Rubio's 'Watergate'

Never, ever, volunteer to give the Republican Response after the President's State of the Union Address -- especially if that president is named Obama. No good will come of it. Just ask Bobby Jindal. Marco Rubio -- the new GOP "Savior" according to Time magazine -- did it anyway. Well, it turns out that Marco Aurelius can't walk on water after all. Talk about not being ready for prime time. Enjoy:

Coup de grâce

Ted Nugent, 64, is an aging "rock star" from the now distant 70s. If you were a young person then, you probably rocked out to his "Cat Scratch Fever" occasionally. But Jim Morrison (of "The Doors") he wasn't. His other "hits" appealed mostly to his dedicated fans/groupies. Musically, he went the way of the dinosaurs. Then, he returned from the dead - sort of. Today, Nugent is "famous" for being a crazy-white-guy-conservative who desperately craves the limelight and won't shut up about his politics. Somehow, he has become an uber Republican and a Tea Party poster boy. Wrapping himself in the American flag, Nugent claims to speak for the average Joe, the cop, and especially our troops. Never mind that he dodged the draft to avoid going to Vietnam. Anyway, Nugent was at the SOTU last night as a guest of a publicity-seeking congressman. Apparently, he behaved himself. Afterward, he mingled with the press, according to Slate. “If you walk the halls with me,” he told a National Review writer, “every military guy, every cop, has an Uncle Ted story. See the smile on my face? These are my buddies here. I’m surrounded by working hard, playing hard Americans.” Right. Slate then reported this sequence of events: Nugent was shepherded over to a standing MSNBC camera. Two police officers looked on, confused by the mobile media herd. “Who’s that?” asked one cop. “It’s Ted Nugent,” said the other cop. “He’s a rock star, he talks about guns.” “Really? Never heard of him.” Priceless.

'Fair and balanced' and untrusted

Poor Fox News. It seems, as Falstaff told his mistress in Henry IV, there's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune. According to Public Policy Polling's latest annual survey on TV news: "There's only one source more Americans trust than distrust: PBS. 52% of voters say they trust PBS to only 29% who don't trust it. The other seven outlets we polled on are all distrusted by a plurality of voters. Just like its actual ratings, Fox News has hit a record low in the four years that we've been doing this poll. 41% of voters trust it to 46% who do not." Andrew Sullivan, of course, couldn't resist: PBS, "That alleged bastion of liberal bias – which Mitt Romney wanted to defund – is now trusted more than any other media source. Congrats, Roger Ailes. You’re doing for the liberal media what Karl Rove did for the Democratic party."

What would Jesus pack?

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition? Yes, pious folks in Arkansas may soon be able to pack heat in church. According to a CNN report, the Arkansas state legislature passed a measure that would allow concealed guns to be carried in houses of worship. It passed overwhelmingly. And the governor, a Democrat, apparently plans to sign the bill. Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri weighs in with this perspective: "Is this really the world we want to live in, where we are not just fearing the worst but expecting it, all the time? To me, at least, that misses the point." Amen.

Go ahead, make my day

POTUS shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012.

The hype is the point

Finally, a clear-eyed writer speaks truth to the Super Bowl. The Atlantic's Hampton Stevens observes that the "spectacle has eclipsed the game." So why fight it? He rightly concludes that the "Super Bowl is our National Day of Capitalism—a feast and party that's mercifully without the least bit of spiritual underpinning. It's a celebration of commercialism and consumerism, and consumption for consumptions' sake. ... If you are a serious, hardcore NFL fan—the sort who is deep into fantasy draft prep by June—try not to get too upset about all the silliness today." Good advice. For sanity's sake, this is one of those times when it really is better to simply bow to the absurd and pass the popcorn.

Another inconvenient truth

WEIGHING IN on the gun control debate, writer Sam Harris goes to the heart of the matter and asks: "How is it that we live in a society in which one of the most compelling interests is gun ownership? Where is the science lobby? The safe food lobby? Where is the get-the-Chinese-lead-paint-out-of-our-kids’-toys lobby? When viewed from any other civilized society on earth, the primacy of guns in American life seems to be a symptom of collective psychosis."

OMG: God is a NFL fan?

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, a quarter of Americans say God influences sporting events. Political comedian Dean Obeidallah helpfully notes: "That means about 80 million Americans believe that God will help one of the teams in this Sunday's Super Bowl." Oh my god. I better call my bookie. Per CNN, when asked if they believe God plays a role in who wins, 27% of Americans said yes. Poll results varied among regions and religions: 36% said yes in the South, 28% in the Midwest, 20% in the Northeast and 15% in the West. Do I have a problem with this? Not at all. I'm a committed whatever-floats-your-boat kind of guy as long as your boat doesn't unduly rock mine. Still, the very idea that God might give the Baltimore Ravens a divine assist is difficult to fathom. I mean, how could He not be a 49ers fan in the first place? After all, they are 4-point favorites. This, of course, is the sort of twaddle we get into when ye of too much faith (the pious 27%) try to bring the Lord down to our level. There's a reason we were made in God's image, not the other way around.

Counterfactually speaking

Salon political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald: "If more guns were the answer [to gun violence], then the U.S., with its 300 million guns, should be safest country on the planet."

Lady-in-waiting

Hillary Clinton is stepping down as secretary of state on Friday. Today, she told questioners (for the upteenth time) that she’s “not inclined” to run for president in 2016. I'm inclined to believe her. But her statement is hardly Shermanesque ("I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected"). So the door is still open a smidgen. Now at age 65, I seriously doubt Hillary wants to run the gauntlet of another presidential campaign (and, if she wins, do it again in 2020 at age 73). But the gathering winds of politics and history may compel her into the race nevertheless. That said, I'm sure Hillary was sincere when she quipped: “I am looking forward to finishing up my tenure as secretary of state and then catching up on about 20 years of sleep deprivation.” She'll probably need it.

Just a Monday thought

There's no turning back, of course. But as one Slate writer recently mused: It really is a shame that exiting the interstate in America, "regardless of where you are, you see the exact same thing."

Quote of the day

The Economist: "In most sports, the best men outperform the best women, but the best women outperform almost all men."

History repeating itself - with a twist

Army Col. Eugene Householder on racially integrating the military (Dec 8, 1941): "[Social] Experiments to meet the wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat." Army Lt.Col. Allen West (Ret.) on women in combat (Jan 24, 2013): "Now is not the time to play a social experiment with our ground combat forces ... This is the misconceived liberal progressive vision of fairness and equality which could potentially lead to the demise of our military." The "sociological laboratory" argument was wrong then, and it's wrong now. But to complete the historical irony, had West been a young man in 1941 and eager to fight, the ex-congressman would have been summarily assigned to a segregated, "all-Negro" unit, probably as a Private. Yes, West is African American.

See Jane shoot

In a terrific piece defending the logic of employing women in combat, the Economist noted that no testosterone is required to pull a trigger. "Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Russian sniper during the second world war, is credited with over 300 kills. The Nazis surely would have preferred a Soviet army with no such female combat troops."

Resisting G.I. Jane - Ctd

SURELY, this had to be an Onion parody piece, I kept thinking. But it wasn't. To wit: "Only someone deliberately blind to human reality could maintain that putting men and women in close quarters 24 hours a day will not produce a proliferation of sex, thus introducing all the irrational passions (and resulting favoritism) of physical attraction into an organization that should be exclusively devoted to the mission of combat preparedness," so wrote National Review commentator Heather Mac Donald who has never served a day in the military, let alone in combat. And we're supposed to take her seriously? Not only did Mac Donald straight-up insult our male warriors (who she blithely paints as a cadre of unethical, unprofessional, sex-crazed brutes), she actually sang a forlorn paean to -- wait for it -- chivalry. No, I'm not kidding. "Chivalry is one of the great civilizing forces, taming men and introducing social graces and nuance to what would otherwise be a brutish social world. It is already on life support, but sex-integrated combat units will provide the coup de grâce," Mac Donald writes. Wow. It's a pity this poor woman wasn't born in the 19th century. She'd clearly be happier.

Resisting G.I. Jane

IT'S BEEN SAID that there are only 36 basic plots in literature. Similarly, a certain narrative against civil rights is retreaded whenever intolerance is forced to confront fairness. For example, antediluvians (a polite term for clueless traditionalists) have dependably employed "the Army is not a sociological laboratory" argument to resist equal rights in the armed forces. The Army leadership used the aforementioned quote in 1941 to justify why it wouldn't integrate African Americans into its ranks. Letting blacks fight alongside whites would pose "a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale," warned spokesman Col. Eugene R. Householder one day after Pearl Harbor. Today, 165 years after women demanded suffrage at the Seneca Falls Convention, the Pentagon lifted the ban on women serving in combat roles. Cue the tattered playbook. “Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness. "The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment,” said retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council. “Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.” Ignorance of history invites its repetition every time.

Will the GOP bring its ship about?

FOUR YEARS ago, it was evident - at least to me - that Republicans would fatally overreach in their quixotic quest to confine Obama to a single presidential term. Theirs was always a doomed galleon plying against history's trade winds. Mr. Obama - now a wilier, battle-hardened politico - is still here and he's not going away. Today, it is evident that this reality is finally sinking in among rational members of the Grand Old Party. New York magazine's Jon Chait pointed to some revealing tweets by conservative Robert Costa, National Review's Washington editor. Costa wrote: "One thing Repubs seem privately confident about: O is a singular, historic figure. Loud chants of O-Ba-Ma today on mall isn't the Dem norm." He noted "Consensus among my GOP sources: Obama is expertly repackaging old-school, tax-and-spend liberalism as the status quo, conservatism threatened" and added "Many members, people you wouldn't expect, are truly concerned about how party's rep is hurting them back home. Some may start to speak up." Is a Great Republican Awakening in the offing? I'd argue yes - particularly since their choice (ironically) is fundamentally Darwinian: adapt or die.

The trouble with 'conviction politics'

Today, much of the GOP (and, to be fair, many leftist Democrats) worships at the altar of conviction politics, a style of governance that puts principle and adherence to ideology first -- regardless of the cost. Congress' current crop of Republican freshmen are especially bewitched with this modus operandi. But for the nation's sake, it would be wiser for these folks to take the counsel of political economist Max Weber. In his famous Politics as a Vocation, he wrote: "Politics is the art of compromise and decision-making based on social benefits weighed against costs; in this respect, political action cannot be rooted only in conviction, since one's conviction can be another's social anathema." This seems so blindingly obvious. And yet, too many politicians and the voters who abet them continue to struggle to see what is in front of one's nose.

Did we just get Gettysburg'ed?

Granted, President Obama's Second Inaugural Address was not conjoined with a civil war or world war -- events that surely helped to elevate the speeches of Lincoln and FDR to greatness. But was Obama's speech actually one for the ages, too, and we just didn't recognize it? The question is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Today, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is regarded as one of the greatest in American history. But that wasn't the case in 1863 when Honest Abe delivered it. The applause was "scattered and barely polite," according to noted historian Shelby Foote. The next day the Chicago Times (a 19th century version of Fox News) described the address as "silly, flat and dishwatery." Echoing a (weirdly) similar sentiment, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius characterized Obama's speech as "flat, partisan and pedestrian." Plus ça change. We'll probably have to wait a century for history's final verdict on Mr. Obama's address. But I have a feeling that its greatness is staring us in the face.

Just Misérable?

I'm not a fan of musicals, so I won't render a judgment on the new (and endlessly promoted) Les Misérables movie. But this passage from a review by Slate's Dana Stevens probably captures its essence: "In the “I Dreamed a Dream” scene—the standalone set piece that will no doubt become the movie’s Oscar audition tape—[Les Misérables tries] to fuse raw emotional immediacy with the mechanics of virtuoso ballad-belting. Anne Hathaway’s big song, delivered in extreme close-up in a single, very long take, is deeply felt and impeccably delivered. ... [But] as the camera reverently gazed through the alabaster pillars of Hathaway’s teeth, all I could think about was the proximity of her tunefully vibrating larynx. She nails the song, no doubt about it, but it’s a performance that, to me, is too much about the awesomeness of its own nailing. (And it doesn’t help that Hooper’s camera won’t stop asking is she nailing this or what?)"

'Tis the season for madness - yet again

ALTHOUGH TWO PEOPLE were tragically killed by a deranged, 22-year-old shooter at that Oregon mall on Tuesday, it could have been much, much worse. I thought we had dodged a bullet from the assault rifle of another madman incubated by the nation's out of control gun culture. That was wishful thinking. Today, yet another 20-something gunman killed at least 27 people at a Connecticut elementary school. Some 18 of the victims were kids between the ages of 5 and 10. Whatever problems each of us have, they pale in comparison to the outcome of this senseless massacre. I cannot begin to imagine what the parents of those slain school children are going through right now, just over a week from Christmas. It's an American nightmare. There's not much to say beyond asking: how high does the body count have to go before this country implements responsible but stringent gun control?

The coronation, again

AS RONALD REAGAN would surely say, "There they go again." As you've probably noted by now, the political media has already called the 2016 presidential election: It'll be Hillary Clinton by a landslide. The sheer ridiculousness of this prediction is self-evident. What we can say is that the pressure on Hillary to run is enormous, and will only increase next year when she steps down as secretary of state. And yes, as the near certain Democratic front-runner, Clinton would probably be a formidable candidate in 2016 if -- and that's a big if -- she chooses to run. That, of course, doesn't mean she would win, let alone cruise to victory. Lest we forget, Hillary was all but coronated Madam President until a fellow named Obama flexed his ambitions. And yet, as Howard Kurtz rightly notes, the media seem to believe that all Clinton has to do now is "plan her inauguration." Kurtz outlines what's missing from these stories: "(a) She is largely insulated from partisan attacks as secretary of State. If Hillary gets in the arena, she’ll start getting pummeled and those approval ratings will come down. (b) Even if Barack Obama is popular in 2016, asking the voters for three Democratic terms in a row is going to be a heavy lift. (c) Hillary was a lousy candidate in 2008, when the press also pronounced her inevitable. (d) She will be 69 and may decide not to run. So why are so many writing and chattering about Hillary Rodham Clinton four years out? She’s good for traffic—and is a heckuva lot more interesting than the fiscal cliff." Will Hillary run? Maybe. But I'll believe it when she actually pulls the trigger.

Girl power, defender of the realm-style

In Shakespeare's Henry VIII, the character Anne Boleyn famously said, "I would not be a queen, for all the world." In real life, the historical Anne Boleyn did indeed become Queen of England as the second wife of Henry VIII. She gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I, whose gender greatly disappointed Henry. However, the second monarch of the House of Tudor would have had a baby himself had he known what was coming five centuries thence. Kate Middleton, as the entire world now knows, is pregnant. We've also just learned that the British Commonwealth has jettisoned the rules that give boys precedence over girls in the royal line of succession. Slate's Alyssa Rosenberg welcomed the change: "So if this royal baby is a girl, Will and Kate won't have to get to work on a boy immediately—or ever." We see which way the stream of time doth run, indeed.

Fiscal reality check

Yet another definition of madness: The parade of pundits on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News opining (with a straight face) about the "fiscal cliff" negotiations in Washington. None of the usual suspects are economists (they just play them on TV). That means they: (a) have no idea what they're talking about, or (b) are badly parroting authentic policy experts (like Ezra Klein) who do. Remember, just a few weeks ago half of these talking heads were predicting Romney would win the presidency, perhaps in a landslide. Just saying.

The burden of beauty

Rula Jebreal (pictured at left) is drop-dead gorgeous. Though her name was faintly familiar, Jebreal's loveliness was top of mind when I first spied her on MSNBC discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. Aha, I stupidly assumed, another beautiful celeb with questionable intellectual credentials (think Angelina Jolie) using her celebrity to spotlight a pet issue. I should have known better. So I Googled her to learn more -- and ended up on the road to Damascus. Jebreal, 39, is an award-winning journalist and novelist with duel Israeli and Italian citizenship (she was born in Haifa, Israel, to an Italian father). Right -- that Jebreal. Oops. Per Wikipedia, she has a masters in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Bologna. Jebreal became the first foreign anchorwoman in the history of Italian television, winning awards for coverage of the Iraq War (including the International Ischia Award for Best Journalist of the Year). She worked as a journalist in Italy for 12 years, earning a reputation as a tough interviewer. Her first novel "Miral," written in 2003, sold millions of copies worldwide, and was eventually made into an award-winning film. Oh, and Jebreal is fluent in five languages: Italian, English, Arabic, Hebrew, and German. In short: She is no air-head. That honor belongs to me for assuming that she was. Even in 2012, men reflexively tend not to take beautiful women seriously. Hopefully, bright lights like Jebreal will slap some sense into us. And, ladies, please use a two-by-four. Lord knows we deserve it.