Deliberate

After his unexpected and extraordinary Ft. Hood speech yesterday and his equally grave Veteran's Day speech today, President Barack Obama appears to be taking the risking of American military lives more seriously than any President in recent memory:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's thinking.

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama's resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

The whole article is worth reading, as our President appears working hard to avoid the key mistake of America's involvement in Vietnam -- supporting a corrupt regime doing our servicemen and women no favors.

Bravo, and here's to a wise, considered, responsible and effective decision.

War Stories

So the post-Ft. Hood violent backlash against Muslims begins...even when they're not:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

This on the same day that more Blackwater bad actions were revealed:

WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Cash is king!

And, today, our President delivered a moving eulogy for the victims of the Ft. Hood attack, mentioning each one by name and telling something about their lives.

And "Taps" is the saddest song.

Mad-Capper

Yes, SPOILERS.





My favorite line in the Season Three Mad Men finale, "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," is one that doesn' t make much sense out of context, but at the point it arrives within this singularly upbeat episode, it causes a smile even upon repeat viewing. It's said by Don Draper when Lane Pryce, having been offered a partnership in the new firm if only he'll fire the first three partners, says, "I imagine it's worth considerably more than that." Don's eyes light up as he says it: "So now we're negotiating."

If, as creator Matthew Weiner says, every episode of Mad Men is meant to be a different genre, this one is the caper movie. Sure, it has it's melancholy counterpoints, most notably when Don and Betty do their typically terrible parenting job in explaining their impending divorce to the kids, certainly in the flashbacks to Don's father's farm failure and accidental death, which are much of what goads him into taking decisive action and set the caper in motion. There's a scary late night fight scene with Don returning home drunk, having just learned from Roger of Betty's new paramour, her "lifeboat," Henry Francis, is another classic of physical acting between Jon Hamm and January Jones, at her best. But most of all there's joy, and I'd put the relief of seeing Betty on an airplane to Reno in this same category.

Joy is an emotion missing from so much of Mad Men and hard-won when it comes, typically offset by tragedy, like the Season One closer when Don gave the triumphant, moving, instantly famous Kodak Carousal pitch, only to arrive home too late to spend Thanksgiving with his family. The success of Don reuniting with Betty at the end of Season Two was fraught with the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis, playing over the a.m. radio as they reached out to hold hands across the kitchen table. But this time Don takes all the sturm und drang of the season and boils it down to his biggest move yet, leading Bert, then Roger, then Lane and ultimately four others to break away from PPL just as their fates are being sold to the huge corporate advertising factory of McCann Erickson, to take the biggest gamble of their lives and start Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce.

There's the gathering of the team, like a Danny Ocean movie (most moving when Don apologizes to Peggy), the jaunty, jazzy score that kicks in as the team begins taking what they need from the old office, working quickly over the weekend to avoid getting caught or leaving behind anything important for client continuity. There's the breezy conspiratorial smiles, the sense that everyone chosen has a part to play, and the scrappy new beginnings, if one can call a suite at The Pierre hotel "scrappy."

Most of all, there's the triumphant return of Joan. She's re-introduced with the reaction shot of the team hard at work, looking up as the camera tracks in on them, then the joyful-to-tears reverse of Joan striding in, wearing black slacks, no less, list in hand, already planning all the infrastructure steals and moves they'll need to make it work. Following it up is the equally gratifying moment of Don kicking in the locked door to the Art Department, with only the continued absence of Sal making it just a little wistful.

As for where the show picks up, one guesses it will be somewhere far enough in 1964 that there will be a new office, albeit not nearly the size yet of the old place, perhaps as early as February 9, 1964, the night The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and the 1960's began shaking off the ache of JFK and kicking into gear. There will be reversals, losses of clients, reaches for bigger fish, money pressures, renewed personality clashes, old addictions and new temptations. Maybe Betty will find Henry Francis less than she imagined and want Don back, although one hopes there that a constant retread cycle in our viewing future. Maybe Don will take Peggy for granted again, maybe Pete will feel under-rewarded again, maybe Bert will die or Roger take up with Joan and even lose the next half of his fortune in a divorce from his second wife.

If nothing else, the stage is set for SCD&L to represent the new age of advertising that succeeded the Sterling Coopers of their day, as the medium exploded with creativity, visual pleasures and a savvy wit that matched the rocketing cultural changes of the times.

It's been a great first three seasons, but if the 1960's themselves are any guide, the best is yet to come.

D'jew eat?

Without getting into spoilers, I have the pleasure of recommending the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man. It's clearly their most personal film, and not just because it's about growing up Jewish in the the late 1960's in suburban Minneapolis, but because with God as a theme and the commensurate inability to discern his or her plan, it's the most clear utterance yet of the theme that runs through all their work: there is no justice.

What makes the Coens so unusual is their success with that theme. They still get to make the movies they want to make after all these years, and the box office clunkers here and there don't slow them down, usually because they bring their movies in on time and budget (thanks to their end-to-end storyboarding process). While virtually every other fictional film and about 99.9% of all Hollywood movies revolve around a morality where, no matter the second act obstacles, good is somehow rewarded and evil punished, in the Coen's world (or their take on our world) the only time that happens is by absurd accident, and usually followed by some ironic reversal, even if small.

What drew them to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men besides the massive opportunity for suspense was undoubtedly this premise, leading to the part that seems to even disappoint some of the movie's fans, the ending with Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff recalling a dream that might as well be his fantasy of an ultimately just afterworld, but which ends with the Coen's leaving him hanging, i.e. him and the belief he clings to hung out to dry.

Likewise, in A Serious Man, for pre-tenure professor Larry Gopnick, no good deed goes unpunished. Taking their cue for centuries of internecine Jewish persecution, the Coens have even incorporated classic themes of Yiddish drama in s movie that I've already heard one non-Jew viewer refer to as "anti-Semitic," and it's easy to understand why. This film makes the Jewish satires of Woody Allen appear benign and playful. With freakish recall they paint perfectly cast pictures of the various characters reminiscent of those from my own youth in the Albany, NY Jewish community, giving the film a kind of ethnic specificity that often leads to successful crossover of an ethnic family comedy -- think Moonlighting or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Coens, however, have little interest in cute or endearing. I mean, has there ever been a villain as terrifyingly unctuous as Sy Adelman in movie history?

A line often repeated in our faith when faced with personal trauma: "It could be worse." In A Serious Man, it always is, hilariously so. Larry is on the verge of losing his wife, his job, his home, his sanity. Larry's narrative counterpart is his pot-smoking son, preparing for his Bar Mitzvah while trying to avoid the big kid down the street to whom he owes $20 for weed. But it's Larry who awakes from the routine of his life as he's forced to look for answers, most specifically to the meaning of God's will. And one wonders by the end if God is, in fact, a serious being, or perhaps enjoys screwing around with us.

While The Book of Job from the Torah may be seen as the inspiration for the tale, this is also a classic tale of a modern (1967) day schlimazel, i.e. born loser. This is as distinct for a schlemiel, which is a bumbling or inept person. The best way to understand the relationship between the two terms:

A schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, schlimazel is the one on whom it always lands.

Don't worry, there's a schlemiel pouring it on Larry in the form of his crackpot genius brother, but I'll leave that discovery for you to see for yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer, which gives a sense of Larry's journey and quest for understanding, if not justice:



Apocalypse coming.

It's God's will.

Still More History

I like the blurb from McJoan tonight the best in her DailyKos post, "History Made, 220-215":

This is the first time a chamber of Congress has passed healthcare reform since Medicare was enacted. There's a lot of work left to do on this, and a lot of ugly to be undone, but we made it this far against long odds. Now the really hard work: the Senate.

Here here. And NY-23 helped -- thank you, teabaggers, for getting a Democrat elected.

Obama's pitch to the Dem Reps leading up to this:

According to Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who supports the health care bill, the president asked, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit” Democratic voters “and it will encourage the extremists.”

Another freshman Democrat from New Mexico, Representative Martin Heinrich, said the president’s comments overall were reassuring. “If you want to see a recipe for failure,” Mr. Heinrich said, “don’t do the things you talked about in your campaigns and turn your back on your base. All the independent voters in the world don’t matter if the Democrats don’t turn out.”

“This is an opportunity to do something as big as Social Security,” he added. “And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”

Honestly, the only person in America who's health may be negatively affected by passing reform is the President's.

Terror

Nightmare unemployment numbers. Here's an interactive chart to tell you how your own demographic is doing.

As for the terror at Ft. Hood, here's to the courageous Police Officer who took down the shooter (and managed to leave him alive to stand trial or court martial), Kimberly Denise Munley.

I'm hoping her heroism will be kept separate from the ideological landgrabs on the Right, but we'll see how it plays on Faux News.

Haywire

Nothing but tragedy at Ft. Hood. The shooter suspect is still alive and, as he's a Muslim, the leading American Islamic advocacy group has come out with a statement condemning (duh!) the senseless slaughter.

Looks like the teabaggers picked the wrong day to capture the news cycle.

Oh, and I'm in agreement with George F. Will (on something other than baseball).

Time Stands Still

Mad Men, SPOILERS.
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This week's episode, "The Grown-Ups," is the one that will be shown in history classes deep into the future when professors want their students to understand the pivotal nature of this particular week in U.S. history, when our fresh young President was assassinated and the man accused of the crime was himself erased just a few days later.

What Mad Men did so successfully with their extensive use of archival television broadcast footage, and the backdrop of the epic story built around Dick Whitman's exhausting quest to be the best Don Draper he can be, was to contextualize the footage so we viewers could both experience what first nationwide trauma shared over mass media felt like as well as understand why it was the turning point, the end of the 1950's, the moment with all its unanswered questions that continue to haunt our nation to this day.

Kennedy's assassination puts the world in a tailspin, with all of the characters glued to the TV to try and make sense of what has happened. Back then there was no such thing as channel surfing, mainly just sitting on one of the three network channels with whichever newscaster(s) you preferred. There was no mosaic reality of current media choices, no multitudes of cable channels or infinite Internet space, no amateur video footage of planes crashing into buildings showing up scant hours after the disaster -- even the Zapruder film is yet to be developed in a film lab. We relied on the trusted newscasters, many of which had earned our trust as part of Edward Murrow's crack WWII reporting troupe, to interpret for us in black and white, replete with vertical roll, nothing so tethered as today's digital reliability. A world a-jitter, hanging on by a thread.

This was certainly the moment Mad Men has been building towards since the pilot, per the mid-century anthropological theme that is the show's foundation. Presidential assassination is perhaps the most taboo of homicides, as it not only affects individuals and families like all other murders but, in cases like Kennedy and Lincoln, can change a nation's fate. While it's an axiom of drama that true character is revealed under pressure, Mad Men shows how this impossibly momentous trauma causes several characters to make long-simmering, life-changing decisions. Veils are lifted, scales fall from eyes. Authority is ignored -- after all, as Pete points out, if we can't protect the most wanted man in America from vigilante justice while under police protection, then there is no functioning system.

What's interesting is how those making these decisions do so by connecting with a partner, while other characters do not so much change as remain boxed in.

We see a new Betty, still processing the forced revelation of her husband's terminal duplicity, now seeing the world with an adult's skepticism rather than the childish moods of the past. She no longer cares what Don knows or finds out: "He's been lying to me for years." Film director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Barfly) in his first Mad Men engagement delivers a Vertigo-like moment for Betty, a vision made more dreamy by the dissolve that leads into it, as she emerges from the powder room at the end of Roger's daughter's wedding and walks towards two men at once, Don and Henry with their backs to each other, and up until she takes her husband's arm we're not exactly sure who she'll choose to leave with. The real decision comes after Oswald's assassination by Jack Ruby, which jolts her out of her chair to cry, "What the hell is going on?!?" and drives her to Henry's promising arms, as much a reaction to Don's refrain, "It's all going to be okay."

These were the two repeated refrains from the episode, beginning with Don's spooky turn around a corner in the office, all the telephones suddenly ringing and the main room empty as employees gather around Harry's television. "What's going on?" he says but quickly gets the picture. And while he's the one taking on the expected daddy role by claiming everything with be fine throughout the show, it's Peggy who has the last repetition, referring to the time they have to redo the AquaNet ad before shooting, now too reminiscent of the assassination scene to be broadcast.

Pete is the other rebel, joining with Trudi in what now appears to be a smart and solid partnership where she agrees with him that the system is broken, both in the government and at Sterling Cooper. While Pete is odious in so many other ways, he's actually the most forward-looking executive at the company, but is dealing to a corporate loss to Ken Cosgrove, ironically referred to by Pete as "Ken and his haircut," just as JFK's detractors would say America elected the haircut, not the man.

Meanwhile Don is increasingly cut off from all humanity, whether powerless at work to hire a quality Art Director due to Lane's budgeting edicts, shorn of his soul-mate elementary school teacher, estranged from Betty due to his tangle of dishonesties, unable to connect with Roger at the wedding thanks to his previous resentments. Roger is also finding himself isolated, with his young wife acting childish and denying him a grown-up partner, reaching out instead to Joan who now lives on the show's narrative margins, she the most capable adult of all.

The episode begins with Pete asleep and ends with Don anesthetizing himself yet again, having come to the office with no other place to go on the sudden National Day of Mourning. Pete wakes up over the course of the episode but Don ends it hitting the bottle, sticking with his dream state. Don finds Peggy also at the office and the two of them are kindred spirits, both alone in their own ways, survivors who can take the events of the week in greater stride than others due to their own traumatic experiences, but Don is still unable to make a complete connection. He's too full of grief from Betty's declaration of no longer loving him, too isolated by the role he's built for himself in terminal pursuit of the American Dream. Peggy goes off to watch the funeral in Bert's office while Don returns to the shadows that are the dominant visual for him this week, once again trapped visually in a doorframe, reaching for the bottle. It's obvious by now that Don is an alcoholic, and that it's as much a trap as his adopted identity, company and marriage.

The rebels, the ones more alive now, are in cells of two, a foreshadowing of the 1960's political cells to come -- the ones committed, sometimes violently, to creating change. While the Beatles will be important culturally should the next season pick up in 1964, it's five more years until the next big hits, when both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy fall from assassin bullets within two months of each other, by which time the more festering trauma of the Vietnam War will be tearing our nation apart.

The question for the season finale is whether we'll see Don Draper somehow rising to the occasion and pulling back together the threads of his life at home and at work, as he's done with varying degrees of success in each of the previous two seasons. Is the change creator Matthew Weiner has touted all season is a permanent trajectory or simply a more sophisticated form of standard television series machinations? Will Betty discover Henry to be a fraud and return home to Don? Will Joan return as Office Manager and Sal as Art Director? Will Pete someone get over on Ken and take the top account position? Will Peggy and Don unite to become a team again?

From the very beginning the big vision and big promise has been depicting the decade of greatest, most rapid change in modern American history, at least since the Civil War one hundred years earlier. If, as Weiner has said, Mad Men is a show about "not getting what you want," then the potential for real dramatic and potentially structural change must be met. Especially the week after so convincingly depicting the historical earthquake that began on November 22, 1963 at 12:30pm CST in Dallas, Texas.

We'll all be watching.

Off Year

I want to say a quick word about the vote tonight, where three lousy candidates lost in this odd off-year election.

One was Democrat Creigh Deeds in Virginia, who ran away from Obama's policies and paid the price when 38% of those who had voted for Obama a year ago failed to show up to vote for him.

Another was former Goldman Sachs CEO and New Jersey Governor John Corzine, who lost his bid for a second term. Corzine may have made some tough decisions in economic downtimes that hurt his favorability ratings, but he's also generally disliked for personal attributes and the inherent corruption of his Goldman wealth. What I saw of Corzine this round was his campaign and him personally making fun of his opponent's girth, not even close to the dignitarian electoral practices of President Obama. And besides, he's got to be a complete egomaniac investment banker moron to think he can drive in a speeding vehicle without a seatbelt. The moment he had his serious accident, I knew he'd have to have a lot of character to get re-elected after such obscenely poor judgment. Which he did not appear to have.

PS: I believe Governor-Elect Christie will have to show a lot of character not to end up getting indicted, impeached or resigning for the corrupt behavior that's just starting to be investigated.

The worst news of the night isn't Bob McDonnell or Chris Christie. The prize for that goes to the state of Maine, particularly the fearful and the carpetbaggers, who have passed a ballot measure striking down the marriage equality law enacted this past term by the State Legislature. It wasn't close enough, not a 5 1/2 point spread, so even in upper New England gay rights remains the frontline in U.S. civil rights.

As for the beautiful counties of my native upstate New York, including Saranac Lake, a town where our family had friends we would visit coming up from Albany, and Lake Placid, home of the 1980Winter Olympics, they sent Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty's rogue candidate to the woodchopper:



This was the day's biggest victory against the forces of darkness. It won't be the last battle. Obama opened up this 150-year Republican or so-leaning district to a special election when he co-opted the sitting Republican Congressman into his bipartisan Administration. So this is an historic flip, and I'm betting that relatively conservative Democrat who won, Bill Owens, will serve multiple terms. He's a lawyer and retired Air Force Captain. Something tells me he'll have skills.

And how about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a squeaker, surprisingly tight even after spending a non-Presidential race record of $140 million. Was it the extended term limits or that he's the richest person in the city?

It's good for the off-years to get feisty, especially against the wealthy when most entrenched and entitled. It's some good changes for the Democratic Party blood, even if it means GOP victories.

It's all set-up for serious business in 2010 and 2012. And Obama is still the best strategist in the country.

It's Collegiate!

Okay, Mad Men is the show of the moment, but The Wire is enduring, and now it's a course at Harvard University:

The class will be taught by sociology professor William J. Wilson, one of the best-known African American history professors in the country, who has made no secret of the fact that he is a huge fan of the show.

"I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientitsts."

Nothin' new, though, per Associate Professor Jason Mittell at Middlebury College:



Mittell treats The Wire as he should, in the same league as the novels of Dostoevsky or drama of Shakespeare, at five episodes a week. And there's word of a similar course at Dartmouth.

Yep, best show cop show ever.

And arguably the finest fictional television series yet produced.

Anniversary

Nettertainment friend DeRosaWorld is promising thirty count 'em thirty JFK assassination facts in 30 days, one for each day in November. I'm guessing it won't take the whole thirty to make the case for conspiracy rather than lone gunman, but follow for yourself.

This is particularly timely as the final two episodes of this Mad Men season hurtle towards that fateful day of November 22, 1963.

Today's fact has to do with Lee Harvey Oswald's contract with the American embassy during his extended stay in Russia...

Dropouts

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is out as contender for the 2010 Democratic California Governor nomination. That leaves no announced Dem contenders, and Former Governor (pre-term limits)/current CA Attorney General in a very good position should he want the nod. Newsom couldn't raise the bucks although one wonders if, given his record, there's a sex scandal in the wings.

Word is out that Afghan challenger to President Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, may quit the run-off election due to a breakdown in talks designed to lessen the corruption by Karzai's faction that plagued the original vote. Should that happen, expect the U.S. to go smaller rather than larger in that country militarily (lack of credible partner).

And in upstate New York's 23rd Congressional district, Republican special election candidate Dierdre Scozzafava has suspended her campaign in light of her extremist Conservative Party rival, Doug Hoffman, endorsed by quitter Sarah Palin among many others, stomping her in the polls. This lead to a great Sunday column by Frank Rich on the "The G.O.P. Stalinists":

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era’s equivalent to today’s tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society’s “ruthless prosecution” of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

Go Hoffman.

Scary Stuff

No, it's not lyin' Liz Cheney. No, it's not even lyin' Dick. (There's a future band name in there.) It's not even lyin' Lieberman.

It's Halloween photos from times past.



You can mythologize about the good old days. The past is just plain scary.



One day we'll all be ghosts.



Halloween on a Saturday night for the first time since 1998. What could possibly go wrong?

Special Interest Group

There are still some oppressed minorities seeking a fair shake:

We Are Douchebags - watch more funny videos

Have a heart!

Military Matters

A tremendously bad day for Pakistan citizens who prefer not to be blown up, with ninety-one confirmed dead and several hundred wounded by a car bomb set off at a crowded market like the very announcement of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's arrival. Assuming this was the Taliban, they also struck in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing five members of the U.N. foreign staff, their goal appearing to be disruption of the upcoming run-off election.

All of this is likely to put pressure on President Obama to send more troops, although rumor has it he won't go as far as General McChrystal wants. It's not a problem solved just with guns, although one wonders if the Taliban are there to stay -- and, if they gain power, suppress freedoms like rights of women, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the White House did enjoy a victory in paring away wasteful spending in the military appropriations bill it signed today. The President says there's more he's like to see cut and next year with Congressional midterms will be a bigger test, but it's a move in the right direction. For some reason the GOP (and a lot of Dems) love to complain about all pork but the military kind.

The President also took a special midnight trip to honor the return of military dead at Dover Air Force Base. It is heartening, if grim, to know the President is making himself palpably aware of the cost.

Duets

Mad Men SPOILERS per this week's even more brutal episode than the previous four.
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Okay.

Just watched the episode again, "The Gypsy and the Hobo," and see the structure as 5 duets of varying length, not a lot of group scenes, only as backdrop for the Roger and Ex- Flame story. In terms Don's reveal with Betty it's one of two reflective subplots, this one about two mature people rediscovering each other after a quarter century and learning the truth about who the other really is. In this one the man has the upper hand over the woman, who he sees as having deceived him, or at least his heart, leaving it broken. This one ends without reconciliation, and like all the stories in the episode, it's about identity, both the idea of changing the name on a label (i.e. Whitman->Draper) and identifying the "meant to be" provider of love:

"You were the one."
"You weren't."

This one has to end up broken up so that we can finish with Don and Betty together.

The second major duet is between Joan and her psycho-baby husband, Greg. We learn that he's hid a huge part of his past from her, possibly the very thing that cripples him emotionally and vocationally, he mother having run off and his dad's subsequent nervous breakdown. Greg continues to shatter after a poor interview, his confessions continuing to mirror those of Don later in the episode, only he ends with a brand new choice of identity, joining the army to continue as a surgeon (and we surely pity those soldiers who will end up sacrificing their lives under his knife). Ironically, he's going the opposite way of Don, who left the army to assume a new identity.

Again, in this reflection the couple stays together but it looks like it could blow at any moment.

The two minor duets are Joan's call to Roger and Don's swan song with Suzanne. Joan and Roger once again get the best lines, the closest to Adam's Rib style Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn tight and brilliant 40's style dialogue. There's a real affection there (was Joanie "the one?") as between two equals, with both knowing what's going on but acting like adults, again an inversion and welcome relief from the troubled Don/Betty duet, the "positive." And Joanie once again gets an instant classic line, "Look at you figuring things out for yourself." Even Roger has to laugh and give her credit.

The Don-Suzanne plot serves to give us Dick Whitman in his most ideal state, i.e. in the bedroom being vulnerable with an understanding woman/young mother figure as was missing from his childhood. Besides the obvious suspense of her waiting in the car as he heads into his nearly twenty minute duet with Betty, Suzanne is another road not taken, most keenly represented and felt in the shot of Don framed by the doorway after his initial confession to Betty, what John Ford fans know as "The Searchers shot" that opens and most notably closes the picture, both times framing John Wayne's Ethan Edwards, a man eternally adrift. That Don chooses not to pass through it speaks to the courage that makes him a character worthy of dramatization. When Betty busts him for his big identity lie, he turns from Don to Dick but with a difference from times past. As Jon Hamm says, when Don gets in trouble, Dick runs.

Not this time.

In fact, besides the Emmy-inducing work of Hamm in his breakdown before his wife, and the extraordinary strength January Jones draws up in her confronting him, what comes through is how fragile the thread really is, that thing that holds together our identities -- family, house, job, spouse -- all a construct to weep over, weep for what was lost or denied, for the mistakes we made to get ourselves into these very traps, yet how terrifying it would be to suddenly have them stripped away. David Byrne once sang, "And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?" Don't asks Betty, "Would it have made any difference?"

The costumes for Halloween are the icing on the cake, and as Don and Betty bring the kids to a house where the father giving out candy is the same dad who discussed teacher Suzanne with Don in the lead-up to the affair, we get the emblematic line of the episode, if not the series: "And who are you supposed to be?"

Per this episode, you might have to ask your partner.

Optional

So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is putting the bill on the healthcare reform bill on floor with a public option. The key is that it is the "opt-out" option which will enable red states (most likely, if any) to close off that avenue for lower health insurance premiums to their citizens. As Jane Hamsher wisely says, the devil is in the details, and we'll see if a governor or legislature alone can opt-out a state. One would think a referendum would be an important if not deciding element, but as the traditional South continues to marginalize itself and it's rump Republican Party, this option let's them do as they will, so be it should it pass.

While the final votes in both houses have not yet been tallied, conferenced, and tallied again, it looks like momentum is on the side of this opt-out option proposed just three weeks ago. Here's a hopefully ironic list of pundits who declared the public option dead weeks ago (much as many declared Obama a lost candidate over and over again), and here's Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) on how the White House was prevailed upon to drop the Snowe-y triggers and go opt-out. All in all, if the public option survives in any useful way, it's the progressives who need to be thanked for standing firm.

From a political point of view, I say that the Democratic Congress and Democratic President, two Houses and an Executive branch all won by strong margins in the last election (last two, actually) have a duty to bring the very legislative promises that got them elected to a floor vote, as intact as possible. This is what democracy is all about, and if the voting public disagrees down the line they can vote in another party or other leaders. Elections have consequences -- even stolen ones decided by daddy's Supreme Court appointees.

And, on the brass tacks political side, Ezra Klein points out why Reid was savvy to include the public option and what may happen, win or lose:

This accomplishes two things for Reid. First, as Frates's unnamed lobbyist points out, he can lose this vote but credibly claim that he went to bat for a pretty good compromise on the public option. Second, it creates consequences for those who want to vote against the public option. Rather than killing the proposal in a back room, moderates who won't vote for cloture will actually have to vote against cloture. That makes them a target in their next election, and ensures a lot of harassment from the left. Reid is, in other words, making it harder -- not impossible, but harder -- for them to oppose the public option. Procedurally, it's a big win for public option advocates.

Here's to victory without a lot of sneaky nastiness stuck in whatever final bill passes. Bottom line is that any U.S. healthcare system that currently wastes $800 billion per year needs reform, ASAP.

I'm with Nico

Nico Pitney, who led the new journalism charge during the Iran uprising earlier this year, publishing tweets and smuggled info, often through Iranians in the U.S. with family still over there, schools the always frustrating Howie Kurtz and others including a flack from the rightwing Washington Times who keeps intentionally mistaking FNC for a journalistic rather than propagandistic operation, in just why the Obama Administration was dead right to go after Faux News:



Key is the 80% anti-Obama slant during the "news" portions of their daily broadcast (I'm assuming the 20% was more neutral than positive), as they pretend to differentiate from the opinion, which is often actually dangerous to the physical survival of our fairly elected President.

What's interesting to me is how the Washington Times person starts off talking like a concern troll that the Admin has made a bad move, that it's backfiring, rather than engaging with the substance of the charge, and continues that tack most of the rest of the piece. Interestingly enough, Jane Hall who left Fox may not appear to agree with everything Pitney says, but her reasons for quitting back him up completely.

And please, no more false equivalencies with MSNBC. Sure, Maddow and Olbermann lean left, but they back it up with real facts, not innuendo and smears, often using the GOP politicos' own words, while at the same time MSNBC gives the entire morning to Joe Scarborough, former GOP Congressman. And they actually practice reasonably objective journalism, the traditional kind, during their news coverage. FNC is actually run by the most successful Republican campaign strategist of the past thirty years, for an avowedly conservative mogul from Australia who's key holdings includes the coarse muckraking rag, The New York Post and the conservative (editorial) Wall Street Journal. Oh, and they called the 2000 election for George Bush before the Florida results were final, influencing the election finish -- that was George's cousin John Ellis who made the call -- talking to George five times that night.

My take: the Obama Administration is right to call out FNC for being different than the others and give them the asterisk. It rallies the true believers and forces a lot of others to spend time defending FNC, which only creates a smoke/fire perception and opportunities for guys like Pitney to go on the air and point out the FNC bias.

Since Obama always thinks long strategy rather than short news cycle, those decrying the wasted time and effort by the Admin now don't see how the set up is long-haul. The tarnish on FNC isn't going to go away after a week. It's just defining it now and forever. Or at least until Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch buy the farm, and new owners move in.

But anyone would be foolish to lose that loyal 2-3 million viewer audience that keeps paying the bills. The business model works for FNC. It just doesn't work for America.

The Pivot and The Frontier

Obama gave a major, major speech on climate change and his upcoming energy policy at MIT on Friday:



Whole transcript here. Interesting that what struck me about the speech wasn't just the ideas, since I've heard them going back to his campaign, but the final passage starting at 17:00, like this:

So we're going to have to work on those folks. But understand there's also another myth that we have to dispel, and this one is far more dangerous because we're all somewhat complicit in it. It's far more dangerous than any attack made by those who wish to stand in the way progress -- and that's the idea that there is nothing or little that we can do. It's pessimism. It's the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue that we're facing. And implicit in this argument is the sense that somehow we've lost something important -- that fighting American spirit, that willingness to tackle hard challenges, that determination to see those challenges to the end, that we can solve problems, that we can act collectively, that somehow that is something of the past.

I reject that argument. I reject it because of what I've seen here at MIT. Because of what I have seen across America. Because of what we know we are capable of achieving when called upon to achieve it. This is the nation that harnessed electricity and the energy contained in the atom, that developed the steamboat and the modern solar cell. This is the nation that pushed westward and looked skyward. We have always sought out new frontiers and this generation is no different.

Today's frontiers can't be found on a map. They're being explored in our classrooms and our laboratories, in our start-ups and our factories. And today's pioneers are not traveling to some far flung place. These pioneers are all around us -- the entrepreneurs and the inventors, the researchers, the engineers -- helping to lead us into the future, just as they have in the past. This is the nation that has led the world for two centuries in the pursuit of discovery. This is the nation that will lead the clean energy economy of tomorrow, so long as all of us remember what we have achieved in the past and we use that to inspire us to achieve even more in the future.

I am confident that's what's happening right here at this extraordinary institution. And if you will join us in what is sure to be a difficult fight in the months and years ahead, I am confident that all of America is going to be pulling in one direction to make sure that we are the energy leader that we need to be.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

It's something lost under eight years of Cheney and Bush, it's the Turner Thesis, also known as the Frontier Thesis, that he put out in 1893 about how the American character had been defined by the "Frontier Line" up until 1890, per the U.S. Census Bureau. Some ideologues try pointing to it as a justification for "American Exceptionalism" in the obnoxious, I'm always right sense, but Turner talks about the dangers of a loss of civics due to the frontier-conquering nature of Americans as well. He concludes without predicting the future so much as tying up the past with a ribbon:

From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survival in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

The Republicans have confused war with frontier. The new frontiers are those of connectivity and planet saving. Bush squandered the tidal wave of volunteerism all Americans but emphatically young Americans offered on 9/12 and beyond. Obama's right that American innovation and dominance of new energy grids and sources should not be a partisan issue. It's about future generations, just like the conquering of the frontier.

And this time we don't have to resort to genocide to do it.

Horror and Halliburton

Hard to take story about a young woman who went to Iraq working for contractors KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, and within four days of arriving was drugged and gang raped by KBR employees. And that's not the worst of it -- when she reported this crime to her superior, she was locked in a shipping container with two armed guards. Only after convincing one of the guards to let her call her father did her rescue get put into motion. It's all here in this harrowing Rachel Maddow segment.

After refusing to take any action against the rapist employees, Halliburton has been working hard to keep this from going to trial, including trying to get a silencing out-of-court arbitration per the employment contract created under then-CEO Dick Cheney. But it's looking that that's not working for them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) got an amendment to a massive defense bill passed in the Senate making it illegal for the U.S. government to do business with contractors who deny victims of assault the right to bring their case to court. Seem like a slamdunk, yet thirty Republican Senators, and only Republicans, voted against it. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) called it a political amendment aimed at punishing a company the Dems didn't like. Nice sentiment for the victims from the supposed law 'n' order crowd, list here:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html

You read that right. McCain (R-AZ) was one of the thirty.

Now there are rumors that powerful senior Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) is looking to strip the amendment from the final bill. There's a denial from his office, but who knows what will happen, with the Pentagon against it.

After all, what matters more, rape or riches?

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/frankens-anti-rape-amendm_n_329896.html

Self-Destruct

The GOP teabaggers have made some sort of Satanic bargain with the rich folks Club for Growth to take down the most moderate members of their party, most notably in New York State and Florida.

Starting with Florida, where popular Governor Charlie Crist is running for Senate in what would think would be a walk, but has been challenged in the Primary by arch-Conservative Marco Rubio and is losing ground -- just within his own Party. Crist's sin?

By any reasonable standard, Crist would be considered a conservative. He is pro-life, pro-gun, antitax, big on law and order, a foreign policy hawk. But these are not reasonable times. In February, Crist not only came out in favor of Barack Obama's stimulus package; he welcomed the stimulator himself to Florida. There is a picture, which Floridians will see more than once before the primary, of the governor and the President arm in arm. Crist's aides can list the various things the stimulus funds have done for Florida — saved the jobs of 26,000 teachers, for starters. They will also tell you that Florida is a net "donor" state: it sends more money to the Federal Government than it receives. "Why shouldn't we get our fair share?" the governor asks. And as for his Obama hug, "He is the President of the United States. You honor the office."

Then again, according to other polls, about a third of Republicans nationally don't think Obama was born in the U.S. A disproportionate number of them are the people who go to rallies and vote in primaries.

The biggest Rubio battlecry is against "big government," although the Joe Klein piece goes on to describe the practical problems with the issue, like how hurricanes forced then-Governor Jeb Bush, Republican, to start a state home owners insurance fund, as the private insurers were sky-high, and the state fund went on to become the largest in Florida.

And furthermore, would Florida have turned down the stimulus with Rubio in the Senate? Lose all that money to keep teachers in schools and property taxes low? And wasn't it a Republican President, George Bush, who bailed out the banks? And if he hadn't, would more than half of America have been okay with losing their pension funds?

Take that Amtrak up north now to New York's reliably Republican 23rd Congressional District, parts of the district having been represented only by a GOPer since before the Civil War:

Yet polls show the Republican candidate in serious trouble. State Republican Party leaders prevented an open primary race and instead engineered the nomination of one of their own, moderate, pro-choice Assemblywoman Deirdre Scozzafava.

Angry conservatives in the 23rd rebelled, rallying to the third-party candidacy of local accountant Doug Hoffman. Hoffman and Scozzafava are splitting the Republican vote between them, allowing Democrat Bill Owen to emerge as the front-runner.

David Frum goes on to discuss the hypocrisy of GOP mouthpiece Hugh Hewitt, who chastises New Jersey independent candidate for Governor, Chris Daggett, who is drawing votes from Republican Chris Christie, but doesn't say the same about Hoffman.

A friend of mine opined yesterday that we he's tired of "us vs. them" and thinks we need a Third "moderate" Party. I'd argue that two would be nice, as long as one of them wasn't filled with disbelievers in Obama's citizenship. Since last November, self-identification of Republicans has fallen from 25% of the electorate to 20%, a 1/5 drop. I'd bet most of that 20% is in the South, making the GOP a regional "rump" party.

The fact is that teabaggers are good for Fox News ratings and rightwing talk radio because those organizations only need 1-3% of listeners to make profits, not 51% of a country or even a district to win. The Democratic Party is actually acting very moderate right now in most areas by standards of the 20th Century, even the idea of universal health coverage being first introduced by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, and later championed by Cold Warrior and Democrat, President Harry Truman. There's a lot of folks that think the Dems could be more progressive, and in essence it is two parties within the big tent.

Maybe there could be a sane Republican party and a crazy offshoot. Maybe it needs to break in two and have 10% hardcore, 10% able to attract disaffected, semi-conservative Dems. I don't see the Dems splitting any time soon -- winning has a way of keeping everybody on the train.

The fear, of course, is the gravy train. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I believe there should be checks against abuse. Only Communist countries have only one party. Nor do I believe that any party can deal a death blow to the other, or there would have been no Democratic Party after Carter, Mondale and Dukakis.

An opposition will return, most likely under the GOP moniker. If unemployment spikes at 25% under Obama maybe the radical right will have it's day, pace the Weimar Republic. But if this President continues to serve in good health I believe things will, slowly, get better, and if so the GOP will have a big choice to make.

Maybe the teabaggin' Glenn Beck right exhausts itself, dwindles, and the so-called GOP moderates or realists take back the Party.

But that may not happen if there are none of them left in the GOP to do so.

Great American

Hard not to tear up watching this 86 year-old WWII veteran's plainspoken plea for gay equality:



Transcript in this post.

Save for a few stubborn states, marriage equality is just a few electoral cycles away.

Winning Diplomatic Path?

Here?

Here?

My Peeps!

Always excited to see my people getting credit for doing good things:

Two Republican party chairmen from South Carolina, in trying to defend Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) practice of not using earmarks, said DeMint "is watching our nation's pennies," just like "the Jews who are wealthy."

Edwin O. Merwin and James S. Ulmer, chairs of the Bamberg County Republican Party and the Orangeburg County Republican Party, respectively, wrote an op-ed in the Times and Democrat this Sunday.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," they wrote. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed."

Nothing like having my peeps compared to a rightwing moron from South Carolina by two other morons within the context of penny-pinching.

Thanks, goyim!

Sense on Afghanistan?

Here's the news revealed today about the Administration's approach to Afghanistan:

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States.
...

“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.”
...

The election in Afghanistan was so badly marred by allegations of fraud that they helped prompt Mr. Obama to rethink the strategy he unveiled just in March, officials have said. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., among others at the White House, had already soured on Mr. Karzai, whose government and family are accused of corruption and ties to drug dealing. The election reinforced those doubts, officials said.

This sounds to me like the opposite answer that we gave in Vietnam, the opposite of trying to prop up a corrupt regime that will just look at the U.S. as fools with money to waste on them. I'd be interested to see if there's consensus agreement among Nettertainment readers on this, since I haven't seen as much divergence on the Afghanistan issue as, say, health insurance reform.

After all, Karzai appears to be stonewalling any attempt at an honest election result:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai may not accept the results of a vote recount from the summer's general election, officials from his campaign hinted, adding a further twist to the already fraught post-poll political environment. On Sunday, his supporters began demonstrations against "foreign interference" in the elections.

As they await the results of a recount to try to adjust for widespread fraud, officials from the Karzai campaign began over the weekend to cast aspersions on the process, centering their criticism on the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which is re-tallying the numbers. The commission finished its audit Saturday, and is reviewing it before releasing it in coming days. If Mr. Karzai is found to have less than 50% of the vote, it could force a run-off with his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Sounds like a little too much like Iran, doesn't it?

Gloves = Off

The insurance industry played it's asshole card this week, and lost any pretense of Presidential friendship:



Bonus mop:



Bul-lay!

Author Author

This is why, at heart, I'm such a big fan of Barack Obama:

This was especially true last March 13, when the incendiary sermons of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, blew up all over the cable networks. On that Thursday, Obama had spent the entire day and evening in the Senate. That Friday, after enduring a series of tough interviews, Obama informed Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe, “I want to do a speech on race.” And he added, “I want to make this speech no later than next Tuesday. I don’t think it can wait.” Axelrod and Plouffe tried to talk him into delaying it: He had a full day of campaigning on Saturday, a film shoot on Sunday, and then another hectic day campaigning in Pennsylvania on Monday. Obama was insistent. On the Saturday-morning campaign conference call, Favreau was told to get to work on a draft immediately. Favreau replied, “I’m not writing this until I talk to him.”

That evening, Saint Patrick’s Day, less than seventy-two hours before the speech would be delivered to a live audience, Favreau was sitting alone in an unfurnished group house in Chicago when the boss called. “I’m going to give you some stream of consciousness,” Obama told him. Then he spoke for about forty-five minutes, laying out his speech’s argumentative construction. Favreau thanked him, hung up, considered the enormity of the task and the looming deadline, and then decided he was “too freaked out by the whole thing” to write and went out with friends instead. On Sunday morning at seven, the speechwriter took his laptop to a coffee shop and worked there for thirteen hours. Obama received Favreau’s draft at eight that evening and wrote until three in the morning.

He hadn’t finished by Monday at 8 a.m., when he set the draft aside to spend the day barnstorming across Pennsylvania. At nine thirty that night, a little more than twelve hours before the speech was to be delivered, Obama returned to his hotel room to do more writing. At two in the morning, the various BlackBerrys of Axelrod, Favreau, Plouffe, and Jarrett sounded with a message from the candidate: Here it is. Favs, feel free to tweak the words. Everyone else, the content here is what I want to say. Axelrod stood in the dark reading the text: “The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made.… But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

He e-mailed Obama: This is why you should be president.

When critics say "Obama gives a good speech" as if the tongue-tied child-speak of George W. Bush somehow led to great policy, it irks me no end. Obama writes a great speech. Years ago I attended a three night seminar with Martin Scorsese who ultimate said that unless he had something of value to say, all the technique in the world was for naught.

Obama almost always has something of value and interest to say.

I like writers. They're the smartest people in the room. (Witness Tina Fey, so much more than just a performer.) Most politicians with books have ghostwriters. Theodore Roosevelt was the last President to write his own stuff. When Obama got to the Senate, he and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) bonded over they fact that they were the only Senators that wrote their own books. Obama is believed by his team to be the best speechwriter among them. He writes at night, in the wee hours. Right on.

The whole GQ piece linked above is tremendous, starting with an early appearance to a meagre audience at a bookstore to promote Dreams From My Father, Obama's memoir, which sold diddly the first time around. Then, republished after his electrifying 2004 Democratic Convention speech, it ran right up to the top of The New York Times Bestseller List.

Writers know what it means to toil by their lonesome to make something that works. (I'd argue a lot of computer programmers have related experience.) Vaclav Havel, the playwright who went on to lead the first free government in Poland is a great example. To be a successful writer you need vision, a strong sense of self, some understanding of humanity, and a stick-to-it-ness even when nobody in the world cares or wants you to stick-to-it.

Decent qualities in a politician, wouldn't you say?

Rachel Take Down Supreme

Yes.



This guy is a smooth obfuscator, but he's not on a Fox shoutfest, and she is clearly the smartest commentator type anchor on TV.



Journalist lives, even if relatively barren on TV.