U.S. Senate hopeful Alan Khazei (D- Rhymes with Hazy) has been touting his endorsements throughout his campaign (Max Kennedy, we hardly heard ye!), but Khazei’s latest endorsement (via Politico) is his most head-scratching:
Caroline Kennedy: Khazei win would be ‘amazing’
According to the Politico report,
Caroline Kennedy was a guest at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s fundraiser last month for Khazei, where she lavished praise on the candidate.
“It would be amazing if this guy won.”
Damn.
The Missus received a 15″ x 12″ mailer from Martha Coakley today, urging her to vote for Coakley for U.S. Senate next Tuesday.
The flip side of the mailer featured the headline, “In Massachusetts, we know that results matter . . . ”
Below were facsimiles of news headlines such as “State suit alleges health insurers denied benefits’ – The Boston Globe, 1/24/07” and “‘Big Dig firm to pay state, city $16m’ – WBZ-CBS, 12/18/08.”
That information, of course, is meaningless since we don’t know a) whether the state suit against health insurers produced any relief at all for those who were “denied benefits” and b) whether the city/state could have – should have – gotten more from that “Big Dig firm.”
Hey, Martha – you say “In Massachusetts . . . results matter”?
The result of your mailer is, I just got the feeling there’s something you’re not telling us.
Last night’s Senate slapfight was a chiropractor’s dream:
Whiplash all around.
One minute Fightin’ Mike Capuano (D-Grimace) is glaring and barking at Scripted Stevie Pagliuca (D-Really! I’m a Regular Guy!). The next he’s saying what good people all his opponents are and how close they’ll stay after this race is over.
(Can’t wait for the big reunion dinner at Olive Garden. Breadsticks on Steve!)
But seriously, what’s with the Caps-slash-Pags smackdown? It’s like they’re battling for second place. Hey, guys – there’s no runoff in this primary. Didn’t your costly handlers tell you that?
Even more head-scratching – what was with the questions at the debate? All due respect to the journalists involved, those were the lamest inquiries this side of the U.S. House ethics investigation of Charlie Rangel.
Worst of the lot: “Why are you more likable than your opponents?”
I yield to no man in my respect for NECN’s RD Sahl, but good lord – did the debate producers have photos of him in Tijuana?
Meantime, Martha Coakley (D-Pack My Bags) weightlessly floated above the fray, while social entrepreneur Alan Khazei (D-Social Entrepreneur) furiously paddled below the waterline.
Bottom line: As of right now, this field is officially in amber.
Somebody book Martha’s flight to D.C.
Here’s pretty much all you need to know about last night’s Democratic Senate primary slapfight on WCVB:
The phrase “treading on dangerous water” was uttered up to several times during the televised debate.
Not to get technical about it, but:
1) The proper phrase is “treading on dangerous ground”
2) Treading on any water is inherently dangerous
Okay – on to the players:
Stephen “Stevey Healthcare” Pagliuca (D-ATM) pounded away at his support for Obamacare legislation regardless of how much it might restrict women’s already restricted access to abortion.
Martha “Am I Senator Yet?” Coakley (D-Sensitized) continued to run out the clock.
Michael “Hey, Call Me Mike” Capuano (D-Kennedy) continued to run his mouth.
Alan “Alan” Khazei (D-???) continued to run.
Wake me on December 9th.
Headline in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “Woods Speaks Out on Crash, Blaming Himself.”
(Ennhh – I’m sorry, that’s wrong. But thanks for playing.)
Because here’s the lede of the WSJ piece:
Tiger Woods broke his silence about his driving accident by posting a statement Sunday on his Web site. He also hired a criminal-defense attorney and declined to meet with crash investigators for the third straight day.
So Woods didn’t speak out – he Webbed out, which is the same as opted out. The Journal, however, almost redeemed itself with Jason Gay’s excellent piece in Monday’s WSJ Sports section.
Lede:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is why the planet needs a 24-hour celebrity-golf-justice channel.
No argument here.
The (left-leaning) mainstream media would have you believe that the Republican party is engaged in an ideological civil war.
So said The Weekly Standard recently in a Scrapbook entry headlined “A Dysfunctional GOP?”
Nut graf:
A supposed civil war in the Republican party has been a theme of mainstream coverage of the recent elections. Evidence on the ground is thin. As the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted:
After years of trailing far behind Democrats, Republicans have now surpassed Democrats as the public’s choice in the 2010 congressional elections. In response to the latest so-called “generic ballot” question from the Gallup organization–“If elections for Congress were being held today, which party’s candidate would you vote for in your congressional district?”–the new results are 48 percent for Republicans versus 44 percent for Democrats among registered voters, and 46 percent for Republicans versus 44 percent for Democrats among adults nationwide. It’s an extraordinary turnaround for the GOP. Last July, Democrats held a six-point lead. Last December, Democrats held a 15-point lead. At one point in 2007, Democrats held a 23-point lead, and for all of that year, 2007, Democrats held a double-digit lead.
Regardless of whether that’s an accurate reflection of the current state of political affairs, here comes the Sunday New York Times with a Page One report headlined “South Carolina Rift Highlights a G.O.P. Debate.”
When Senator Lindsey Graham joined forces last month with Senator John Kerry on a compromise to the climate change legislation known as cap and trade, it was the last straw for the Charleston County Republican Party.
The county party, which has traditionally been considered moderate, voted by a wide margin to censure Mr. Graham in harsh terms.
So – “supposed civil war”? Or “GOP Dysfunction”?
Discuss among yourselves.
Here at the Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider, the hardworking staff has conducted a love/hate relationship with Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Peggy Noonan.
But Noonan’s piece this weekend is right on target.
Headlined “He Can’t Take Another Bow,” Noonan’s column assails Pres. Obama for being obsequious in foreign policy and immaturely ham-handed in domestic affairs.
Noonan cites an Elizabeth Drew piece in Politico to illustrate the latter:
Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, “a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man.” They once held “an unromantically high opinion of Obama,” and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn’t “the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought.”
She scored “the Chicago crowd,” which she characterized as “a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team.” The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision—”an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment.”
On the foreign policy front, Noonan points to Obama’s routine bowing to foreign leaders:
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren’t playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying “Tough Talks Yield Big Progress” or “Obama Shows Muscle in China,” the bowing pictures might be understood this way: “He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation’s interests.”
But that’s not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.
According to Noonan, the pictures reflect a basic misunderstanding/disregard of protocol, “of what has been done before and why, and of what divergence from the traditional might imply.”
When a great nation is feeling confident and strong, a surprising presidential bow might seem gracious. When it is feeling anxious, a bow will seem obsequious.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.
No kidding.
Exhibit A: The Excellent White House Adventure last week of two reality-show wannabes who crashed the state dinner for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh.
Exhibit B: The rumpus over the conduct of Obama’s White House social secretary Desiree Rogers (via The Daily Beast):
Breaking with tradition, Rogers was a guest to the state dinner, which honored Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife. She arrived solo, in a cream-colored Comme de Garcons dress, a curious choice that has since been the subject of considerable sniping online.
In the past, White House social secretaries have worked, not partied, on the nights of major events, racing around to make sure everything is going according to plan.
Of course, everything did not go according to plan. But that’s the inevitable result of an administration that wants to reinvent the wheels of government.
Which results in a lot of wheel-spinning.
Which, in turn, results in a lot of media-spinning.
Which is what the Obama administration will be doing on the Sunday morning squawk shows.
Three-plus weeks after the fact, the New York Times obituarized Boston’s own Brother Blue.
Hugh Morgan Hill, who as the storyteller known as Brother Blue captivated passers-by on the streets of Boston and Cambridge, Mass., with his parables, life stories and idiosyncratic retellings of Shakespeare’s plays, and who became a fixture at storytelling conferences and gatherings in the United States and abroad, died on Nov. 3 at his home in Cambridge. He was 88.
And he was a lot closer to 89 by the time the Times got around to noticing.
Of course, a three-week-delay might be the average for Boston-to-New-York news.
See this NYT piece on the U.S. Senate race to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Anything there you didn’t know?
Q.E.D.
As it happens, Black Friday (amazing how quickly that retailers’ nickname for the day after Thanksgiving – it puts them in the black – became common currency in popular speech) increases not only sales at retail outlets, but wire-service salience at newspapers as well.
Case in point: The Boston Globe’s November 27 A section, which included a fat (by today’s standards) 36 pages.
As usual on most days, Page One featured only Globe bylines – four, to be exact. But the other 23 stories that filled the expanded-by-advertising newshole were plucked from the wires of the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times (big time), the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune.
(Oddly, nothing from the Globe mother ship’s New York Times syndicate.)
Over all, a Bleak Friday for Globe content.
Reheated dishes from the hardworking staff’s Turkey Day media menu:
Item: PETA’s the Party Pooper
The animal-rights group PETA had a special recipe for Thanksgiving dinner: An appetite-suppressing TV spot (via AdGabber via BU student Alex N) featuring a little girl saying grace at the family table. It went something like this, as described in a PETA press release:
“Dear God, thank you for the turkey we’re about to eat–and for the turkey farms where they pack them into dark, tiny little sheds for their whole lives,” the girl in the ad begins. As her relatives react, she continues, “And special thanks for all the chemicals and dirt and poop that’s in the turkey we’re about to eat.” The ad concludes, “This Thanksgiving, be thankful you’re not a turkey. Go vegan.”
Grace note: The press release was headlined “PETA’S Thanksgiving ‘Grace’ Commercial Banned by TV Networks” (actually, network affiliates), which legitimate news sources confirmed.
Funny thing is, by PETA standards, the “Grace” commercial is the animal-rights equivalent of Trix Are For Kids. The average PETA ad is more incendiary than Glenn Beck (go nuts here). That’s a common tactic for advocacy groups with limited marketing resources: They look to get the biggest bang for their advertising buck. Unfortunately, that approach often blows up in their face.
Let’s be clear: No one (in their right mind) is in favor of animal abuse. But PETA is abusive in a different way. It assaults people’s sensibilities so they’re disinclined to support an organization they’d normally be sympathetic to.
If PETA could control its animal instincts, it might gather a bigger herd.
Item: Fantastic Mr. Fox Is . . . Fantastic
The Missus and I spent Thanksgiving afternoon watching Wes Anderson’s film of the classic 1970 Roald Dahl children’s book. (Here’s a taste.)
The story line is engaging, the animation is riveting, and the whole thing is delightful.
The hardworking staff gives it four tails.
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