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     I was going, gentle readers, to write something about that stupid Barack Obama song being peddled by some GOP stalwart named Chip Saltsnan who wants to be the party's new chairman.  I was going to, but I can't.  It's just too tacky to quote. The rhymes aren't very good--"Farrakhan" and "won" rhyme about as well as "on" and "won."  Too tacky. Too vulgar.  Can't do it.

 

     Fortunately, there are lots of smart Republicans who will never elect a twit like this as party chairman.  Period.  Full stop.

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December 28, 2008

 
     At the end of a year this columnist likes to remember some of those we lost during that year. There is never enough room for all the valuable dead, but here are some:
 
     We lost Mark Felt an FBI agent who, as Deep Throat, was the source who helped end Richard Nixon's presidency.  We lost actress and singer Eartha Kitt and playwright Harold Pinter.  Just imagine her in one of his. Oh my.
 
     We lost Jesse Helms, an unapologetically racist senator whose time, thankfully, had passed.  We lost Studs Terkel, a writer and philosopher whom I grew up hearing on the radio.
 
     We lost Alexander Solzhenitsyn, another writer and philosopher who helped bring down the Soviet Empire. That was real empire;  we also lost Charlton Heston, who played the rulers of lots of fictional ones.  Also from Hollywood, we mourned Cyd Charisse, a dancer and actress of great grace.  And Van Johnson, a star from back when stars were really stars.  And Paul Newman died, perhaps the finest actor of his generation and certainly the one with the bluest eyes.
 
     Music lost Odetta Holmes, who shared the blues with us.  And Bo Diddley, an icon of rock and roll.
 
     Conservatism lost Bill Buckley, one of its most literate voices.  Bobby Fischer died.  As a youngster he'd been the world champion of chess, and if he never seemed quite sure of what to do next, wasn't that something all by itself?
 
     Journalism lost Tim Russert who never ran out of well-researched, pointed questions for his guests on "Meet the Press."  Fashion lost Yves St. Laurent.  And the idea of bravery in response to challenge--that lost Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mt. Everest and set an example for us all.
 
       

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Holiday wishes

Ann Hawthorne, who edits this column, will be taking a leave from her editorial duties over the holidays. The column will resume after the holidays.

Happy Holidays!!!

December 17, 2008

     Well, no, New York Governor David Paterson doesn't have to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton will vacate when she becomes Secretary of State, but I kind of hope he does.
 
     There are all kinds of other interesting New Yorkers.  The New Yorker magazine lists, among others, such disparate figures as basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, novelist Toni Morrison, and the theatre's Arthur Laurents.  They might all be wonderful, but I do like Caroline.
 
     Critics say she lacks experience.  They're wrong.  She has experienced tragedy--murdered father, murdered uncle and the death of her brother.  She has experienced joy--brought her kids up out of the spotlight so that they could lead relatively normal lives.  She has an uncle who's been in the Senate for about a hundred years.  He can advise her on how the place works or, sometimes, doesn't.  And it's worth remembering that Ted, her uncle, was first elected as a kid with no experience at much of anything. 
 
     Experience isn't what you need anyway.  A good staff can explain the technicalities of drafting a bill or offering an amendment.  What you need is a sense of what will be good for the country.  I suspect that Caroline Kennedy has as clear an idea as most of us of where she thinks we should go.
 
     She led an out-of-the-limelight life until a year or so ago, but then she campaigned vigorously for Obama and was one of his advisors on choosing a running-mate.  She has had a chance to see how campaigns and politicians work.  And she's smart;  I think she's shown that.
 
     So if she wants it, now that the kids are grown, I hope she gets it.  If she's terrible at it, the voters can pick someone else in just two years. 
 
 
      

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December 15, 2008

 

    

 

 

      Shoes don't make history very often.  I'm old enough to remember Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on a desk at the United Nations General Assembly one year.  That was a pretty good story.  Shoe as gavel?  Shoe as symbol of protest?  Whatever.

 

     And now of course we have an Iraqi reporter chucking both his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad news conference.  Shoe as weapon?  Probably not;  it's hard to imagine doing serious hurt to anybody with a shoe--maybe a spiked sports shoe or a stiletto, but these were just the usual, wear 'em to work variety.  Shoes as protest--well I guess so.  And did the reporter get carted off to jail in his stocking feet?  Not to worry--even a jail cell in Iraq is unlikely to be cold.

 

     Today we read that thousands turned out in the streets of Baghdad to demonstrate in support of the shoe-throwing newsie.  Now that's the good news.  We claim we invaded Iraq to teach them, among other things, about democracy.  And what could be more democratic than showing your dislike for the power occupying your country by cheering the guy who threw shoes at its president?

 

     I don't know, of course, what they'll do to the reporter turned shoe-chucker, but what they should probably do is give him a medal.   And we, of course, should say to ourselves--hey, protest, democracy--these guys really get it.  Mission accomplished (this president likes that slogan).  Let's all go home.

 

     Never happen, of course, but you've got to hope. 

 

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December 14, 2008

     Usually, presidents start off with pretty good press.  The negative reviews and all that come later.  It feels odd to be defending Barack Obama this early, but here we go.
 
     I've seen two or three stories the past couple of days wondering if, maybe, Obama wasn't involved with his state's disgraced governor, Rod Blagojevitch.  Hadn't there been some talk between the two about the Senate seat Obama's vacating?  Might he have shared the governor's plan to sell it?
 
     Well, the short, simple answer to these questions seems to be, no.  Obama, I read, hadn't spoken to the governor in over a year.  That's a long time in politics.  Had his staffers ever mentioned a possible successor to the governor?  Hard to be certain there, so many more people are involved.  But I have seen absolutely no credible evidence that any of Obama's people ever bargained with any of the governor's people, no evidence that Obama or anyone on his staff did anything wrong.
 
     Herblock, the late Washington Post cartoonist, always drew Richard Nixon with a heavy five o'clock shadow.  I remember a cartoon he ran when Nixon won the presidency in 1968 showing him smiling and beardless.  "This column," the caption read "gives every new president a clean shave."   Let's do the same for Obama.
 
     Nixon, of course, later famously said, "This president is not a crook," and people argue about that to this day.  But Obama's done nothing wrong that I know of, so let's give him a clean shave and a happy, smiling start.  The job will challenge him later--it always does--he'll face controversies and make enemies--they always do.  
 
     But I wish you a very happy start, sir.  You'll want to remember it when things get ugly later on.    

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December 13, 2008

 
      I, and most of us who've covered politics in recent years, lost a gifted friend yesterday.
 
     Robin Toner, whose newspaper career started in West Virginia but who spent 23 years at the New York Times, died of colon cancer.
 
     I met Robin, as best I can remember, on Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign.  She was there for the Times;  I, for CBS.  We sat together on the campaign enough that we got to be friends.  She was an excellent reporter, a good observer who knew how politics worked and could write about it clearly and with authority.
 
     And she had a good calm temperament, which helps on the road where things can and do go wrong.  Hers was a face you were always glad to see on the bus, the plane, at the press conference, wherever.  Just a good person with whom to share the trip.
 
     I've missed her because I'm retired now and didn't cover the '08 campaign.  Now, sadly, I'll miss her fine stories too.   

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