Pitiful performance: The failed potty-training of public officials
or How Eliot Spitzer Became a Bimbo
posted 3-12-2008 - 4:37 pm
amended 4-19-2008 2:55 pm; see addendum below

 
I don't envy New Yorkers right now. Two of their favorite offspring have just messed themselves in public, and the entire business smells like a soiled diaper. First Eliot Spitzer, now Geraldine Ferraro. Two politicians once above reproach, and now deep in manure because of their respective impulse control problems.

Spitzer's problem, like Bill Clinton's and so many other male politicians before him, was the inability to keep his plumbing to himself and his pants zipped while he was busy rooting out fraud and corruption, with a righteousness and rough arrogance that made voters proud but won him few friends among Republicans and Democrats alike. Ferraro's was, in the heat of a tight race, the inability to resist saying something controversial and find a less inflammatory way of making her point. And because of their intemperance and bad judgment, both Democrats had to resign their positions today; in so doing, they've damaged some of their party colleagues by proxy as well, and their Republican opponents must be thrilled.

Defeating the destructive Republican agenda
posted 3-18-2008 - 7:55 pm

 
A colleague and I have been having an on-again, off-again e-mail conversation as the Democratic primary process staggers on. Mostly, it's been about the policy topics that haven't been discussed in any detail and the relative merits of the remaining candidates. But it's also been about the need to press forward the progressive agenda and, more to the point, derail the Republican agenda, which has been harmful to the average American and destructive to the long-term economic health of the nation ever since Jimmy Carter left office. We and the economy got a brief respite during the Clinton years, but the damage done since by the Bush family Know-Nothing probably wouldn't allow another such respite, even if the other Clinton got elected with a decisive majority in both houses of Congress.

The need to press forward with that progressive agenda at all costs and begin to undo the ultraconservative Republican damage seems to be temporarily lost on Senators Clinton and Obama, as is the importance of their spending much more time and effort criticizing Dubya Bush and John McCain, seeing how the latter will get a free ride for five months if Hillary and Barack dump on each other instead. Still, what seems to grab Democrats the most at the moment is the extreme polarization between Clinton partisans and apologists on one side and Obama partisans and apologists on the other. The fact that both candidates have issues they have yet to fully address appears only to have sharpened this bitterness between the two Democrats' supporters — at a time when both candidates can least afford it.

SnarkAttack debuts:  Why another blog?
posted 3-4-2008 - 4:37 pm

 
People seem to understand the need for more than one website. More than one blog, tho, may seem to some to be overdoing it. Egotism, even.

Fear not, friends. My ego doesn't require more than one blog — only my career does. PoliticalEye, a blog I began elsewhere nearly three years ago and moved to Blogspot when it seemed opportune, is a timely op-ed portfolio of sorts. A comparatively civilized venue for ideas, it's also meant to show other op-ed writers and editors what I can do. The essays and commentaries are often longer than the standard 650-750-word column allowed in most newspaper or magazine op-ed sections. Online opinion blogs get to be longer, but that print version has a pretty solid size restriction. Which is why I started my own opinion blog: to publish the longer essays I couldn't place in the op-ed pages.

Snark Attack, however, is a lot less formal. Sassier, off the cuff, more impromptu; less circumspect, perhaps, but I'd like to think just as defensible in its opinions. I belong to a few listservs, and folks on those lists noticed after a while that my list comments often seemed like blog entries. When a few of my colleagues suggested that I lift those comments wholesale and put them on my blog PoliticalEye, I hesitated at first; those sober or snippy remarks aren't quite on a par with my op-ed essays. The obvious solution (once I really thought about it — duh!) was to start a new blog.

And here it is.

I'm hoping it will be even better read than PoliticalEye and enjoyable to those who read it. I'm sure you'll let me know one way or the other, right? I look forward to those replies. Until your next visit, then. Ciao, ragazzi!