Good News For Kinky Lovers

Posted on August 1, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The Lone Star-studded political news this week is that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Don’t Mess With My Political Ambitions) has made a beehive – sorry, beeline – to the Texas gubernatorial race.

Hutchison announced that she’ll leave her Senate seat in November to campaign full time against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry (R-Don’t Mess With Me, Period – Or I’ll Secede). That GOP primary smackdown promises to be a battle of right wing vs. righter wing (I’ll leave it to you to sort out who’s who).

Luckily, the right wingnut has also entered the race. Musician/novelist/quadrennial corner-office candidate Kinky Friedman is back for another electoral dip of the wick – always a welcome event given his proven multimedia prowess.

Not surprisingly, though, Friedman’s monetary prowess is once again relatively limp, as this Austin American-Statesman blog post about gubernatorial fundraising indicated several weeks ago.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer of Fort Worth revealed today he’s raised almost $800,000 in contributions. That’s far less than what Republican Gov. Rick Perry or his expected primary challenger, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, have said they each corraled, but probably in excess of what Democratic prospect Kinky Friedman will be reporting this week (I’ve heard Friedman has raised less than $100,000, the bulk of it from Spicewood entrepreneur and long-time Friedman supporter John McCall).

Kinky lovers of the world, unite!

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This Kabuki’s For You, Part 2

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

You’d have to be Evelyn Wood herself to read all the reviews of last evening’s Beer Blanket Bingo at the White House.  Suffice it to say that the post mortems ranged from the predictable (the Drudge Report labeled Pres. Obama our “Bartender in Chief”) to the unpredictable (Slate reporter John Dickerson’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Brewski: Or the politics and semiotics of the Gates-Crowley beer summit”) to the totally predictable  (Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s statement to his house organ, theroot.com):

Narratives about race are as old as the founding of this great Republic itself, but these new ones have unfolded precisely when Americans signaled to the world our country’s great progress by overcoming centuries of habit and fear, and electing an African American as President.

File that under “Sentences We Never Finished,”  à la The Weekly Standard.

But the best reaction to the White House kegger, as David Letterman dubbed it, came from MSNBC video savant  Chris Matthews. Right after Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley finished his cool, calm and collected press conference in the wake of Julyfest, Matthews said, “I have watched politicians for about 40 years now, he’s better than most of them.”

Politico’s Roger Simon gushed about Crowley, “Is that guy suave or what? ‘We had a cordial, productive discussion’ – he’s like a head of state.”

Matthews then exclaimed, “I feel like we’re watching ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ – we got our Susan Boyle here.”

I guess the only thing left is for some media-savvy British cop to arrest Susan Boyle in her home.

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Rather Blather

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Dan Rather tells the Aspen Daily News that Pres. Obama should form a White House Commission to help save the press.

A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom,” Rather said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”

“A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom,” Rather said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”

Yes, and the red beating heart of a truly free and independent press is a healthy avoidance of government entanglements, regardless of worthy intent.
Rather’s all over CBS for sandbagging him in an effort  to suck up to the Bush White House five years, but now it’s okay to get in bed with the federal government?
Dan needs a hobby.
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This Kabuki’s For You

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

If today’s Obama-Crowley-Gates beer klatche isn’t the most transparent photo op of 2009, it’ll do till something else comes along.

Dead giveaway that this is a shadow dance: Imageer-in-Chief Barack Obama has beer-shifted (for reasons that the chin-strokerati have belabored in Talmudic detail) from first-reported Budweiser to – Breaking! – Bud Light, accent on light.

Let’s hope Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard University poohbah Henry Louis Gates Jr. are more steadfast in their choice of malt beverages.

Beyond that there are the numerous public polls along the lines of  the BettyConfidential survey, “If you had a beer with the President, what would you discuss?”

All due respect, but who cares – outside of you, that is.

Regardless, the Beltway Beer Summit will no doubt produce more bromides than an Alka-Seltzer factory.

Given all the hoopla surrounding this brew-ha, it serves us right.

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Momola

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

I yield to no man in my admiration for Mommy bloggers, who are, after all, Moms.

But accusations that Mommy blogs are engaged in pay-for-playpen product placement are plaguing the parental precincts of the plugosphere.

Phew.

Start with the New York Times piece two weeks ago that noted this online promotional trend:

Marketing companies are keen to get their products into the hands of so-called influencers who have loyal online followings because the opinions of such consumers help products stand out amid the clutter, particularly in social media.

Mommy bloggers are increasingly plugging free products they receive. And for the most part, they’ve restricted their reviews to positive reactions. Buzzkill Moms need not apply.

That’s led to a bloggy backlash, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week:

Moms who blog about all things baby and family are abuzz after the blog MomDot spearheaded a “PR Blackout challenge” for one week in August. Mommy bloggers should avoid publishing press releases, reviewing products or promoting giveaways, writes MomDot blogger Trisha Haas, because plugging products causes too much stress, deadline anxiety and time away from the family.

The WSJ piece also quoted a soi-disant UnMommy blogger:

Daily Finance blogger Sarah Gilbert (who says that she is not a mommy blogger but is “journaling online about motherhood”), says that a PR blackout is a sign that online marketing via mothers has gone too far.

The Federal Trade Commission certainly thinks so. As Poynter Institute columnist Al Tompkins poynts out:

[The FTC is] now considering revising its guidelines for editorials and testimonials in ads and requiring that bloggers tell readers when they have been paid or otherwise compensated by a company they are writing about [PDF]. If a computer company were to send you a laptop to test and keep, for instance, you would have to disclose this information when blogging.

Some – like Women’s Wear Daily’s Memo Pad in a post about the 2009 BlogHer conference in Chicago this past weekend – have asked why Mommy bloggers are being targeted when technology bloggers are given a pass.

Session leaders encouraged bloggers to follow their own instincts and questioned why the FTC was targeting parenting bloggers when technology bloggers have been receiving free goods, trips and other swag for years.

Beyond that, as Daily Finance blogger Sarah Gilbert noted in the abovementioned post “Mommy blogger brouhaha is the new Mary Kay”:

Mommy blogs are not mommy blogs if they’re marketing vehicles, just as parties are not parties if there’s an expectation that you buy something before you say “goodbye.” The suggestion that moms only write about their kids and their husbands for a week isn’t shocking because it would be gnawing off the hand that feeds you; it’s shocking because it has to be said at all.

The hardworking (but childless) staff at Campaign Outsider thinks that says it all.

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Tailin’ Palin

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had barely ended her farewell speech on Sunday (Executive summary: I’m more powerful now that I’m not governor of the least populous but largest state in the Union) when liberal pill-and-a-pest organization MoveOn.org had a TV spot whacking Palin up and running on nationwide cable (hat tip to ABC News’s daily digest, The Note).

Clearly, as Sarah Palin pursues her dream of . . . whatever,  her greatest strength will be her opponents’  weakness – that is, the left’s inability to just ignore Palin.

Solution: Give her a good leaving alone, and Palin will find herself, well, alone.

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Cool!

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

I loved this story in the New York Times.

Headline:

“The Bruise Heard Round the World.”

Lede:

IF you’re an astro-geek, this was as good as it gets.

Around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing last week, an amateur astronomer in Australia detected evidence that a comet had collided with Jupiter, leaving a bruise the size of Earth. This was just days before the longest solar eclipse the world will see this century, in Asia — and in the same summer as a new “Star Trek” movie, no less.

For backyard stargazers, it hasn’t been this delicious since Pluto was demoted from planet status.

A bruise the size of Earth. Yikes!

It was “what seemed to be the biggest planetary collision since 1994, when fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet also collided with Jupiter (hey, with a mass two and a half times greater than all the other planets in the solar system combined, it’s a big target).”

Obvious question in the Times piece:

“Would a blow like this to Earth wipe out civilization?”

Alas,  the piece never provides an answer. So, here’s mine.

Yikes!

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Skipping Skip, Part 3

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

It’s well known that the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider has valiantly refrained from crowd surfing Gatesapalooza.

And the thing the hardworking staff doesn’t want to talk about today is this quote from the Skipster in an Associated Press report (via Breitbart.com):

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he is ready to move on from his arrest by a white police officer, hoping to use the encounter to improve fairness in the criminal justice system and saying “in the end, this is not about me at all.”

Puh-leeze. This is entirely about Gates. For further evidence, see Glenn Loury’s New York Times op-ed piece, which makes some good, if debatable, points, including this one:

As far as I am concerned, the ubiquity of this narrative shows that we are incapable of talking straight with one another about race. And this much-publicized incident is emblematic of precisely nothing at all. Rather, the Gates arrest is a made-for-cable-TV tempest in a teapot.

All it lacks is the Mad Hatter.

Paging Johnny Depp. Paging Mr. Johnny Depp.

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Palin’s Sailin’

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin officially leaves office today – not exactly the equivalent of British monarch Edward VIII’s abdication, but close enough for cable.

And for the Wall Street Journal, which added this tidbit to the mix:

One clue Ms. Palin isn’t likely to retreat into the long Alaskan night came from a July 22 post on her Twitter account, in which she recites some lyrics to “Rollin’,” a song by the country-western duo Big & Rich. “Ain’t gonna shut my mouth/ I know there’s got to be a few hundred million more like me/ just trying to keep it free,” she wrote.

Look for a Palin’s Flailin’ post coming soon to a Campaign Outsider near you.

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High Noonan

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider had a little fling with Peggy Noonan – as a reader, as a reader – during the 2008 presidential campaign.  Noonan was at the top of her game in her Wall Street Journal column back then, and the hardworking staff – along with NBC’s hothouse anchor Brian Williams – posited a Pulitzer  in Noonan’s future.

Alas, Noonan’s writing has fallen off since then, but her latest WSJ column, headlined “Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare,” is pretty good.  Here’s a representative sample:

The White House misread the national mood. The problem isn’t that they didn’t “bend the curve,” or didn’t sell it right. The problem is that the national mood has changed since the president was elected. Back then the mood was “change is for the good.” But that altered as the full implications of the financial crash seeped in. The crash gave everyone a diminished sense of their own margin for error. It gave them a diminished sense of their country’s margin for error. Americans are not in a chance-taking mood.

Pretty good, except for this:

The final bill, with all its complexities, will probably be huge, a thousand pages or so. Americans don’t fear the devil’s in the details, they fear hell is. Do they want the same people running health care who gave us the Department of Motor Vehicles, the post office and the invasion of Iraq?

Noonan could just have easily written, “Do they want the same people running heath care who gave us Medicare, the 40-hour work week and the moon landing?”

It all depends on how you hold it up to the light.

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