Thursday, May 6, 2010

Poison Penn

I recommend checking out Jon Chait's rebuke of Mark Penn's predictable "centrist" idiocy. It just takes me back to early 2007. I was an Obama supporter from very early on--probably not long after his announcement in February of that year. I sensed something from the guy, didn't quite know what, but I knew that this guy could win, and that he should win. I worried at a number of points during that campaign season but I never seriously considered backing anyone else, in part because the other options were so unpalatable. But Clinton was perhaps the worst choice, not because of she lacks talent or intelligence (which she doesn't), but because the woman simply has no ability to judge talent or character in others. Her senior staff were clueless loyalists, to a person, at best. At worst...well, you had Mark Penn. An enabler of everything that is wrong with American Politics today. A guy who combines the good judgment of Bob Shrum, the insight of Dick Morris, and the personal ethics of Jack Abramoff. Ugh.

Put another way, I couldn't vote for someone who could implicitly trust a person like that. In a way, he was Hillary Clinton's Sarah Palin, at least for me, and certainly for a lot of plugged-in netrootsy types.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.