light years “across.” Yet, here, in America, and elsewhere as well, most humans are still desperately afraid to become individuals. “Why bother?” they reason. Why take the risk? “Look at me, please,” is the unspoken but desperate cry of the public talker, or “texter,” or “Twitterer.” I am here. I am important. I have human connections. I count for something. I am not (heaven forbid) unpopular. I am not alone.”

Sweet surrender

Embrace the Twitter. Because resistance (for some) is futile. A passage from a terrific piece by New York magazine's Joe Hagan:

Brian Stelter, the TV and media reporter for the New York Times, has adroitly mixed news reportage with details of his personal life, tweeting links to his stories along with documentation of his efforts to lose weight and updates on his onetime love affair with a CNBC reporter named Nicole Lapin. ... Stelter, lauded among his peers as the future of tweeting journalism, says he can’t imagine life without Twitter. “I want to live in that stream,” he says. “So scary to hear myself say, ‘I can’t imagine life without it.’ ”

Um, what life? I don't know whether to laugh or cry at Stelter's confession. But Sarah Mclachlan's lyrics do spring to mind: "The life I left behind me / Is a cold room / And sweet, sweet surrender / Is all that I have to give."

Saturday factoid

According to a recent study ("Who Says What to Whom on Twitter"), 20,000 elite users -- celebrities, bloggers, and media outlets -- comprising less than 0.05% of the user population, attract almost 50% of all attention within Twitter. That explains why millions will be familiar with this representative tweet from Meghan McCain, the 27-year-old daughter of Sen. John McCain: "OHHH MY GOD—A BIG JIANT ­SPIDER JUST CRAWLED ON MY ­PILLOW!!!!!! ARGHHHH OMG OMG OMG EWWWW OMG!!!!!!!!!!!" No, the apocalypse is not nigh. It just feels like it is.

The deafening hagiography of Steve Jobs

I hate to say this, but enough already. Yes, Steve Jobs was "insanely great." The Apple mogul deserves praise for his culture-altering accomplishments. I too wish he had not departed this world so soon. And may he rest in peace. But enough with the soul-rending eulogies already. GASP! What, too soon? Well, perhaps. But c'mon -- am I really the only one who thinks the cartoon at left is a tad over the top? Granted, it is well-intended and represents only one in a flood of digital bouquets thrown as appreciations, remembrances or retrospectives. A bit disturbingly, some border on being self-serving tales in obit guise. ("We spent the afternoon on the shoreline of Kona, Hawaii, where Jobs and his wife ...," waxed one writer in an apparent need to showcase her "chosen few" status.) Another obit-tale, written by Ron Rosenbaum for Slate, is entitled "Steve Jobs and Me." In it, he reveals how his 1971 article supposedly inspired Jobs. Anyway, you get the picture. I have little doubt that Jobs, an intensely private man, would cringe at the sheer volume of hagiography being spun about him. "Apple is a new religion, and Steve Jobs was its high priest," read the headline of a Washington Post story about Jobs this morning. Post reporter Michael Rosenwald wrote: "[T]here’s a greater, higher power at work here, a mystical truth that has emerged among more enlightened Apple fans and on the fringes of academic research. In a secular age, Apple has become a religion, and Steve Jobs was its high priest." Um, you gotta be kidding me. Though Rosenwald is quite serious (he drank the Apple Kool-Aid long ago), he acknowledges that there is truth in the words of a friend who told him: “I feel bad for the guy and his family. ... if anything, the outpouring of grief shows just how obsessed we’ve become with our electronic toys." In other words, this amazing surge to canonize Jobs as a saint says more about us than him. It probably speaks to a yawning cultural emptiness that is nibbling away at the soul of an increasingly narcissistic society. But that is grist for another post. History will give Jobs his proper due. In the here and now, Apple fans might be wiser to follow the advice Jobs himself gave: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." Or worshiping it.

Cartoon credit: Steve Breen (San Diego Union-Tribune)

The long goodbye?

Has the Economist identified another inconvenient truth about the Sarah Palin phenomenon? It writes: "Many now expect Mrs Palin to fade away, which is something we've heard before. But is our collective fascination with her really dependent on her potential to run for office? Liberals love to hate Mrs Palin because they believe she's a divisive, know-nothing windbag. And conservatives love to hate the liberals she so effectively pisses off. She will no doubt continue to cater to the needs of both groups. And our TMZ-inspired political media can hardly turn away from her family drama and experiments with the English language. I'll celebrate the death of Mrs Palin's political celebrity if she ever starts making sense or develops the wherewithal to string two coherent sentences together. That is when she will be forgotten, when she is no longer a spectacle. ... As long as she keeps floating somewhere between Huckabee dullness and Beck insanity, she's not going anywhere." Damn.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Polls

The Daily Caller breathlessly reported, "In news sure to inject shock and awe into the Republican political primary season, a Zogby poll released Thursday showed Herman Cain leading the Republican field, topping former front-runner Mitt Romney by an astonishing 20 points. Cain would also narrowly edge out Obama in a general election, the poll found, by a 46-44 margin." The poll results are the preferences of likely Republican primary voters. Still, should Cain start measuring the drapes in the Oval Office? Um, no. A new Pew Research Center poll found that few Americans could even name a leading GOP candidate. Only 28 percent named Rick Perry and only 27 percent named Mitt Romney. As for that Cain fella in the Zogby poll, for most Americans it's: Herman who? The Pew poll also found that just 27 percent of Americans are following campaign 2012 news closely. If you've wondered what Grade A navel gazing looks like in the news media, wonder no more. This is a classic example of it. Just keeping it real, folks.

The last word

Perhaps channeling the frustrations of all rational Republicans, David Frum unloads on Sarah Palin and laments the havoc she wrecked: "In the end, she exploited, abused, or embarrassed almost everyone who had believed in her. Most embarrassing of all: she was never even a very good con artist. Everything that was false and petty and unqualified in her was visible within the first minutes of encountering her. The people she fooled were people who passionately wished to be fooled. To that extent, what was important in her story was not the faults and failings of Sarah Palin. There have always been grifters in politics. What was important in her story was the revelation of conservatism’s lack of antibodies against somebody with the faults and failings of Sarah Palin. That’s the story that should trouble us still."

Stranger than fiction?

One day a first-rate historian or journalist will pen the definitive book about Sarah Palin. Though history will record her as a curious footnote, Palin's true infamy will be narrated as a cautionary tale. How, some will wonder, did this psychotic personality nearly ascend to presidential-level power? Today, we still do not know what really happened. Nicolle Wallace, a former George W. Bush aide and adviser to John McCain's 2008 campaign, provided a chilling glimpse during an interview with Time. "There certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if [McCain-Palin] were to win, it would be appropriate for her to be sworn in," Wallace said. Oh my. There is clearly more to this story. I've harshly criticized John McCain for plaguing us with Palin. Like most politicians, the Arizona senator has an unsavory, cynical side. But he is neither crazy nor a fool. This implies that he made this Faustian Bargain with his eyes open. Even a few chats with Palin would have revealed her odd duckiness at the very least. It's well-documented that his senior staff wasn't fooled for long. Neither was Wallace. But if upon realizing his mistake McCain planned to oust Palin post-victory, then suddenly a great many things begin to make sense. This is all speculation, of course. But I suspect the real story about Sarah Louise Palin will prove to be far stranger than fiction.

Welcome back from the ledge, Sully

Like many folks who read and admire Andrew Sullivan, I too have given him grief about his Palin obsession. At times it was scarily over the top. But his reasons were always noble. "All I ever cared about was that someone who was incapable of understanding reality, who was, in my view, clinically disturbed, intellectually incapable and emotionally crippled, should not be foisted on the world as a potential US president because John McCain had a temper tantrum," Sullivan wrote today. I "second that emotion," as Smoky Robinson would put it. Sullivan announced he is finally unslinging his gun belt, writing: "There's no need any more to even think, let alone blog, about [Palin]. I did what I could to expose her and the corrupt system - in politics and the media - that made her possible. And she's over. Mission, as they say, accomplished." He of course added: Cue the music from "Jaws". Heh. I too will blog about Palin as events warrant, but I'll mostly do so comedically. For Palin is merely a curio now, a political Paris Hilton or, if you like, a kindred Kardashian of the Wasilla kind. Going forward, I'll treat her accordingly.