Hillary’s Amazing Balkan Adventure
From our UK edition
It's the little fabrications that tell you all you need to know about a Presidential candidate. This, then, is very entertaining.
Alex Massie
Sunday
Location, location, location
From our UK edition
Daniel Drezner praises Elaine Sciolino, who is leaving Paris after five years as the New York Times' correspondent, as a "fine reporter/observer". Not so fast, cautions Arthur Goldhammer: Her swan song reminds us why she will not be missed. For our national newspaper's chief correspondent, France means above all sexy underwear, friendly butchers, nasty haberdashers, handkissing, and other quaintnesses. La grande Nation is a dotty old aunt best captured in droll anecdotes. Now, to be sure, Madame Sciolino's farewell despatch is meant to be whimsical, even jolly. Alas, it's simply cliched, banal and, appallingly, stuffed with name-dropping. More to the point, it's also supposed to demonstrate how peculiarly funny and odd the French are.
Lord Ted’s XI
From our UK edition
In the wake of Armstrong and Benaud and Constantine we come, as we must, to Dexter. THE D XI 1. Stewart Dempster (NZ)2. Ted Dexter (ENG) (Capt)3. Rahul Dravid (IND)4. KS Duleepsinhji (ENG)5. Martin Donnelly (NZ)6. Basil D'Oliveira (ENG) 7. Jeff Dujon (WI) (Wkt) 8. Alan Davidson (AUS) 9. Bruce Dooland (AUS) 10. Allan Donald (SA) 11. Dilip Doshi (IND) This was a more difficult selection than some and a degree of ingenuity and no small measure of research were required before I could finalise the XI. A reminder of the criteria: the side must, as best as is possible, be balanced, however balance must not be fetishised to the point that it compromises excellence. Style and flair are favoured, generally speaking, over solid reliability.
Saturday
Mikes Blog Roundup
From our UK edition
As Katherine Mangu-Ward says plenty of normal people aren't following the presidential race. Then there's rapper DMX who's given the best interview of the year so far. Choose your own highlight... Are you following the presidential race? Not at all. You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton. His name is Barack?! Barack Obama, yeah. Barack?! Barack. What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa? Yeah, his dad is from Kenya. Barack Obama? Yeah. What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here. You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
The Obama Curve
From our UK edition
Charles Murray on Obama: I understand how naïve it is to read a presidential candidate’s speech as if it were anything except political positioning, but that leads me to my final point: It’s about time that people who disagree with Obama’s politics recognize that he is genuinely different. When he talks, he sounds like a real human being, not a politician. I’m not referring to the speechifying, but to the way he comes across all the time. We’ve had lots of charming politicians. I cannot think of another politician in my lifetime who conveys so much sense of talking to individuals, and talking to them in ways that he sees as one side of a dialogue.
Top of the Table!
From our UK edition
Selkirk's Lee Jones tackles a West of Scotland player during this afternoon's splendid 24-10 victory at Philiphaugh. My boys, it's fair to say, gave Mr Eugenides' boys one hell of a beating... Promotion to Scottish rugby's Division One - for the first time in nearly 20 years! - remains a dream that will not die. On to the final game of the season next Saturday: away to third-placed Biggar who still have promotion hopes of their own...
Friday
Obama is Obviously Just the New Bush…
From our UK edition
Lord knows there's no shortage of stupidity swishing around Barack Obama's candidacy. But this, from Victor Davis Hanson - the Cincinnatus of the National Review - is as dumb as a bag of spanners: Whence Obama's problems? It is not that he believes in the venom of Rev. Wright, or that when he says something stupid like a "typical white person" he means to imply a stereotyped distasteful race. He doesn't. The problem is instead the environment that he heretofore has navigated in — prep school, the Ivy League, the regional identity politics of Chicago, or Illinois liberalism — is hardly representative of his own country.
Thursday
Westminster and Whitehall dishonour Britain again
From our UK edition
Need it be said that the treatment of the Gurkhas - by successive governments - is disgraceful and a harrowing indictment of the civil service and politicians alike? Have these fools no shame? Apparently not. They came in their Sunday best — a sea of tweeds, brogues and blazers with gold buttons — and mingled politely opposite the Houses of Parliament. There was a lot of hip-hooraying and handshaking. It was the most British of protests. But while the thousand retired Gurkhas who gathered in London yesterday were certainly British in heart and mind, theirs was a campaign to become British by law.
Huckabee’s Moment
From our UK edition
It's striking how refreshing Mike Huckabee's reaction to the Jeremiah Wright frenzy is. We're so used - and too many conservatives have demonstrated this again this week - to the grinding tedium of knee-jerk My Party Rules, Your Party Sucks* political discourse that it's almost astonishing when a leading figure (from either party) can come out and say something like what Huckabee said about Reverend Wright: And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south.
Department of World Begins in 1492
From our UK edition
Clive Davis: I might as well remind Barack Obama that the war in Iraq hasn't lasted longer than WW2. There were some isolated outbreaks of fighting before Pearl Harbour.
New Labour’s Bankruptcy
From our UK edition
If you doubted that Gordon Brown's government is already exhausted, consider the nonsense being peddled by Stephen Carter, the former PR supremo brought in to salvage something - anything! - for Gordon. From Iain Martin's column today: A couple of takes on Carter's actions are being briefed: either a justified clear-out of the team that brought you the election-that-never-was, or another example of outside experts misunderstanding tribal Labour. Probably, it is a bit both. What is clear is that on Tuesday, in scenes redolent of The Office and David Brent, Carter divided up the Cabinet into "break-away" groups of six or seven, where they were given problems to solve - such as how the next election might be won. They then had to report back to Brown and Carter.
Ban the Badger!
From our UK edition
Marvellous. From The Scotsman's diary column: YOU'LL never eat lunch in this town again: the landlord of the Easter Road bar and eatery, Utopia, has placed a poster in his window, warning Alistair Darling to keep off the premises. It shows a noose above Mr Darling's head, with "Barred" above his picture and "Not Welcome In This Pub" below. It is owner James Hughes' personal protest against new duties on beer, wine and spirits in this month's Budget. "The poster is meant to be humorous, but to make it clear to punters that it is not us who are putting prices up, but Mr Darling," he said. "The noose signifies that it is the government who should be hanged and not the licensed trade." Alba does not in any way condone the idea of a necktie party for the Chancellor.
Wednesday
Jeremiah Wright & Ken Mehlman
From our UK edition
Impolitic though it is to say, I'd suggest that the idea that a) the United States government created the AIDS virus and unleashed it upon the African-American community is no less plausible than the notion that b) a virgin once gave birth to a son in a Bethlehem stable. Still, some beliefs gain legitimacy from being 1) widespread and 2) having been around for a long time - something Mitt Romney learnt to his cost during his campaign. Others do not: so the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a kook because he believes a) not because he also, I presume, believes b). Still, amidst the rumpus over his "controversial" sermons, one small element of Wright's anger seems to have been somewhat overlooked.
Poor people can fly: something must be done
From our UK edition
Highly amusing leader in the Guardian today: Flying has become a modern middle-class hypocrisy, a source of guilt and pleasure all at the same time. Everyone is confused. OK, if you say so... It is easy to preach about the need to restrict air travel but harder to do anything about it. Er, what need? Government support for a new third runway at the [Heathrow] airport also suggests that it does not plan to stop people travelling. For shame! And so on and so on. As I say, the whole thing is a spiffing example of the paper's po-faced, yoghurt-knitting fretting over something that should, naturally, be celebrated: freedom.
Guns in Britain and America
From our UK edition
Good news, for once, from Washington as the US Supreme Court looks likely to uphold a ruling that the District of Columbia's blanket prohibition on owning handguns is unconstitutional. Frankly, people, I'm confused. That is to say, I'm confused that there's ever been any confusion over the meaning of the Second Amendment. It all hinges upon the interpretation of the provision that: "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Froze
From our UK edition
Ah, sweet, sweet New York City.
Tuesday
Obama’s speech
From our UK edition
Barack Obama's speech today on race and America should, if there's any justice, seal the Democratic party's presidential nomination. It is a remarkable, subtle, nuanced discussion of how and why America remains so polarised on race. No other candidate could have delivered this address (and certainly none of them could have written it). It is - by a distance - the best, most important speech of the year and, in many ways, perhaps even the most significant speech given by any politician in years. Politically it seems to me that Hillary Clinton is a big loser today. Her hope must surely now rest upon the idea that conservatives will destroy Obama in November. But that's a counsel of despair. How does she counter this speech? She can't just make a speech herself.
Monday
The Cheney School of Parenting
From our UK edition
Harlan Coben takes to the op-ed pages of The New York Times to recommend parents install spyware on their kids' computers. Make no mistake: If you put spyware on your computer, you have the ability to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. That’s what spyware is — at least the parental monitoring kind. You don’t have to be an expert to put it on your computer. You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports — weekly, daily, whatever — showing you everything your child is doing on the machine. Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won’t even consider it. Maybe it’s the word: spyware.
Wherever the Green is Worn
From our UK edition
The ten worst Irish accents in cinema history? Check 'em out here. Amazingly, Tom Cruise doesn't take the top spot... So, yeah, Happy St Patrick's Day. Time then, to dust off this unnecessarily dyspeptic take from a few years ago: When I was a student in Dublin we scoffed at the American celebration of St. Patrick, finding something preposterous in the green beer, the search for any connection, no matter how tenuous, to Ireland, the misty sentiment of it all that seemed so at odds with the Ireland we knew and actually lived in. Who were these people dressed as Leprechauns and why were they dressed that way? This Hibernian Brigadoon was a sham, a mockery, a Shamrockery of real Ireland and a remarkable exhibition of plastic paddyness.
Department of Prissyness
From our UK edition
Ezra says this New York Post headline - 'Whore-ible Ordeal: Dad - demonstrates that - shockingly! - the NYP "isn't a very classy newspaper". And thank god for that. There are enough humour-free newspapers in America already without needing to scold the Post for daring to make it's readers laugh in fine, classical tabloid fashion. Sex scandals are manna for the tabs and it's encouraging - in this too tired and shabby world - to see that the Post is maintaining high standards in the coverage of these affairs.