the SNOB
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I Was Against Sean Penn Before I Was for Him...
He may be the leftist crackpot di tutti leftist crackpots in Hollywood, but at least he remains willing to flick ash in the face of one elitist, nanny-state piety. ¶ 2:50 PM 0 Comments
He may be the leftist crackpot di tutti leftist crackpots in Hollywood, but at least he remains willing to flick ash in the face of one elitist, nanny-state piety. ¶ 2:50 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
But this is madness!
No! This. Is. WASHINGTON DC!
Let me get this straight: at a time when oil prices are surging, the mideast remains about as stable as Britney Spears at a custody hearing, and hurricane season is around the corner, the Senate votes 97-1 to stop putting oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
This is sort of like saying, "well, I may get laid off into the start of a recession pretty soon, so let's blow the savings on a trip to Vegas before I need that money to spend on rent and groceries."
You could argue--wrongly, I think, but honestly--that we ought to be using the SPR to buffer a short-term spike in prices. Otherwise, this is rank foolishness. Yes, buying 70k barrels a day at $120 is expensive, but it will be a lot more expensive when it's $150, which I won't be surprised to see before the election. The whole point of the SPR is to be there as a strategic reserve, in case the excrement really hits the impeller. Granted, the SPR is 97% full, so stockpiling another two days' worth of imports probably won't make that much difference, but it's the thought that counts. As is usually the case, any bill of substance that gets 97 votes is probably a bad idea. ¶ 10:19 AM 0 Comments
No! This. Is. WASHINGTON DC!
Let me get this straight: at a time when oil prices are surging, the mideast remains about as stable as Britney Spears at a custody hearing, and hurricane season is around the corner, the Senate votes 97-1 to stop putting oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
This is sort of like saying, "well, I may get laid off into the start of a recession pretty soon, so let's blow the savings on a trip to Vegas before I need that money to spend on rent and groceries."
You could argue--wrongly, I think, but honestly--that we ought to be using the SPR to buffer a short-term spike in prices. Otherwise, this is rank foolishness. Yes, buying 70k barrels a day at $120 is expensive, but it will be a lot more expensive when it's $150, which I won't be surprised to see before the election. The whole point of the SPR is to be there as a strategic reserve, in case the excrement really hits the impeller. Granted, the SPR is 97% full, so stockpiling another two days' worth of imports probably won't make that much difference, but it's the thought that counts. As is usually the case, any bill of substance that gets 97 votes is probably a bad idea. ¶ 10:19 AM 0 Comments
Monday, May 12, 2008
Eat the Rich
State rep Paul Kujawski's initiative to increase taxes on "exorbitant" university funds refuses to die the quiet death the presidents of the state's many universities clearly wish it would. Kujawski, last seen pissing on the shoulder in front of a statie at a DUI stop, epitomizes the depth of the threat.
Having similarly micturated away the goodwill and deference conservatives ordinarily afford to venerable endowed institutions run by old men in colored robes and pointy hats, university leaders now must face a much baser challenge from the populist left. While Jim Manzi writes in the Corner that "giving lots of money to Democratic politicians very well might" stop the drive, I'm considerably less sanguine. When Charles Grassley and a well-marinated Democratic hack rep from Webster agree on the basic outlines of something, it's a fair sign that the wolves and sheep dogs are preparing to put their differences aside and crack open a jar of mint jelly.
There are two big problems here. The first is that any discussion of the issue will necessarily focus on Harvard, even though it is an extreme outlier. I haven't run the numbers, but if one takes into account the number of undergraduate students, I suspect Harvard, Yale, and perhaps Princeton and Stanford will stand very much alone.
The proposals bouncing around Beacon Hill are as mongoloid in their economic reasoning as a great cynic like myself could possibly hope. Imprimis, a tax is proposed on any endowment over a billion dollars, just like that. Perhaps an enterprising rep can propose to have Kujawski pay the same taxes as John Kerry, seeing as they both call themselves "senator." Like the Alternative Minimum Tax, Kujawski's Narrowly-Tailored-Exorbitantly-Rich-Ivy-League-Schools-Ought-To-Pay-Their-Fair-Share-The-Bums law will, with the benefit of inflation and time, eventually grow into a broad revenue stream that can't be touched.
Compared to this, Sen. Grassley's suggestion that universities ought to spend at least 5% of their endowment on students annually strikes even me as quite reasonable. This is where the second big problem rears its head: none of the proposed "solutions" are likely to accomplish anything like what we want.
The assumption here is that requiring universities to be slightly less stingy with their endowments will achieve a social good by reducing the cost of higher education. Michelle Obama's complaints aside, it is unclear to me why the government should care in the least how much it costs to attend Harvard. I would be fascinated to know how many students were admitted to Harvard over the past decade and chose not to attend due to the cost. One could argue that just as much benefit to society is accomplished by funneling these future luminaries off into public colleges, who years later benefit from their largess and the glow of their reputation (c.f. Jack Welch and UMass).
Given that most universities (and certainly all of those likely to be hit with a luxury tax) are able to fill their student bodies at current prices, why should we assume that if Harvard and BU are forced to spend $5000 more per student on aid, they won't simply find a way to raise the cost of attendance pari-passu? Indeed, this is arguably one of the most significant effects of the availability of large amounts of cheap credit in the form of student loans, without which the number of students able to pay would be far smaller.
One of the things which must be borne in mind throughout is that colleges generally, and especially the elite ones, are not in the business of admissions nearly half as much as they are in the business of rejections. Harvard could, at today's high prices, fill up every dorm room on every campus inside Route 128 with Harvard freshmen, and still not exhaust the demand for a Harvard degree. They could probably still do so at triple or quadruple the price, at least for a few years. At some point, "Harvard" as a brand would join Cadillac and Budweiser in the pantheon of brands that used to imply the utmost in American-made quality.
As with the economy at large, once you get below the top several dozens of schools, the payoff from increased endowment payouts shrinks rapidly. Harvard could realistically afford to forego tuition altogether, while Bentley could perhaps hand every freshman their choice of a free hat and T-shirt. To the extent that Grassley and others are talking not just about absolute cost but about access, it's not clear any of these bills would do any more than slightly alter accounting procedures for the lucky few. The vast majority of students, attending mediocre institutions with endowments to match, would probably see little, if any real change. ¶ 12:05 PM 2 Comments
State rep Paul Kujawski's initiative to increase taxes on "exorbitant" university funds refuses to die the quiet death the presidents of the state's many universities clearly wish it would. Kujawski, last seen pissing on the shoulder in front of a statie at a DUI stop, epitomizes the depth of the threat.
Having similarly micturated away the goodwill and deference conservatives ordinarily afford to venerable endowed institutions run by old men in colored robes and pointy hats, university leaders now must face a much baser challenge from the populist left. While Jim Manzi writes in the Corner that "giving lots of money to Democratic politicians very well might" stop the drive, I'm considerably less sanguine. When Charles Grassley and a well-marinated Democratic hack rep from Webster agree on the basic outlines of something, it's a fair sign that the wolves and sheep dogs are preparing to put their differences aside and crack open a jar of mint jelly.
There are two big problems here. The first is that any discussion of the issue will necessarily focus on Harvard, even though it is an extreme outlier. I haven't run the numbers, but if one takes into account the number of undergraduate students, I suspect Harvard, Yale, and perhaps Princeton and Stanford will stand very much alone.
The proposals bouncing around Beacon Hill are as mongoloid in their economic reasoning as a great cynic like myself could possibly hope. Imprimis, a tax is proposed on any endowment over a billion dollars, just like that. Perhaps an enterprising rep can propose to have Kujawski pay the same taxes as John Kerry, seeing as they both call themselves "senator." Like the Alternative Minimum Tax, Kujawski's Narrowly-Tailored-Exorbitantly-Rich-Ivy-League-Schools-Ought-To-Pay-Their-Fair-Share-The-Bums law will, with the benefit of inflation and time, eventually grow into a broad revenue stream that can't be touched.
Compared to this, Sen. Grassley's suggestion that universities ought to spend at least 5% of their endowment on students annually strikes even me as quite reasonable. This is where the second big problem rears its head: none of the proposed "solutions" are likely to accomplish anything like what we want.
The assumption here is that requiring universities to be slightly less stingy with their endowments will achieve a social good by reducing the cost of higher education. Michelle Obama's complaints aside, it is unclear to me why the government should care in the least how much it costs to attend Harvard. I would be fascinated to know how many students were admitted to Harvard over the past decade and chose not to attend due to the cost. One could argue that just as much benefit to society is accomplished by funneling these future luminaries off into public colleges, who years later benefit from their largess and the glow of their reputation (c.f. Jack Welch and UMass).
Given that most universities (and certainly all of those likely to be hit with a luxury tax) are able to fill their student bodies at current prices, why should we assume that if Harvard and BU are forced to spend $5000 more per student on aid, they won't simply find a way to raise the cost of attendance pari-passu? Indeed, this is arguably one of the most significant effects of the availability of large amounts of cheap credit in the form of student loans, without which the number of students able to pay would be far smaller.
One of the things which must be borne in mind throughout is that colleges generally, and especially the elite ones, are not in the business of admissions nearly half as much as they are in the business of rejections. Harvard could, at today's high prices, fill up every dorm room on every campus inside Route 128 with Harvard freshmen, and still not exhaust the demand for a Harvard degree. They could probably still do so at triple or quadruple the price, at least for a few years. At some point, "Harvard" as a brand would join Cadillac and Budweiser in the pantheon of brands that used to imply the utmost in American-made quality.
As with the economy at large, once you get below the top several dozens of schools, the payoff from increased endowment payouts shrinks rapidly. Harvard could realistically afford to forego tuition altogether, while Bentley could perhaps hand every freshman their choice of a free hat and T-shirt. To the extent that Grassley and others are talking not just about absolute cost but about access, it's not clear any of these bills would do any more than slightly alter accounting procedures for the lucky few. The vast majority of students, attending mediocre institutions with endowments to match, would probably see little, if any real change. ¶ 12:05 PM 2 Comments
Friday, May 02, 2008
Sea Change in Britain?
Early returns now suggest that the infamous mayor of London, "Red Ken" Livingstone, is set to be replaced by Conservative Boris Johnson. I'm reminded of 1992, when Rudy Giuliani defeated a reeling David Dinkins to become the first Republican mayor of NYC in as long as anyone could recall. In the same year that Bill Clinton completed the federal trifecta for the Democrats, Giuliani's stunning victory was a more accurate indicator of where the country as a whole was headed in the years to come.
One of the most remarkable shifts to take place in politics in my lifetime has been the near-disappearance of crime as a key domestic issue. In the mid-80s, I remember going to see a horse show at Madison Square Garden; as we approached Times Square, my father told us to roll up the windows and lock the doors, and we heard two gunshots on the way back out. The murder rate peaked at over six a day. When Giuliani was elected, gunpoint muggings were happening in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight and reasonable people wondered whether New York City was governable. "White yuppies buying real estate in Harlem" would have made a good headline for an entry in The World's Most Dangerous Places travel guide.
Today, violent crime remains, but it is largely a silent problem that afflicts only the poorest and blackest of us. So long as you don't live in Indian Country, you have little to fear, even in many of the the largest and formerly most violent cities. When a pretty white girl from a good family gets murdered, it's news for weeks or months, because it doesn't happen nearly so often as it used to. For the middle class and above, violent crime has become akin to the genocide in Darfur, an awful thing that we really ought to do something about, but it's something that happens to other people.
This goes a long way to explaining why shysters and demagogues like Al Sharpton are permitted to get away with being spokesmen for "their community." If you're White America and you're in charge, why bother taking on Revvum Al when you can pay him off? It's not like kids are getting shot on the school bus in Wellesley.
Ah, but in Britain, this is all completely backwards. It is true that we have more gun crime and murder here, but it is concentrated in some very narrow and sad places. The vast majority of the country is a practical paradise, the worst public disorder being a few loudmouths bobbing and weaving on the green line after a Sox game. Across Britain, ordinary upper-middle class people find themselves surrounded daily by public drunkenness and thuggery that would be surprising on West Broadway after the St. Patrick's Day parade; muggings are everyday occurrences that the police respond to by telling the victim to "be more careful next time." This is exactly the sense of crumbling of the most basic foundations of civilized society (freedom from random violence) that led to movies like "Falling Down" in the early 90s.
So, perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a similar change in the UK. The assumption that Europe would keep progressing leftward is held as apocalyptically by the American Right as it is held hopefully by the Left. With Berlusconi's victory in Italy earlier this month, we have center-right governments in power in the majority of the EU. Something tells me David Cameron will make it four in the UK before long. ¶ 11:53 AM 0 Comments
Early returns now suggest that the infamous mayor of London, "Red Ken" Livingstone, is set to be replaced by Conservative Boris Johnson. I'm reminded of 1992, when Rudy Giuliani defeated a reeling David Dinkins to become the first Republican mayor of NYC in as long as anyone could recall. In the same year that Bill Clinton completed the federal trifecta for the Democrats, Giuliani's stunning victory was a more accurate indicator of where the country as a whole was headed in the years to come.
One of the most remarkable shifts to take place in politics in my lifetime has been the near-disappearance of crime as a key domestic issue. In the mid-80s, I remember going to see a horse show at Madison Square Garden; as we approached Times Square, my father told us to roll up the windows and lock the doors, and we heard two gunshots on the way back out. The murder rate peaked at over six a day. When Giuliani was elected, gunpoint muggings were happening in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight and reasonable people wondered whether New York City was governable. "White yuppies buying real estate in Harlem" would have made a good headline for an entry in The World's Most Dangerous Places travel guide.
Today, violent crime remains, but it is largely a silent problem that afflicts only the poorest and blackest of us. So long as you don't live in Indian Country, you have little to fear, even in many of the the largest and formerly most violent cities. When a pretty white girl from a good family gets murdered, it's news for weeks or months, because it doesn't happen nearly so often as it used to. For the middle class and above, violent crime has become akin to the genocide in Darfur, an awful thing that we really ought to do something about, but it's something that happens to other people.
This goes a long way to explaining why shysters and demagogues like Al Sharpton are permitted to get away with being spokesmen for "their community." If you're White America and you're in charge, why bother taking on Revvum Al when you can pay him off? It's not like kids are getting shot on the school bus in Wellesley.
Ah, but in Britain, this is all completely backwards. It is true that we have more gun crime and murder here, but it is concentrated in some very narrow and sad places. The vast majority of the country is a practical paradise, the worst public disorder being a few loudmouths bobbing and weaving on the green line after a Sox game. Across Britain, ordinary upper-middle class people find themselves surrounded daily by public drunkenness and thuggery that would be surprising on West Broadway after the St. Patrick's Day parade; muggings are everyday occurrences that the police respond to by telling the victim to "be more careful next time." This is exactly the sense of crumbling of the most basic foundations of civilized society (freedom from random violence) that led to movies like "Falling Down" in the early 90s.
So, perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a similar change in the UK. The assumption that Europe would keep progressing leftward is held as apocalyptically by the American Right as it is held hopefully by the Left. With Berlusconi's victory in Italy earlier this month, we have center-right governments in power in the majority of the EU. Something tells me David Cameron will make it four in the UK before long. ¶ 11:53 AM 0 Comments
Monday, April 21, 2008
I Was for Obama before I Was Against Him
Like TV weathermen, pundits are usually very good at describing what is going on right now, but not to be relied upon for much else. Bob Novak's piece today on Obama Republicans is a perfect example of the "if the election were held today, X would happen" manufactured non-information.
Between today and the general election lies the sea. The Internet has become such an everyday thing that we fail to reflect on its unique impact. The volume of information, and the speed at which it is delivered, are vastly greater than ever before. To understand this, let's look at another context.
Not so long ago, if you were a movie geek, you might have to wait 4-8 weeks for a movie-geek magazine to print a rumor about something that happened on the set of a particular picture. People who lived in a large enough city to get daily delivery of Variety were alpha-geeks, but even they were subject to the whims of the editors. Today, tens of thousands of blogs, many dedicated to a single movie, scour the all-seeing web for the tiniest tidbits to broadcast instantly to everyone from the hipsters in Brooklyn to pimple-riddled kids in Moline, Illinois.
And yet, what do I know about what's going on with the latest Joss Whedon production? Absolutely nothing. Don't get me wrong: I think Joss Whedon is brilliant, but I'll wait for the movie to come out, then I'll get a little interested, but probably end up getting it from Netflix since I've got about 19,342.65 things contending for my attention. The Internet has contracted what used to be a relatively long and slow supply chain into virtually nothing--but it has not changed the fact that 99.99% of people are not interested in 99.99% of the information available.
Six months ago, I thought Obama was an interesting, vaguely heroic American archetype in the Teddy/JFK/Reagan mold, and contemplated the thought of his possible election with a placidity that did not apply to Hillary, Kerry, or Gore. I no longer do, but I am also an admitted extreme politigeek, and consume more news in a day than most people do in a month. I fell out of love with Obama long before he lost his inner monologue about clingy Pennsylvanian rednecks, on the basis of relatively pure substance, or "the issues," as reporters like to call things they don't think people pay enough attention to.
Elections are funny things, and can be redefined by small slips--c.f. Bosnia for Hillary, bitter and glingy rednecks for Obama--so predicting a McCain blowout now is risky. But if the race were to unfold in a relatively straighforward matter, which would be the ultimate in unexpected events, that's the scenario I'd bet on. ¶ 6:17 AM 1 Comments
Like TV weathermen, pundits are usually very good at describing what is going on right now, but not to be relied upon for much else. Bob Novak's piece today on Obama Republicans is a perfect example of the "if the election were held today, X would happen" manufactured non-information.
Between today and the general election lies the sea. The Internet has become such an everyday thing that we fail to reflect on its unique impact. The volume of information, and the speed at which it is delivered, are vastly greater than ever before. To understand this, let's look at another context.
Not so long ago, if you were a movie geek, you might have to wait 4-8 weeks for a movie-geek magazine to print a rumor about something that happened on the set of a particular picture. People who lived in a large enough city to get daily delivery of Variety were alpha-geeks, but even they were subject to the whims of the editors. Today, tens of thousands of blogs, many dedicated to a single movie, scour the all-seeing web for the tiniest tidbits to broadcast instantly to everyone from the hipsters in Brooklyn to pimple-riddled kids in Moline, Illinois.
And yet, what do I know about what's going on with the latest Joss Whedon production? Absolutely nothing. Don't get me wrong: I think Joss Whedon is brilliant, but I'll wait for the movie to come out, then I'll get a little interested, but probably end up getting it from Netflix since I've got about 19,342.65 things contending for my attention. The Internet has contracted what used to be a relatively long and slow supply chain into virtually nothing--but it has not changed the fact that 99.99% of people are not interested in 99.99% of the information available.
Six months ago, I thought Obama was an interesting, vaguely heroic American archetype in the Teddy/JFK/Reagan mold, and contemplated the thought of his possible election with a placidity that did not apply to Hillary, Kerry, or Gore. I no longer do, but I am also an admitted extreme politigeek, and consume more news in a day than most people do in a month. I fell out of love with Obama long before he lost his inner monologue about clingy Pennsylvanian rednecks, on the basis of relatively pure substance, or "the issues," as reporters like to call things they don't think people pay enough attention to.
Elections are funny things, and can be redefined by small slips--c.f. Bosnia for Hillary, bitter and glingy rednecks for Obama--so predicting a McCain blowout now is risky. But if the race were to unfold in a relatively straighforward matter, which would be the ultimate in unexpected events, that's the scenario I'd bet on. ¶ 6:17 AM 1 Comments
Monday, April 14, 2008
BostonTHEN
A year or so ago I was bitching to my business partner about the fact that we had to, you know, actually sell our product, that it made me feel like just another damn peddler as opposed to the artiste I much preferred to consider myself. To which he responded, "You think this is bad? I was walking past South Station this morning and there was a guy there in a chicken suit handing out Metros. Now that's humiliating." Point taken.
The question for BostonNOW is, if your competition has a guy in a chicken suit handing out free product, what do you do? It's like getting an invitation to a Halloween party at Marilyn Manson's house and trying to figure out what to wear. If you show up in lipstick and fishnets (and are male), it's a sure thing everyone else will be wearing J. Crew. No matter which way you play it, you're going to lose.
On one hand, I am delighted to hear of the paper's demise, solely because there will be at minimum three fewer hawkers trying to stuff the damn thing down my shirt on my morning commute. One by the bus stop at Maverick square, one ten yards away at the T station, and another coming up out of the ground at South Station. I do hope those people find other, less annoying work, because it was an honest job, but until one of them mugs me to pay for his next round of scratch tickets, I'm putting it down as a win.
Likewise, this is probably good news for all the other papers in the city. All of them depend to varying degrees upon mindshare and advertising dollars, and BostonNOW did nothing but dilute what was already getting more watered-down than the seventh-inning beer at Fenway. It's not a good thing to have members of your herd dying off due to famine, but make no mistake: better them than you. That said, if I could have chosen, I'd much rather have seen the Metro go.
Make no mistake: BostonNOW was a laughingstock of a publication, the best argument I've ever seen for government licensing of writers, and a general offense to trees everywhere. But at least it took a run at personality, locality, and a needed break from the stupefying vapors of professional journalism that have over the past half-century utterly ruined an entertainingly disreputable business.
If Hell is English cooks, German policemen, and French mechanics, then the Metro is its newspaper, where "content" functions solely as a numbing lubricant to ease the entry of the real product, i.e., the ads for tires, online degree mills, and outpatient medical studies. If you think the Globe is a bit dull now, you have not even begun to imagine the possibilities yet to be exploited in extreme blandness in the service of ever-more-efficient distribution of promotional materials. I have seen the future, and it is a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand typewriters, rewriting press releases for Associated Press bureaux all over the world. ¶ 5:29 PM 0 Comments
A year or so ago I was bitching to my business partner about the fact that we had to, you know, actually sell our product, that it made me feel like just another damn peddler as opposed to the artiste I much preferred to consider myself. To which he responded, "You think this is bad? I was walking past South Station this morning and there was a guy there in a chicken suit handing out Metros. Now that's humiliating." Point taken.
The question for BostonNOW is, if your competition has a guy in a chicken suit handing out free product, what do you do? It's like getting an invitation to a Halloween party at Marilyn Manson's house and trying to figure out what to wear. If you show up in lipstick and fishnets (and are male), it's a sure thing everyone else will be wearing J. Crew. No matter which way you play it, you're going to lose.
On one hand, I am delighted to hear of the paper's demise, solely because there will be at minimum three fewer hawkers trying to stuff the damn thing down my shirt on my morning commute. One by the bus stop at Maverick square, one ten yards away at the T station, and another coming up out of the ground at South Station. I do hope those people find other, less annoying work, because it was an honest job, but until one of them mugs me to pay for his next round of scratch tickets, I'm putting it down as a win.
Likewise, this is probably good news for all the other papers in the city. All of them depend to varying degrees upon mindshare and advertising dollars, and BostonNOW did nothing but dilute what was already getting more watered-down than the seventh-inning beer at Fenway. It's not a good thing to have members of your herd dying off due to famine, but make no mistake: better them than you. That said, if I could have chosen, I'd much rather have seen the Metro go.
Make no mistake: BostonNOW was a laughingstock of a publication, the best argument I've ever seen for government licensing of writers, and a general offense to trees everywhere. But at least it took a run at personality, locality, and a needed break from the stupefying vapors of professional journalism that have over the past half-century utterly ruined an entertainingly disreputable business.
If Hell is English cooks, German policemen, and French mechanics, then the Metro is its newspaper, where "content" functions solely as a numbing lubricant to ease the entry of the real product, i.e., the ads for tires, online degree mills, and outpatient medical studies. If you think the Globe is a bit dull now, you have not even begun to imagine the possibilities yet to be exploited in extreme blandness in the service of ever-more-efficient distribution of promotional materials. I have seen the future, and it is a thousand monkeys, sitting at a thousand typewriters, rewriting press releases for Associated Press bureaux all over the world. ¶ 5:29 PM 0 Comments
Friday, April 11, 2008
Didn't Work for Mitt
John McCain will probably be the first Republican to be outspent by a Democrat in a long time. So what? The medium matters, but so does the message it delivers. McCain's campaign had the plug pulled out and stuck back in more times than Terri Schiavo. Romney outspent him by enough to name a few buildings in Harvard Yard, and yet, Mitt's the one looking for the right shade of lipstick to compliment the grumpy old man's cheeks.
This isn't to say that either Romney or McCain are or were perfect candidates, but neither is Obama. He lost Massachusetts on his merits, and since Super Tuesday he's fallen from the heights of Mount Olympus by failing to rid himself of a turbulent priest. Had Hillary not scored the most devastating own goal since Michael Dukakis hopped into a tank, Obama would likely be looking at a resounding enough beatdown in Pennsylvania to give the superdelegates pause (under GOP winner-take-all primary rules, she'd be ahead), but instead they've all been reminded of the one thing about the Clintons that we were all glad to be rid of eight years ago.
Nor does the path become easier for Obama as Hillary is forced into the rear-view mirror. Hillary pokes him with the tiniest of sticks and is called a murderess; the strongest arguments against him (he's an inexperienced pinko) are ones she can only make through third-cousin surrogates on public-access cable on nights with a crescent moon. Money buys you the chance to frame the debate, but what you put in the frame matters too. Just ask Mitt. ¶ 11:13 AM 0 Comments
John McCain will probably be the first Republican to be outspent by a Democrat in a long time. So what? The medium matters, but so does the message it delivers. McCain's campaign had the plug pulled out and stuck back in more times than Terri Schiavo. Romney outspent him by enough to name a few buildings in Harvard Yard, and yet, Mitt's the one looking for the right shade of lipstick to compliment the grumpy old man's cheeks.
This isn't to say that either Romney or McCain are or were perfect candidates, but neither is Obama. He lost Massachusetts on his merits, and since Super Tuesday he's fallen from the heights of Mount Olympus by failing to rid himself of a turbulent priest. Had Hillary not scored the most devastating own goal since Michael Dukakis hopped into a tank, Obama would likely be looking at a resounding enough beatdown in Pennsylvania to give the superdelegates pause (under GOP winner-take-all primary rules, she'd be ahead), but instead they've all been reminded of the one thing about the Clintons that we were all glad to be rid of eight years ago.
Nor does the path become easier for Obama as Hillary is forced into the rear-view mirror. Hillary pokes him with the tiniest of sticks and is called a murderess; the strongest arguments against him (he's an inexperienced pinko) are ones she can only make through third-cousin surrogates on public-access cable on nights with a crescent moon. Money buys you the chance to frame the debate, but what you put in the frame matters too. Just ask Mitt. ¶ 11:13 AM 0 Comments
