“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. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told ‘you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant…And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.” Jeremiah Wright is defended by a brother from across the pew, Mike Huckabee. Gotta say, I don’t agree with basically any of Huckabee’s policy positions, but, he can be a seriously likable guy at times (even if he did fold a defense of Falwell into his remarks.)
Category: World at Large
From Russia with Love.
Speaking of bravura performances recently, my sister Gill (on loan from ABT) premiered as Odette/Odile in the Kirov Ballet’s production of Swan Lake over the weekend in St. Petersburg, at the famed Mariinsky Theater. And, through the magic of Youtube, her Black Swan pas de deux is now online:
For the non-ballet folk, that spin move is known as a fouette, and they’re hard!
Thank You, Iowa…Again.
At the Iowa county conventions today, as a result of Edwards and other candidate delegates switching their support, Sen. Obama picked up six additional delegates on Clinton (or, to be more exact, 7 to her 1.) “Edwards dropped 8 delegates to 6. Those six will be up for grabs, perhaps, at the Iowa Democratic Party state convention in June.” Update: Reports emerge that Obama’s Iowa take today could be seven delegates, or even as many as nine. That’s an Ohio-sized haul. Update 2: We’re going to need a bigger boat: Now, it’s Obama +10. Update: Also, +3 in California.
Trouble in Tibet.
“The protests, sparked by the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising that sent Tibet’s Dalai Lama into exile, are the latest embarrassment to hit 2008 Olympic-host China.” Some deadly (and potentially Olympics-threatening) violence breaks out in Lhasa, Tibet, claiming between 10 and 100 lives (depending on the source.) “Chinese authorities blamed the Dalai Lama for the unrest, but the Dalai Lama said the protesters were simply acting out of ‘deep-rooted resentment’ of the Chinese government. ‘As I have always said, unity and stability under brute force is at best a temporary solution…I therefore appeal to the Chinese leadership to stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people. I also urge my fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence.’“
Reporting from China, the Atlantic‘s James Fallows says the news isn’t really getting past the Great Firewall…yet.
Spitzergate: From Tragedy to Inevitable Farce.
I’m not going to cover all the sordid details of the Spitzer case here — he’s gone, so, politically speaking, there’s not much else to say about it (and — for the moment anyway — the search for a possible campaign funds connection sounds likes a fishing expedition.) Nevertheless, regarding the news coverage here in the Apple, it — to no one’s surprise, I guess — has already pushed past prurient to wallow in the tacky. When the feeding frenzy first locked on to “Kristen’s” MySpace page (5 million hits in a day), I actually felt sorta bad for the poor girl. (Ok, I know, she’s not poor — she makes $5500/hr. Still.) Prostitution is illegal, true, but she’s still basically a troubled kid engaged in a seedy enterprise, and I think it’d be pretty hard for any personal site — this one included — to withstand that level of withering, snark-heavy scrutiny from the entire world at large. That being said, from front-page, come-hither portfolios all over NY today to 200 large made on music downloads overnight, I have a feeling the last thing Ms. Dupre needs right now is anyone’s pity. Oh well. Milk it, I guess.
Just be clear, I’m not saying the coverage is anywhere near as repellent as the media aftermath to the Virginia Tech killings, and I know sex has sold newspapers since the dawn of the printing press. (I mean, the tabloids caught my attention this morning.) But, c’mon now. In any case, I’m guessing Silla Wall Spitzer is having a truly terrible day.
(By the way, if anyone cares about my own editorial decision to post a pic of Ashley Dupre here, I did so to be fair to Ms. Iseman, of McCain fame. The lesson here seems to be: If you must get caught in a sex scandal (or what the NYT thinks might be a sex scandal), try to keep the seamier-type pics off of the Internets.) Update: Client 9 radio? Um, yeah.
Beware of the Leopard.
It was announced earlier in the week that a new Pentagon study was set to confirm the obvious: “An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.” Big surprise there.
Well, apparently, even the obvious must be suppressed in the Dubya regime. According to ABC News, the report is now being hastily buried. “The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won’t be emailed to reporters and it won’t be posted online.” Instead, it seems, the report will be on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard.”
Update: ABC News asks for and receives a snail-mailed copy of the report, after which they promptly scan it and post it online as a PDF. Bang-up job suppressing that one, guys.
Spitzer’s Out…Hubris or Death Wish?
“I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every New Yorker, and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I sincerely apologize. Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.” Spitzergate comes to its inevitable close as the Governor resigned this morning, paving the way for Lt. Governor David Paterson to take office in Albany. (Yes that means Clinton -1.)
I know that some Dems have argued that Spitzer shouldn’t resign, citing David Vitter in particular, and that something is fishy about the Dubya Justice Department’s handling of this case. To be sure, I haven’t been relishing the unsightly upsurge in schadenfreude among the GOP, Wall Street, and exactly the type of corporate ne’er-do-wells Spitzer spent a lifetime fighting.
But, let’s get real here: Spitzer’s actions weren’t only brazenly and colossally dumb, they were patently illegal. Now, one can question the purported immorality of the world’s oldest profession, and I would be among those who think it’s a relatively victimless crime, situations like human trafficking excepted. But given that Spitzer is a guy who’s personally put people in jail for prostitution and then condemned them in the press, this would seem to be a no-brainer. He had to go down for this, or he would have put himself above the law. So whether or not Spitzer had well-connected political enemies — and, of course, he does — is somewhat beside the point here. The real problem here is that Gov. Spitzer was so unfathomably stupid as to engage in illegal acts that he — better than virtually anyone else alive — knew would result in his downfall. And the tragedy is that, given what Spitzer might’ve accomplished in office otherwise, everyone now pays the price for his apparent inability to restrain his appetites.
Spitzer Self-Destructs.
How about a good, old-fashioned Democratic sex scandal? In a political shocker today, New York Governor, rising Dem star, and purported ethics champion Eliot Spitzer appears to have an affinity for prostitutes. More to come after Spitzer’s press conference, but, really, what was he thinking? Spitzer was no Jimmy Walker — He’s cultivated his squeaky-clean public persona as a moral crusader since day one. That was his whole cachet. And given the enemies he’s made, there was no way on God’s green earth he was going to be able to keep that sort of thing quiet. It’s sheer idiocy on his part. Update: “I am disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.” Spitzer makes a brief statement, and word comes out of a wiretap. Stick a fork in him, he’s done.
Update 2: Within an hour of the story’s leak, Gov. Spitzer gets unpersoned by Team Clinton, with all traces of his existence removed from Clinton’s website. (He endorsed her back in May.) Which makes it as good a time as any to note that, if he resigns this evening as some expect, Sen. Clinton loses a superdelegate. His likely successor, Lt. Gov David Paterson, would be the Empire State’s first (and America’s third) black governor, as well as New York’s first blind one. He is already a Clinton superdelegate (although, according to some reports, potentially a wavering one.) While on the subject, Obama picked up two more supers today regardless. Update 3: It doesn’t seem Spitzer is resigning tonight.
Going back to Cali.
California officially certifies its delegate count from Super Tuesday, and, as it turns out, Senator Obama has picked up eight more delegates there. That’s twice as many as Clinton received on her big “blowout” day of March 4th, when, delegate-wise, she won Ohio and, it seems, lost Texas. Update: Just to clarify, I should say Obama picked up four more delegates in CA, which Clinton in turn lost. So Obama +4, Clinton -4, a.k.a. an eight-delegate swing.
Blame Canada.
“‘He said someone from Clinton’s campaign is telling the Embassy to take it with a grain of salt,’ said one participant in the conversation. The source added, ‘someone called us and told us not to worry.’” As I’m sure y’all know, one of the late-term factors redounding against Obama in Ohio was Goolsbeegate, where it seemed one of Obama’s top economic advisers had suggested to the Canadian government that the Senator’s rhetoric on NAFTA was just political hot air. Senators McCain and Clinton, of course, ran with it. (This has caused a political uproar in Canada, as the leak seemed an attempt by the right-leaning Canadian government to help out McCain.) Well, now it turns out that, not only is there less to the Goolsbee story than first appears (Canadian officials sought him out before Super Tuesday, not the reverse, as reported), but that it was Sen. Clinton’s campaign actually making overtures to the Canadians on the subject of NAFTA.
Charming. Somehow, with Ohio come and gone, I doubt this side of the story will have much in the way of legs. But, if you needed any further indication at this late date that Sen. Clinton can be a tremendous hypocrite at times, just look to our friends to the North.