As Scrooge once said, sort of, “It was a hiatus, nothing more.” The only remotely Dickensian pause was occasioned by a trip from one coast to another to visit friends in George W. Bush’s adopted hometown (Max and Nancy and Sean McCrohon. I flew to New York and drove down with my brother, John).
All the News, etc.
On February 10, 1897, The New York Times adopted its new slogan: “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” thus launching 107 years of ever-intensifying nitpicking by everyone who doesn’t toil for the Times. A relatively old example: Lies of Our Times; shockingly, it’s a print publication. And a much newer one: the Wilgoren Watch; it’s dedicated to the pursuit of sloppiness and half-truths committed to print by the Times reporter covering the Howard Dean fiasco.
Stately Plump
It’s not too late to say “happy birthday” to James Joyce, who would have turned 122 today had he not died at the age of 59. As he once wrote:
“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked fried mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”
There is, of course, more where that came from.
When Iraq wasn’t a threat
When Iraq wasn’t a threat
The way Colin Powell told it in February 2001, a while before the Bush administration decided the United Nations had done nothing to reduce the menace of Saddam, the U.N. sanctions had pretty much taken care of the big bad dictator:
“… Frankly they [the sanctions] have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq. …”
Link by way of a colleague.
One Last Money Observation
Just for context: A brief note in a Washington Post story reviewing the fund-raising landscape (and how Kerry has been dumping lots of his own money or assets into the campaign):
In a signal of the danger for the Democratic nominee, President Bush reported $99.1 million in the bank as of Dec. 31, nearly seven times as much as the top five Democrats had together.
And Bush, who’s just tuning up for the race, spent more money than anyone: $33 million (to big spender Dean’s $31 million) through Dec. 31, 2003.
Matching Funds
The Federal Election Commission just certified the latest batch of matching funds for candidates accepting public money for the campaign (Dean, Kerry, and Bush aren’t among them). One surprise (to me) is that Lyndon LaRouche (the “forgotten man’s candidate”) has qualified to receive a million bucks in matching funds. A million.
More on Dean Money
A site I hadn’t heard of before, PoliticalMoneyLine (referred to in a Times story this evening), has new details on Dean’s fundraising and spending. You can buy details of the most recent reporting period (October through December 2003) for 25 bucks, or pay $2,500 to get the full run of PolitcalMoneyLine and the FECInfoPro database for a year.
Farm Livin,’ the Life for Me
America’s near the end of its toughest yearly trial — the maw of sunless nothing that yawns between the end of fall “Survivor” and the onset of winter “Survivor.” Rupert‘s about to save us, though, if we can just wait till after Super Bowl XVIKPWOQ.
In the Jeff Probst-less meantime, high-minded Berkeley-ites residing beneath the dry-rot rafters on Holly Street have whiled away the empty hours by watching all six discs of the first season of “Law and Order” (“L&O,” as it’s known locally). Not sure how that happened. Kate hated the show when I’d land on it on A&E. But she, Tom, and I watched every episode together the last two or three weeks. Sure, everything’s a little bit too neat; and sure, the show relies too much on the unquestioned faith (as most of the cop shows do) that the system produces the right results (the ultimate refusal to kneel at the same altar was one of the chief reasons “Homicide” still stands out).
Now we’re done with “Law and Order” for awhile (the first season’s the only one on disc so far). And that has led us to another dimension of classic TV: the first season of “Green Acres” on DVD. Kate and I watched the first couple of 22-minute episodes this evening. Observations/confessions:
–The show really had a great ensemble cast, fine writing, and flawless comic timing.
–I never thought I’d think Eva Gabor was a looker, but now I do.
–She was a better comedienne than I remember, too.
–And the pig featured in the DVD picture looks more like Babe or a close cousin than the warty, hairy, ungainly pig from the show, Arnold.
What can I say? I’m easy to please. Sometimes.
Dean.com Bust
The top story on The New York Times site right this minute is the shakeup in Howard Dean’s campaign: Joe Trippi out and a Gore lieutenant in. But the news I found most interesting was the mention of Dean’s finances: He raised $41 million through Dec. 31 (the excellent OpenSecrets.org is worth checking, though it currently posts reports only through Oct. 15, 2003) and has spent it all; the Times says he has $4 million or $5 million on hand, the cash raised since the first of the year; the Washington Post reports the cash situation prompted the campaign to skip further TV advertising in next week’s primary states.
So where did that mountain of Internet money go? The campaign reportedly spent $9 million-plus on TV advertising so far. What about the other $32 million? What combination of plane leases, candidate and staff housing, salaries, broadband access, toner and Dunkin’ Donuts runs adds up to that? I’d love to see the books, out of sheer curiosity.
Most likely, all the campaigns spend money fast, since the name of the game is gettng results now; and this isn’t the first time a promising candidate has burned a big bank balance with little to show for it. But to read that most of the capital is used up already and that the campaign will survive only with another big round of donations carries a whiff of the worst of the dot-com bust: We’ve got such a hot business plan/candidate, we need a big hit of venture capital/contributions right now. It’ll be awhile before we see results, but the upside could be huge. And then you wind up with office suites full of nice computers and furniture to sell for 20 cents on the dollar. Not that that’s where Dean & Co. is headed, necessarily. You can’t avoid the feeling, though, that investors just got word their stock is sick.
Why Johnny Can’t Sell
(By way of my brother John): Because, The New York Times says, Johnny (and Janey) can’t spell:
“When Holly Marshall wanted to sell a pair of dangling
earrings, a popular style these days, she listed them on
eBay once, and got no takers. She tried a second time, and
still no interest.
“Was it the price? The fuzzy picture? Maybe the description:
a beautiful pair of chandaleer earrings. …”