California Goes From Gimbels To Lohan

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed piece:

California: The Lindsay Lohan of States

Lede:

Listen up, California. The other 48 states—your cousin New York excluded—are sick of your bratty arrogance. You’re the Lindsay Lohan of states: a prima donna who once showed some talent but is now too wasted to do anything with it.

That’s a far cry from Raymond Chandler’s dismissal of 1940s California as “the department store state: the most of everything and the best of nothing.”

Hard to believe the Golden State could get much lower than that. But apparently it has.

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Somewhere Over The Atlantic Ocean . . .

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

I’m reading a shattering piece in the November Atlantic headlined “The Last Patrol,” story and photographs by Brian Mockenhaupt.

The article’s tag says: Brian Mockenhaupt, a former infantryman, is a writer in Detroit.

Make that, a helluva writer.

Here’s the intro to his remarkably brave reporting:

In September 2009, the second platoon of Charlie Company arrived in Afghanistan with 42 men. Ten months later, nearly half had been killed or wounded, mostly in the Arghandab Valley—a key to controlling southern Afghanistan. Now these 82nd Airborne troops were getting ready to leave the Arghandab behind. They had one more dangerous job to do: a joint mission with the untried artillery unit that would replace them patrolling the fields, orchards, and villages they called the Devil’s Playground.

And the devil gets his due in one harrowing, horrifying day.

I could quote endlessly from this piece, but really, you should just go read it.

 

 

 

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What’s Better/Worse In London From Twenty Years Ago

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

The London Underground

Better

Upgraded cars, stations

Worse

£4 single rides

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand

Better

The food

Worse

The dress

British House of Commons

Better

No Gordon Brown

Worse

No cries of “reading!” when MPs are, well, reading

CCTV

Better

More cameras!

Worse

More cameras!

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Cezanne’s Card Players

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Hidden gem alert:

The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in London.

On view now is the exhibit “Cezzane’s Card Players,” which assembles all but two of Paul Cezanne’s studies and finished works of what many think is his greatest painting.

From the Courtauld website:

Paul Cézanne’s famous paintings of peasant card players have long been considered to be among his most iconic and powerful works. This landmark exhibition is the first to bring together the majority of these remarkable paintings alongside a magnificent group of closely related portraits of Provençal peasants and rarely seen preparatory oil sketches, watercolours and exquisite drawings.

The Courtauld Gallery’s two masterpieces from this series, The Card Players and Man with a Pipe, are joined by exceptional loans from international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, to offer a visual feast of some of the artist’s finest paintings.

Not to mention the Fauvist feast in the rest of the gallery: from Dufy and Derain to Vlaminck and Matisse.

Also a feast: The Diaghelev exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Well worth the trip.

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When A Man Is Tired Of London

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

It’s been 15 years since I was last in London. But here I am, sitting on a bench alongside the Thames with Big Ben, Big Ferris Wheel, and Waterloo Bridge to my right, the National Theatre directly across from me.

(The Missus and I saw Anthony Hopkins there in Pravda in – when? – 1985.)

Anyway, we’re back, this time on very different business than before. Throughout the ’80s, the Missus would come here to check out the fabric shows for the shoe clients she did trend forecasting and product development for.

Eventually, though, we shifted to Paris for the fabric shows, largely because it was just more pleasant to be there.

There’s a coarseness to London that’s only gotten worse over the years. We saw it tonight in the young men and women who populate the West End every day.

The great Dr. Johnson said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

Maybe. But back in London after 15 years, I could get tired of this place pretty quick.

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WSJ/NYT Op-Ed Gingrich Smackdown!

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal and New York Times each featured a Newt Gingrichabilia op-ed, to very different effect.

Exhibit A: The WSJ op-ed from former George W. Bush press secretary Ari “You Talkin’ to Me?” Flesicher.

Nut graf:

Having served as the majority spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee after Republicans took the House in 1994, I’ve seen the promise and the peril of divided government before.

That would be the Gingrich era of gridlock, government shutdowns, and gratuitous impeachment investigations – exactly what the current Republicans are promising over the next two years.

Exhibit B: Times Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd’s column featuring a series of quotes from the House Speaker-in-waiting:

“What the American people were saying is ‘Enough!’ ” the Speaker-to-be told me, as he savored his own win and his party’s landslide, which he said was “a historical tide, not just a partisan election” . . .

The next Speaker felt that the humbled president should take the election as a cue to be conciliatory, and he proposed they talk in the next few days. He offered to reach out to Democrats who wanted to work with his side, but also noted that the president would not be wise to stand in the way of the conservative agenda.

“I prefer to believe that this president, who is clearly very smart, is quite capable of thinking clearly about a message sent by the American people,” he said . . .

He said that contrary to what the media elite had been jabbering about, he would not use his subpoena power to rain down a series of investigations on the Democratic administration.

No “witch hunts,” he said. Only “legitimate” investigations.

The kicker:

Yeah, that all worked out for Newt Gingrich. He really came through. The quotes above came from Gingrich, when I covered his heady victory in Marietta, Ga., in the 1994 Republican landslide that made him Speaker.

Paging John Boehner. Paging House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner.

Smackdown Scoreboard: NYT 1, WSJ 0.

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“Let Tim Smoke”

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

That’s exactly what San Francisco Giants ace Tim Lincecum did in the World Serious, although the slogan actually refers to Lincecum’s pot bust last year, as New York Times reporter Tyler Kepner has noted:

Lincecum dresses in the space that once belonged to Barry Bonds, who is largely scorned for his role in baseball’s steroids scandal. Lincecum was charged last off-season with marijuana possession, but that seems to have endeared him even more to certain fans in San Francisco, where a popular T-shirt bears the slogan, “Let Tim Smoke.”

Lincecum is the Best Pitcher Nobody Knew – until this week. He’s only earned two Cy Young Awards and only has the most strikeouts in baseball history for a pitcher’s first four seasons.

At 26.

They don’t call him The Freak for nothing.

More from Kepner’s fine NYT piece:

[B]aseball was his destiny, shaped in the suburbs of Seattle by his father, Chris, who worked for Boeing. Chris built his son’s unusual delivery: back to the plate, glove raised to the sky, then a whirling of hips and a stride, wrote Roger Angell of The New Yorker, like “a January commuter arching over six feet of slush.”

Beautiful.

Just like Lincecum’s performance in the Serious.

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Dead Blogging Massachusetts Election Night TV

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Having no life of its own, the hardwatching staff guerilla-monitored Boston television stations’ Election Night coverage.

9:30ish

New New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-I Will Not Let That Happen), after trouncing Charlie Bass (D-Flounder) Paul Hodes (D-Baloney), declared her victory at 15 CPM (Cliches Per Minute).

Representative sample: We are taking our country back.

Taking it back from other Americans, Kelly? Or what?

10ish

Fox News Channel calls the Massachusetts gubernatorial race for Deval Patrick.

MSNBC: Chris Matthews looks like hell. He sounds that way, too.

CNN: It’s like they had a chinstroker bakeoff and everybody won. On the set: Candy Crowley, Anderson Cooper, Soledad O’Brien, David Gergen, Eliot Spitzer, Kathleen Parker, Gloria Borger.

Can you have too much punditry?

Bill Delahunt calls 10th Congressional race for Bill Keating. WCVB’s Heather Unruh Uncalls it.

Sean Bielat concedes to Barney Frank after taking on “a 30-year incumbent in one of the most gerrymandered districts in the state.” But mostly Bielat tells his wife she’s going to drop their baby (three times) and tells the crowd “I’m worried for my son’s safety.”

Sean Bielat is an idiot.

10:30ish

He’s baack:

Say goodbye to Barney (The Big Purple Congressman) Frank, and say hello to the old snarky Barney:

“This election has confirmed the complete political irrelevance of the Boston Herald.”

11ish

Charlie Baker delivers a classy concession speech. If we’d seen more of this Charlie Baker during the campaign, the race would have been a lot closer tonight.

Deval Patrick (D-Four More Years!) continues his Mr. Rogers impersonation.

Did you vote for Deval?

I knew you would.

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How About Them Jints? (World Serious Champion Edition)

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

The lovably misfit San Francisco Giants, the postseason team least likely to win the World Serious, did just that Monday night.

In the process, they once again (after cuffing him around in Game 1) made Texas Rangers ace Cliff Lee look all-too-human. Lee actually pitched pretty well in Game 5, but one bad pitch (Hello, Edgar!) done him in, as they say.

Meanwhile, hats off to:

• Giants ace Tim Lincecum, who went lights-out in Games 1 and 5;

• Giants closer Brian Wilson, who recorded two saves, zero earned runs in te Serious;

• Series MVP Edgar Renteria, the first non-Yankee in baseball history to have a game– Series-winning hit in two World Series.

Given the small TV markets involved, the Fox network didn’t love this World Serious.

But I did.

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Yvonne Abraham Channels Gail Collins

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Saturday New York Times column from Gail Collins:

Name That Candidate

The end of an election season is always thick with regrets. Do you think Meg Whitman is contemplating all the other things she could have done with $141 million? Does the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in West Virginia kick himself for allowing his wife to establish a voting residence in Florida?

Among the other questions Collins posed:

II. Match the excuses:

A) “I’ll put it up on my Web site, I promise you.”

B) “I had read that in one place.”

C) “This is four years ago.”

D) “You know, I’m a mom. … My daughter’s in Europe.”

1) Sharron Angle, the U.S. Senate candidate in Nevada on her claim that Dearborn, Mich., and the nonexistent town of Frankford, Tex., are governed by Sharia law.

2) Alex Sink, a gubernatorial candidate in Florida, explaining why she looked at a debate tip, texted onstage via a makeup artist’s cellphone.

3) Ben Quayle, a Congressional candidate in Arizona, on charges by the owner of the Dirty Scottsdale Web site that Quayle once ran a section aimed at finding “the hottest chick in Scottsdale.”

4) Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on her failure to come up with a Supreme Court ruling she disagreed with.

(Answers: A-4; B-1; C-3; D-2.)

Cut to: Sunday Boston Globe column from Yvonne Abraham:

Political savvy tested

Hallelujah! This wacky-ugly political season is almost over. Even for Massachusetts, we saw a whole lotta crazy this year. But how closely were you paying attention? Test your political junkiness with this fun quiz!

Among the questions Abraham posed:

3. When asked to name his favorite beer, the governor of Massachusetts chose:

A. Sam Adams, brewed by The Boston Beer Company
B. Any of the delicious Harpoon beers, made in Boston and Windsor, Vt.
C. A toffy, obscure beer called Moretti from Udine, Italy
D. Bud, a beer drunk by real men who are People Like Us

Answer: C, and winner of the Senator John “Ducati’’ Kerry Award.

Don’t get me wrong: Abraham’s column was a lot of fun.

Just a lot of Collins as well.

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