The Denver Post article has a pretty good laff line here:  “‘The fact that Bennet has Barack Obama ads on everyone’s television screens multiple times a day right now shows that he’s scrambling to win this primary,’ said Eric Sondermann, a Denver political consultant. ‘That is not an ad you’d run in the general election.’”  Well, no wonder Romanoff is pulling ahead.  If Bennet thinks running ads featuring President Obama here is a good idea even in a Democratic primary, then he’s a bigger idiot than even I would have guessed.  Obama is not popular here, not even among Democrats, and especially not among the kinds of Democrats who are inclined to mail in a vote this week.  Even many liberal Coloradoans go for the “I’m an independent thinker and I’ll represent the people of Colorado against Washington interests” blah blah blah.  This is a state that likes its mavericky Senators, left, right, or center.

Here’s a little recap as to why I think Bennet is such a supreme tool:  his  first job in Colorado was downsizing and raiding companies on behalf of right-wing, union-busting billionare Phil Anschutz and his money.  Then with zero political experience, he was named Chief of Staff for then-new Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who happened to be a fellow alum of Wesleyan University (and Bennet’s father just happened to have been President of Wesleyan.)  Next, Hickenlooper appointed Bennet as the head of Denver Public Schools in spite of the fact that he had zero experience in education either as a teacher or as a lower-level administrator.  Bennet stayed only three years in that job as a Michelle Rhee-style downsizer and school-closer, and then was appointed to the U.S. Senate by now-lame duck Governor Bill Ritter.  As I wrote at the time of his appointment, “Bennet has learned well that career educrats rarely stick around more than three or four years–sticking around means being accountable for your decisions and ‘reforms,’ whereas there’s a lot more flash and a lot more cash in delivering the appearance of a reformer, making a big media splash, and moving on before the chips fall.”

Nice work if you can get it, eh?  Bennet is the Condoleeza Rice of the Democratic Party, serving all of his masters very well and being richly rewarded in the process.  I don’t have any illusions that Romanoff is any kind of progressive Jesus Messiah for the Front Range–but at least the dude has experience and has had the patience to build his career the old-fashioned way.  I’d love him more if he were a Latina–but being the not-Bennet in this campaign is good enough for me. 

More funny:  the two men who are to blame for foisting Bennet on the people of Colorado, Ritter and Hickenlooper, are both doomed but for different reasons.  Ritter announced in January that he wouldn’t run for re-election this fall, and Hickenlooper, who is running to succeed Ritter, looks like he’ll coast easily to victory because of the total meltdown in the Republican governor’s race.  And as I’ve written here before, being governor of any state is going to be a whole lot of no-fun for at least the next four years.

“Michael Hastings, if you believe him, says that there were no ground rules laid out. And, I mean, that just doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me,” she said, adding that she knows McChrystal’s staff and McChrystal doesn’t have a history of interacting with the press. “I mean, I know these people. They never let their guard down like that. To me, something doesn’t add up here. I just — I don’t believe it. “

So far, no one–neither the General nor his staff of Lost Boys–has said that Hastings’ reportage wasn’t accurate.  There’s always going to be some carping and jawing when someone gets scooped, but all you have to do is read Hastings’ article to see why he was privy to a lot of talk and behavior that Logan never saw in her years on the war beat for CBS in Iraq and Afghanistan.  From “The Runaway General:”

“Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides. 

“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”

.       .       .       .       .       .      

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner. 

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

.       .       .       .       .       .      

According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

.       .       .       .       .       .      

The general’s staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There’s a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority. . . .

By midnight at Kitty O’Shea’s, much of Team America is completely shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while McChrystal’s top advisers lock arms and sing a slurred song of their own invention. “Afghanistan!” they bellow. “Afghanistan!” They call it their Afghanistan song.

McChrystal steps away from the circle, observing his team. “All these men,” he tells me. “I’d die for them. And they’d die for me.”

The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-knit group represents the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan. While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side.

.       .       .       .       .       .      

At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. “Oh, not another e-mail from [Richard] Holbrooke,” he groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

.       .       .       .       .       .      

The son of a general, McChrystal was also a ringleader of the campus dissidents – a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment while thumbing his nose at authority every chance he got. He accumulated more than 100 hours of demerits for drinking, partying and insubordination – a record that his classmates boasted made him a “century man.” One classmate, who asked not to be named, recalls finding McChrystal passed out in the shower after downing a case of beer he had hidden under the sink.

And all of that was just in the first half of the article!  Do read the whole thing.  It’s a portrait of Strangelovian weirdness of the hacks who are apparently running the war in Afghanistan.  Gee, I wonder why it’s taken them 9 years to get nowhere?

OK, to summarize:  underachieving binge-drinking but connected cadet (“the son of a general!”) grows up to tolerate (and I would argue, even encourage) his all-male staff members’ drinking, towel-snapping, and aggression, as though no one was watching and they are accountable to no one in the U.S. Government, to NATO, or to the world.  (Keep reading–don’t miss the parts where somehow, McChrystal keeps his job even though he played an active role in covering up the circumstances of the death of Pat Tillman, and oversaw the abuse and torture of prisoners at Camp Nama in Iraq!) And he and his staff do this all in front of a frakking reporter for Rolling Stone!  Rolling Stone, the happy home of Hunter S. Frakking Thompson!  Rolling Stone, which made its mark on journalism through its opposition to the war in Vietnam!  But, apparently Cadet McChrystal was too stoned in those years to have noted all of that.  Either that, or he doesn’t care–he and his staff don’t care how they present themselves in front of a reporter from Rolling Stone because they really think they can say and do anything with impunity.  Talk about your d00dly privilege!

That’s why, Lara Logan, you would never have gotten this scoop from Stanley Pan and his Lost Boys.  See, you’re a girl, and teh d00dz can only unwind and relax and tell it like it is to another d00d.  You’re right that it’s not fair–but not because Hastings misled anyone or pretended like he wasn’t a reporter.  He was just a d00d, a d00d the Lost Boys foolishly trusted because of his d00dliness.

FAIL on the arrogance.  FAIL on the doodliness.  But most of all, FAIL on teh stupid.  Stanley Pan and his Lost Boys shouldn’t be running a ride at Disneyland, let alone a war.

Don't we already have enough rich, white "Teds" in the Senate?

What????  You mean it wasn’t a super-duper awesomely fabulous idea to appoint a man to the U.S. Senate with zero political experience and without him ever having proven he could win a single vote?  Who indeed ever would have predicted this? 

It’s an early poll, so take it for what it’s worth, but both Governor Bill Ritter and Senator Michael Bennet face an uphill battle for (re)election.  It couldn’t happen to more deserving white ruling-class d00dly d00dz!  The Republican front runner for the Senate seat is former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton, and the next Republican runner-up in the current polling is Ken Buck, the Weld County D.A. who put away for life the murderer of a trans woman in Greeley earlier this year, who said “We care deeply about human life in this community. . . If someone goes after someone here because of their sexual status, we will come after you with everything we have.”  So, it’s not like a thinking girl doesn’t have options in 2010.  Besides, if the Dems can’t get $hit done in the Senate with 60 votes (I guess the U.S. Constitutional principle for majority votes in the Senate no longer applies–somehow George W. Bush and his allies in the U.S. Senate moved legislation with 50 votes plus Dick Cheney), then they can get along  just fine with 59 Dems, or 58, or 53, or whatever.

Like I said last year:  if all Ritter wanted was an Ivy-League educated schmoozer, he could have appointed me.  I’ve never gotten a job because of my daddy or mommy, unlike the unelected Senator Bennet, who as far as I can tell has gone from unearned job to unearned job thanks to Daddy and the Old School Ties.  I’ve always been hired because I earned the relevant degrees and experience in my chosen field–a risky strategy these days, I know!

I would like to point out that the loose coalition of the willing that does not consider this cut unthinkable is made up of gay people and straight people; the coupled and the uncoupled; the married and the unmarried; those who have dependent (or formerly dependent) children and those who do not. I mention this because one of the first things people make sure to tell me in particular is that they are not homophobic (you know what? If you feel you have to say this, you are homophobic. I didn’t bring it up, you did.) Several of the kinder scolds suggested that we who were not with the program would understand this issue better if we actually had children and better understood the sacred bond between parent and child. The most ignorant argued that the childless were not excluded from this benefit, and could access it any time we liked by having, adopting or inheriting children. Of all the unspoken assumptions, perhaps the one best masking itself as intellectual common sense was that we who are childless at Zenith do have a moral and ethical commitment to our colleagues’ children, because it is these children who, as adult workers, will earn the professional wages to pay for our government benefits in retirement.

In other words, because I haven’t had children, regardless of how much I have paid into Social Security over the years, I will become a welfare queen in old age. And as I sign my government checks over to the BMW dealership and the grog shop, it will not be just any children who support me in the style to which I am now accustomed, but the children of my Zenith colleagues. . . .

No, they respond: nothing will do but an unlimited benefit reserved exclusively for the children of Zenith. 

Then, she followed up with another post, “Discriminating Tastes:  What People Who Are Not Normal Might Know That You Don’t Know,” in which she further elaborated on one of the points in the previous post, which is how many government and employer-sponsored benefits are crafted and doled out according to certain assumptions about what’s normal about people’s domestic arrangements, and that the normals win while the not-normals lose.  She writes, “[t]o my mind, one pernicious legacy of the social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s is the notion that the opposite of invidious hierarchy is the equality of similarity,” and notes that one result of this is that people who point out injustices get accused (even by people who share the same basic political orientation) of creating or perpetuating pernicious divisions, rather than just pointing out that they exist.  (Oh yeah!  How many of you have been accused of this, when you point out that the wolf has once again eaten up poor old Granny and Red Riding Hood, and a friend or colleague suggests that Granny or Red Riding Hood might have chosen to eat the wolf instead, but they were foolish women who chose badly, and clearly there are no structural, dietary, or dental inequalities that might have contributed to this outcome.)

This presumption that equality = similarity has real implications for LGBTQ people, as it does for straights who aren’t “normal,” i.e., not-married, child-free, etc.:

Take marriage. One of the things that worries me about gay marriage is not that a lot of gay people long to be more similar to, or even appear to be exactly the same as, straight people. That has always been true in one way or another. It’s that gay marriage reinforces the falsehood that everyone has access to the same privileges if they are willing to make the “same” commitments. That marriage delivers only a simulacrum of similarity, even to straight people, and that there is no logical reason to make it a gateway to privilege, is a conversation that gay marriage has made it more difficult to have. Consequently, that marriage represents the pinnacle of ethical commitment to another person is an assumption by which the unmarried are stigmatized.

One might also point to loving commitments between children and adults, in which legal custody of a child is firmly viewed by most Americans as the greatest ethical commitment possible. Commitments outside that legal and/or biological relation, however deeply felt, are viewed as a degraded version of this bond. Again, let us look to gay and lesbian people who now parent. In this case, technical inclusion of non-traditional parents has allowed the institution itself to remain a socially, legally and economically privileged site. It used to be that gay people were all perceived as potential child molesters (that was homophobia); now we seem to all be, in the eyes of our friends, potential parents. This is not homophobia, but it’s not progressive either: it means that queer people who do not own children are now subject to similar stigma that child free heterosexuals are, and their relations to children they love are not taken seriously as an ethical commitment.

Go read them both.  I’ve always thought that tuition benefits restricted to children of faculty and staff members were too narrowly defined, and clearly discriminated against people who (for whatever reason) didn’t have children of their own.  Before coming to Baa Ram U., I worked at a Catholic university which employed a number of religious women and men, who for obvious reasons didn’t have children.  It also employed a lot of “normals” who were not-normal when it came to children.  (That is, they didn’t have them.)  I agreed with a colleague of mine, who was frustrated that she couldn’t bestow the favor of a college education on her dear nephew, whereas her colleagues with children could do this for an unlimited number of biological or adopted children. 

Employee benefits should be available to all employees, regardless of their sexuality, the vows they might have taken (or not), or whether or not they have children.  If they’re not available equally, then they’re not employee benefits, they’re special rights.

And, on a personal note:  because the illustration that TR chose for her first post, “More Annals of the Great Depression,” of the Cleaver family from Leave it to Beaver (at right), I was horrified to discover that I am in fact married to Wally Cleaver.  (It’s true!  He looks a lot like Dr. Mister Historiann back when he was in high school!)

The two of them are both straight, white, male, Wonder Bread twins–neither of them could win a one-man charm contest.  Romanoff will have to run to Bennet’s left, which will be a good thing.  (And there’s plenty of room to swim around in over there!)  Romanoff’s background isn’t quite as posh as Bennet’s, and he has the advantage of having run and won several elections.  Accordingly, Romanoff has statewide connections with labor, Latinos, and the Dem machine–none of which Bennet had until last January, or has in any depth now.  (Most of his money has come from out-of-state–Daddy’s rich friends and the Old School Ties presumably swung into action for him, to the tune of $900,000!) 

Romanoff has a kind of earnest wonkishness that appeals to me–he’s someone who has worked for what he’s achieved politically, not someone who (in the famous words of the late Texas Governor Ann Richards talking about George H. W. Bush) “was born on [or appointed to] third base, and thinks he hit a triple.”  (The Locust Valley Lockjaw really is out of control with that Bennet guy.  Someone in his campaign should suggest an accent coach!)

Meghan McCain

24 year-old Meghan McCain was one of the few bright spots of her father John McCain’s presidential campaign last year, and she’s deeply concerned about what she sees as the Republican party’s lack of message for young people.  (And personally, I think she’s right–although it’s not like the Democrats have all that many prominent young leaders in their camp, either.)  Well, 44 year-old talk radio host Laura Ingraham has decided that a trenchant critique of Megan McCain’s ideas is beyond her, so she has resorted to name-calling, as in, McCain is “too plus sized to be a cast member on the television show The Real World.“  Nice.  Well, this is what you get when you advance the eminently sane argument that Ann Coulter is a nutter, not to mention an ineffective spokesperson for selling the G.O.P. to the younger generation:  ” I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. . . . if figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off, then they are definitely turning off other members of my generation as well. She. . . appeal[s] to the most extreme members of the Republican Party—but they are dying off, becoming less and less relevant to the party structure as a whole.” 

McCain is correct–the G.O.P. has a major youth problem, and based on conversations with my students, jumping up and down about gay marriage and Bill Clinton’s sex life in the 1990s is, shall we say, not the way to go, my friends.  The majority of people in their twenties don’t even understand, let along share, the animosity towards gay people and gay marriage that motivates the older end of the Republican base, and please recall–even 29 year-olds today were only eighteen when Clinton was impeached.  For better or worse, they just don’t care about the signal event that made the careers of right-wing pundits like Ingraham and Coulter. 

McCain responded to Ingraham’s insult with a well thought-out article asking, “after all this time and all the progress feminists have made, [why] is weight still such an issue? And in Laura’s case, why in the world would a woman raise it?  Today, taking shots at a woman’s weight has become one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice.”  I’d say that taking shots at any ambitious or accomplished woman in general is still a “socially accepted prejudice,” and unfortunately, women can be just as aggressive in applying unfair and irrelevant standards to judge other women as men, and sometimes moreso.  Let’s hope that McCain will be able to articulate a new vision for Republican women–maybe even a feminist one?  Because Gen X Republican women like Coulter and Ingraham have always been more invested in self-promotion and putting on a particular kind of glamour that never meshed with how the majority of Republican women live their lives.  I certainly don’t care that Coulter and Ingraham have never married or had children, and that they’ve made themselves ultra-thin and blond and camera-ready.  That may be authentically who they are–but their images are more about advancing their own careers, not any particular policy positions and certainly not the fortunes of the G.O.P.  (Ingraham’s Wikipedia page reports that she began the process of adopting a child in 2008–will Dr. Laura attack her for sending the message that fathers are irrelevant, since she remains unmarried?)

McCain’s problem with Coulter and Ingraham may be that she actually seems to care about the G.O.P. and not just self-promotion.  Her family name gives her that luxury, of course, whereas Ingraham and Coulter are scrappers who have made it without family connections (so far as I know, anyway.)  To conclude, here’s why Ingraham’s chosen line of attack against McCain is so truly pathetic:  it reveals an obsession with just weight control, with a frenzy to shrink yourself down to a size that is sufficiently nonthreatening to men, to the media, and to the Washington establishment.  Ingraham’s comment reminds me of all of the women I went to college with who had eating disorders:  anorexics are the most boring people in the world, because they think and talk only about their weight, which is not only self-centered in extremis, it’s about the least interesting and least significant thing about oneself–irrelevant even in the tiniest of universes.  And that’s a truly pathetic place for a well-educated woman in her forties to be:  attacking a woman twenty years younger by calling her fat.

UPDATE:  Check this out from The View today (via The Daily Beast):

“Senator B” was appointed to the Senate by hir state’s governor because the previous Senator was invited to join the Obama cabinet.  Ze is white, 44 years old, the parent of three children, has never held elective office but has held several jobs won through family and old school connections, and is a complete cipher as to hir positions on the issues of the day.  What kind of coverage does Senator B get in the mainstream press?  When ze held an “open house” to “get to know” people–because ze has never, ever campaigned or won a single vote in hir lifetime–a local paper reported that ”the senator was mobbed by well-wishers delivering congratulations as well as citizens with concerns they wanted [B] to hear. A table of brownies and cookies disappeared during the first hour of the three hour event.“

Brownies and cookies!  Did you hear that, Senator G?  Why didn’t you think of that?  Oh, right–you’re too ambitious and too focused on leap-frogging up the seniority ladder, aren’t you?  Christ on a cracker, people:  now will you believe me about Sarah Palin?  Because Senator G went to Dartmouth, has a law degree from UCLA, and learned Chinese as a second language, people can’t call her “trailer trash” or “Governor Gidget” or “beauty queen,” while mocking her for her monstrous, absurd ambition.  No–she gets called “Tracy Flick” and her hands slapped for being so monstrously, inappropriately ambitious instead. 

Meanwhile, Senator B gets a free pass–for passing out brownies!  Please, just close your eyes and swap sexes on Senator G and Senator B.  Re-read the stories imagining that the subject is of the opposite sex, whereupon your brain will explode and the contents will fly out of your ears.

I’m officially and permanently angry about this.  Where can I sign up to primary my Governor and new Senator?

Bennet continues to be the beneficiary of awesome press.  Gee, I wonder if a Latino or Latina with his background would be given such a free pass?  Not really, I don’t–because of course, there are no Latin@s with his background–not until Latin@s are presidents of most prestigious colleges and universities, dominate the financial sector, are an overwhelming majority in all three branches of the federal government, and can steer their children successfully in following in their footsteps as the ruling elite.

Last night on 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan’s character had a funny line about “white myths,” such as the notion that diet is causally related to diabetes, “or Colorado.”  Well, Colorado’s ruling class is a white reality.  Governor Bill Ritter:  keeping Colorado safe for white male privilege!  With Dems like this, who needs Republicans?

Seriously?  Why not the “I need to spend these last few years at home with my teenaged children” excuse?  (Via Valhalla at Corrente.)  Here’s the key graph in the New York Times article:

On Wednesday she called Gov. David A. Paterson, who will choose a successor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her concerns about Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s deteriorating health (he was hospitalized after suffering a seizure during President Obama’s inaugural lunch on Tuesday ) prompted her decision to withdraw, this person said. Coping with her uncle’s condition was her most important priority, a situation not conducive to starting a high profile public job.

Whatever.  Senator Kennedy has a wife, he lives in Virginia and Massachusetts, and he doesn’t have any minor children to look after, so I’m unclear about the services that Caroline Kennedy thinks she might might offer him.  What does “coping with her uncle’s condition” involve?  I suppose if that’s a deal breaker for you, then you really shouldn’t be in the Senate.  (Hey–Gerald Ford was President while his wife was seriously impaired, and John Edwards pursued his latest White House bid after wife Elizabeth’s cancer recurred.  What’s so rough about an ailing out-of-town uncle?)

UPDATE, 1/22/09:  Hey–don’t complain to me!  Senator Kennedy doesn’t like the fact that he’s being used as an excuse by his niece, either.  (Via The Daily Beast.)

UPDATE, 1/22/09, evening:  Aaaaannd, amateur hour just rolls on and on, doesn’t it?  I can’t believe this.  (And yes, I’m talking about Gov. Patterson as well as Kennedy!  Please, everyone:  tell “your people” to STFU already.)

Like his two immediate predecessors in the U.S. Presidency, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Barack Obama is the father of daughters and only of daughters.  In fact, there are now (at least as of Tuesday) six U.S. Presidents since World War II who were the fathers of daughters only:  Harry S Truman (Margaret), Lyndon Johnson (Lynda and Luci), Richard Nixon (Tricia and Julie), Bill Clinton (Chelsea), George W. Bush (Barbara and Jenna), and Barack Obama (Sasha and Malia).  The other six postwar presidents–Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush–all had children of both sexes.  None had Only Eisenhower had boys only, and only one (Bush) has sons with prominent careers in electoral politics.  (I suppose radio talk show host Michael Reagan is in politics, loosely speaking, but I’m talking here about involvement in electoral politics.)  Am I missing anyone in this list? 

We’ve only had two presidents whose sons also became president.  (And look how that worked out for us, with Mr. Worst and Mr. Second Worst President ever!)  Longtime readers know that I am opposed to nepotism and the creation of American aristocracies, but I recognize that wealth and a famous name are highly useful in launching a career in politics.  I wonder who the first daughter will be to follow her father into the White House?  (Or her mother?  Nah.  Not in my lifetime!)  A few of the women listed above have been active in politics because they married into political families–Julie Nixon Eisenhower is married to David Eisenhower, the grandson of the President after whom Camp David was named.  One married a politician:  Lynda Bird Johnson Robb is married to Chuck Robb, a former Virginia Governor and U.S. Senator.  But no daughters have chosen to become pols.  Most seem to cherish private life after their parents leave the White House.