Everybody Hates Scott McClellan
Robin D. Laws has a great take on Scott McClellan's tell-all book: Even in the depths of his tenure as Bush press secretary, Scott McClellan always seemed to me like the most likely administration official to write a scathing tell-all. His divided consciousness was always visible as a series of tells that would have led him to the slaughter at any poker table. McClellan's deer-meets-headlights demeanor at tough press conferences signaled a lack of belief in his own statements—a fear that he might be caught ... read more
I'm currently reading What Happened, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's 323-page stab in the back to the Bush administration. The book wasn't supposed to be out until June 1, but the publisher lifted the embargo yesterday and I grabbed a copy at Barnes & Noble. Current and former Bush administration officials are playing dumb on McClellan's motive for writing the book, but he makes it crystal clear in the preface: Valerie Plame leakers in the White House used him to pass along lies to hide the ... read more
'Recount' Stars Voting Machine That Doomed Gore
Over the holiday weekend, my wife M.C. Moewe wrote a news story for the Daytona Beach News-Journal on the Volusia County optical scan voting machine that registered 16,000 negative votes for Al Gore right as the networks were scrambling to decide who won Florida: HBO's new docudrama Recount stars Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary, but the real scene-stealer hails from Volusia County -- a voting machine that registered 16,000 negative votes for Al Gore in the wee hours of election night 2000. "A machine in Volusia ... read more
Forget the Kennedy Memorial
A recent anonymous comment about the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas deserves its own post: Directly behind the monument is a 12-story building that houses the county records office on the lower floors. The upper floors, beginning with the 6th floor, house part of the county jail complex. I was locked up on the 7th floor of that building and stared down at the monument for 3 months a few years ago. It is without a doubt the ugliest structure ever dedicated to a person living or dead. ... read more
Hillary Clinton: Whites Like Me Better
There's a nice dustup on the Drudge Retort this morning over Hillary Clinton's explicitly racial justification for her continued candidacy: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," Hillary Clinton said in an interview with USA Today. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There's a ... read more
Judging Annie Leibovitz By Her Cover
In a column this morning for TownHall.Com, David W. Almasi calls me a "race-monger" for pointing out the racial implications of the LeBron James/Gisele Bundchen Vogue magazine cover. Annie Leibovitz's photo was a recreation of a famous World War I military recruitment poster, with James in the role of the woman-lusting gorilla and Bundchen as his prey. People who see King Kong in the cover are not far off the mark. Citing Chris Rock's Saturday Night Live character Nat X, Almasi, the executive director of the ... read more
Ezra Klein's an Athletic Supporter
I'm a fan of liberal blogger Ezra Klein, but this may be the worst sports metaphor ever: Since all political commentary is powered by sports analogies, let's take football here. The Clinton team is playing as if this will be decided on points. But in fact, it will be decided by judges, some of them empires, some of them representatives of the crowd, some of them big donors to the stadium. And those judges are terrified of pissing off their loyal fan base. The strategy here should be making the loyal fan base ... read more
