11D

All Must Be Mocked

Is Obama too pure to be mocked? Can his purity be mocked? Yes, damnit.

The Comedy Central crew and the late night hosts have been a little afraid to go there. His race and the partisanship of their writers might be factors.

Dowd thinks his green earnestness is a prime target for ha-has. She had chatted about making Obama jokes with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

When I noted that Obama, in his memoir, had revealed that he had done some pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” the two comedians began riffing about the dapper senator’s familiarity with drug slang.

Colbert: Wow, that’s a very street way of putting it. ‘A little blow.’

Stewart: A little bit of the white rabbit.

Colbert: ‘Yeah, I packed a cocktail straw of cocaine and had a prostitute blow it in my ear, but that is all I did. High-fivin.’ ’

Here's Colbert on the New Yorker cover.

UPDATE: Must read Jon Swift (via Bitch PhD)

Rosa Brooks and Dan Drezner talk about this at Bloggingheads.

President Presumptive

OK. Who's loving that Jesse Jackson said "nuts" on national TV? Raising her hand.

Back story that you all know, but let's go through it anyway. Obama goes to black churches and says, "any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father... Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes."

This caused a ripple of debate in the blogosphere. Ross Douthat discusses marriage rates among the white working class. A piece in PJM tells Obama to lay off black fathers. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written several posts on this topic. On the Today show, they first discussed Nutsgate and then had some expert talk about how blacks think Obama should deal with this sensitive topic. He said, we should not only scold the deadbeat dads, but point a finger at social as a whole for creating a hostile environment for black men.

Where's George Bush? Is he still the president? I heard some vague talk about him in the press at the G8 conference where they bravely decided to lower fuel emissions by 2050, but that's about it. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

George Bush has handed over the bully pulpit to Obama. The chatter in blogosphere and in the mainstream media is about stuff that's happening in Obamaworld. Nobody is wasting ink or keyboard clicks on Bush.

Has Bush landed in "lame duck" land, earlier than previous presidents?

Online Needs Offline

A couple of weeks ago, I registered as a volunteer for the Obama campaign. I identified myself as a political science professor. After I filled out the online form, I surfed around his website for a while. I was pretty impressed. A political website that was saavy enough to use Digg? Cool. Turns out that the Obama campaign has hired one of the Facebook founders to coordinate their online efforts. But as cool as the website is, nobody has called me yet to make phone calls or stuff envelopes. That's a problem.

Obama's website also features one of the most annoying aspects of the Internet age. The lack of a phone number and real bodies at a desk to answer questions. When you click on the Contact Me button, you get sent to a FAQ page. I wanted to track down some internship opportunities for students and am now too annoyed to deal.

Money Changes Everything

Thomas Friedman had an excellent op-ed a few days ago, which I'm sure has been blogged extensively, but I wanted add another voice to the mix.

Friedman said that the issue that is going to motivate voters in November is going to be the economy, not terrorism or nation building in Iraq.

Up to now, the economic crisis we’ve been in has been largely a credit crisis in the capital markets, while consumer spending has kept reasonably steady, as have manufacturing and exports. But with banks still reluctant to lend even to healthy businesses, fuel and food prices soaring and home prices declining, this is starting to affect consumers, shrinking their wallets and crimping spending. Unemployment is already creeping up and manufacturing creeping down.

The straws in the wind are hard to ignore: If you visit any car dealership in America today you will see row after row of unsold S.U.V.’s. And if you own a gas guzzler already, good luck. On Thursday, The Palm Beach Post ran an article on your S.U.V. options: “Continue to spend upward of $100 for a fill-up. Sell or trade in the vehicle for a fraction of the original cost. Or hold out and park the truck in the driveway for occasional use in hopes the market will turn around.” Just be glad you don’t own a bus. Montgomery County, Md., where I live, just announced that more children were going to have to walk to school next year to save money on bus fuel.

First Spouses

David Brooks and Gail Collins blog about the candidate's spouses. Interesting comment by Gail:

I’m sticking to my original conviction, though. We’ve had a couple of first ladies who affected policy in a negative way, by being overprotective of failing spouses (Edith Wilson, Nancy Reagan). And we’ve had a couple who captured the American imagination in a way that made them significant in their own right (Frankie Cleveland, Jackie Kennedy). But the only two who had a real impact on policy in the White House were Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton.

It's Pearls and Belts From Now On

I haven't been a huge fan of Hillary during this campaign. Her tactics annoyed me, she was no match for the stirring speeches of Mr. Inspiration, and she hung around for far too long. However, there is no question that her campaign was hit several times by torpedoes of sexism. Very quickly we're moving from discussions of women leaders to discussions of pearls and belts. I'm guilty there, too. Shrug.

While I'm waiting around for the new issue of the Atlantic to go online, I thought I would point you to this article on feminism and Hillary in the New Republic and coverage on this topic by the Daily Show. What the heck, check out Indecision 5768, too.

UPDATE: Wow. Big raging debate between Linda Hirshman and younger women bloggers. See here, bean, Jill, and Jen.

The Clothes Horse Race

I'm a huge fan of Michelle Obama's clothes. I have to admit that I have used google image to to check out what shoes she wore with what dress. The Post has a fun piece comparing Cindy McCain v. Obama's fashion style.

During the famous fist pound speech, Michelle wore a purple, sleeveless dress with a fantastic belt. I could never pull off that shade of purple, but it looks fab on Michelle. I was a bit worried about the upper arm waddle when she waved to the crowd, but she made upper arm waddle look good. And I really need that belt.

Question of the Day: Hillary as V.P.

It seems like Hillary is crossing her arms and refusing to get off the playground, until Obama makes her VP. There are some real pros and cons to giving into her demands.

Question of the Day: Should Obama make Hillary his VP?

Dysfunctional Endings

So, we thought that Hillary was going to concede the race and then she changed her mind. It's like an abusive relationship. I want a clean break up, please. It's time for closure.

This on and off again stuff isn't serving her cause any.

Matt Yglesias writes,

I probably shouldn't write any more about this woman and her staff. Suffice it to say that I've found her behavior over the past couple of months to be utterly unconscionable and this speech is no different. I think if I were to try to express how I really feel about the people who've been enabling her behavior, I'd say something deeply unwise. Suffice it to say, that for quite a while now all of John McCain's most effective allies have been on Hillary Clinton's payroll.

Is She or Isn't She?

So, is Hillary dropping out tonight? CNN just reported no.