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But for some mysterious reason, neither Newseum, nor Daily News for that matter, carries that cover – I couldn’t get it on line so I photographed it at the newsstand
Here’s the photo at the Daily News website
which goes with the article.
Apparently, after deciding the page one, someone told the paper to hype up the anti-Paterson news instead.
….
Irony alert! William white-women-are-the problem Kristol is posing the question:
Will Obama Save Liberalism?
To be sure, the column is filled with every demeaning quote he could find on liberalism. But he is trying to show his bona fides by using the Reagan simile yet again.
Which makes the question so heavy in irony as Obama was writing in his book about the failed liberalism and how Reagan changed all that…From his book:
“The conservative revolution Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight--that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie–contained a good deal of truth.” page 156
and on page 32
“That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.”
It was also the post-partisan candidate, who claims to represent a base without ideology
But Bill Kristol is on to something.
I noticed that the media is less ashamed to be called “liberal” these days.
To be sure, this would be the exact same media that has been called “liberal” for the past 30 years, even while fawning over Reagan, demanding the impeachment of Bill Clinton, gunning down Gore and Kerry and fawning over W. Somewhere, during the cheering for the war in Iraq, the irony was too heavy and suddenly “liberal” became “main stream”. With that title safely secured, the new shooting down of the Clintons and the fawning over Obama – the same media doesn’t consider “liberal” such an insult anymore.
As someone who clung to the self-definition of liberal since the offensive on it started by Reagan, I want no part of this meaning of the word.
Like Earth Day which was started by environmental activists and was adopted by corporations as money making logo, liberalism shall be purged of ideology and substance.
Yes, Bill Kristol, Obama will save “liberalism”. But by the time that happens, it will maybe synonimous with “hipster” or “male”
At best, it’ll be Phil Oaks’ liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I’ll send all the money you ask for
But don’t ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I remember resenting him taking down the word I had decided to save. But, soon, that would be the most endearing definition out there.
I definitely need another name for myself.
I was going to drop this subject, I really really was.
But the Kennedys are not! Check out the NY Post headline:
Kenedys livid as Gov asked Caroline to “Lie”
and it goes on
An “apoplectic” Kennedy family is seething over the rough treatment that heiress apparent Caroline got from Gov. Paterson’s office and is spoiling for revenge, several sources close to the clan have told The Post.
and there’s more
“Ted is furious. The family is furious. The Kennedys are now against the governor.”
Well, I am for him. Besides those rumors that came from the governor’s office which I wish they didn’t, this is the alleged crime:
Among Paterson’s offenses was a request that Caroline lie about her unexpected withdrawal for “personal” reasons, according to NY magazine.
“You can’t withdraw. You’ve got to stay in this thing, and I’ll just not pick you,” Paterson reportedly told her over the phone late Wednesday.
Of course, this is just speculation as the dueling “it was her” “it wasn’t her” are still going on.
Interestingly, only days ago, Ted was furious with Caroline for using his illness as “personal reasons But, hey, Ted pretended to be angry at the Clintons and justified the ugly insinuations of racism when he endorsed Obama by the “Johnson was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights” statement. So, there’s a pattern here of picking reasons for unprincipled actions.
But now “Guv’s mess” appears as headline in several papers and NY Post has a slanderous article about the governor’s trip abroad in the same issue.
The nerve! To stiffle the princess!
The New Yorker summons Caroline’s friends – some of them pundits to give her side of the story. It’s an 8 pages defense with some very revealing moments . One of the most quoted advocate – and the only named source is Laurence O’Donnell from – where else? MSNBC who starts the ballgame by attacking Paterson
“And when they get into that phrase ‘not ready for prime time’? This is the ‘not ready for prime time’ governor you’re watching.”
We know, Laurence. That’s why your network mocked his blindness on SNL
Meanwhile, her unnamed friends were wondering:
As for Caroline Kennedy’s last-minute withdrawal, her friends were left to speculate. Had she suddenly panicked? Had she realized that she’d be signing on for more and more misery, of which the past few weeks had been just a foretaste? That her days would consist of drudgery—fund-raising phone calls, trudging up to frozen, decrepit towns she’d never heard of? That there would be no more leisurely summers in the Hamptons, no more spontaneous long lunches with friends, no more undisclosed finances? Had she realized, in short, that she wanted her old life back?
We get some highlights of the reception her entitlement got
Representative Gary Ackerman, of New York’s Fifth District, in Queens and Long Island, compared her to J. Lo. “One of the things that we have to observe is that DNA in this business can take you just so far,” Ackerman said, on “Face the Nation.” “You know, Rembrandt was a great artist. His brother Murray, on the other hand—Murray Rembrandt wouldn’t paint a house.”
We get details of her growing up, including “moments of greatness” as seen by her anonymous friends
She had moments of greatness: according to the biographer C. David Heymann, when the police discovered pot plants that her cousin David was growing in her back yard in Hyannis Port, she took the blame.
We get an idea about what her campaigning for Obama was like
Still, while she was campaigning for Obama, she was in control of her time. She wasn’t required to show up anywhere or do anything in particular: any amount of time she gave to him was a gift for which the campaign was grateful.
We get her state of mind before she was prodded to run
Before the Senate opportunity came along, she’d never been inclined to political arguments, never been one to pontificate about an issue. “I thought she understood her place in the culture,” one friend says. “If you asked her opinion on something, she would back off. She was comfortingly self-effacing.” And what if she lost? What if she didn’t get the job? That would be humiliating. Kennedys don’t like losers, Caroline Kennedy especially. “In the case of the Profiles in Courage awards, she’s made it clear in recent years that she doesn’t always want us to recognize people who are political losers,”
Al Sharpton, one of the few named sources, thought that betraying Hillary paid off for Caroline and got her a base – all based on a visit at Sylvia’s
Moreover, by endorsing Obama, at a time when it was not at all clear that he would win the primary, and from Hillary Clinton’s home state, Caroline Kennedy had won the allegiance of a younger constituency on her own behalf.
He said her reception in Harlem was more enthusiastic than Obama’s because people told him
‘No, man, she risked a lot for us.’
And we get a sample of her wonderful ‘sarcasm” with the media
When Wolf Blitzer, of CNN, asked her why Hillary Clinton was not formally vetted by Obama’s Vice-Presidential search committee, of which she was a member, Kennedy interrupted him.
“Boy, you know an awful lot about this, don’t you?” she said. “ ’Cause I’m not telling you anything else, O.K.?”
“But just walk us through that decision,” Blitzer asked.
“No, I’m not going to walk you through that decision!” she said indignantly.
“Why not?”
“It’s a confidential process!”
Of course, I remember how well she did with Brokaw who was pampering her best he could.
The article ends where it started: she didn’t really want it
But in the end, it seems, she could not give away the life she had. Despite all the work that her friends and supporters put into her bid, despite all the behind-the-scenes campaigning, despite all the fuss and the coverage and the lunches and the phone calls and the public-relations consultants, she decided that she would prefer not to.
I believe that. After all, I know it wasn’t her idea any more than W had the idea to go in politics. And I can only fantasize what it would have meant for the country if then too, the media and other unpleasantness would have made that other lazy loafer say: the hell with it, I like my life ad a rich man better…After all, no one asked Murray Rembrandt to paint.
I suppose that, even in the plutocracy we had become, a minimum amount of drive is required from the very rich. At least from the rich women that is, because elitism doesn’t exactly preclude sexism.
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