And I thought we had a prestigious, rub-your-face-in-it speaker at NU in 2002:
President Obama to deliver U-M spring 2010 commencement address
Yet before I think this is too cool, it’s only for the undergrad graduation, as the b-school graduation is April 30. Regardless, that is one serious publicity coup for UMich. Way to go, Blue.
UPDATE: Seems grad students get four tickets after all. Sweet.
Just stated my list to my friend Brian:
Other nominees?
I’m not 100 percent bummed about tonight; this will probably force Obama and the Democrats to focus on naked job-creation projects like they should have done in the first place. The only problem is that any efforts to get job projects passed will probably get caught in the newfound morass – by gaining a seat (and maybe more in November?) and never budging an inch to support anything Democrat-initiated, Republicans have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that government can’t solve anybody’s problems.
And apologies to anyone who follows my Twitter posts, from which I basically constructed this entire post. Recycling is good for the Earth, after all.
Tomorrow is the Massachusetts special Senate election for Ted Kennedy’s seat, the coverage of which has been drawing my attention for the past week and a half. While I think it’ll be a disappointment if Coakley loses, as it would indicate reinforcement of the unsuccessful status quo of the past decade, that and a G.O.P. gain in November will surprise me about as much as our Chicago toaster oven will when it burns the toast again. (And by that I mean I will be not at all surprised.)
The stats on midterm elections are frequently trotted out, and they’re almost always bad for the incumbent President’s party. Also frequently trotted out these days is the fact that the “Tea Party” is more popular than either major party, and while that movement doesn’t seem to me to have a platform beyond “visceral howls of opposition”, that’s a lot of voter anger floating around that’s inevitably focused on the team in power.
That said, what potential G.O.P. candidate out there can win in 2012? It looks now like none of them can: Romney is too manufactured to get the nomination; Huckabee commuted the sentence of a prisoner who later murdered four police officers; Palin won’t convince enough general-election voters that she’s competent; and Pawlenty is possible but Midwestern governors are usually too nondescript (remember when people said Tom Vilsack could get the Democratic nomination?). The best remaining candidate is probably Rudy Giuliani, but his personal life is a mess, he’s too socially liberal for the base, he dropped out in 2008 when he couldn’t even win the Florida primary and he’s made enough ridiculous claims recently to turn off most voters. In early 2006 the Democrats had the Hillary machine and Obama was an untarnished star, but there’s nobody in the G.O.P. like that as of January 2010.
Anything’s possible in almost three years — caveat up in here — but the conservative part of the G.O.P. is super fired-up and determined to knock off all moderates, meaning they’re either going to nominate someone like Palin who is very unlikely to win the general election or they’ll get angry at having to swallow yet another compromise mainstream candidate like McCain. Either way, not a great situation for challenging a sitting president who’s had time to recalibrate from midterm results.
So the House version of the health-care reform bill just passed by five votes, 220 to 215. There was exactly one Republican vote in favor, from Rep. Joseph Cao of New Orleans, who I imagine is the most hated man in the party right now. (In a racially intolerant throwback, the “g–k” word is floating around online – lofty rhetoric from those on the way-right wing still living in the Korean War era.)
Me, I think it’s a mostly positive development and certainly an issue that has long remained shamefully unaddressed, even if useful explainers like this one still leave me wondering how much the system will ultimately change. And I guess that’s it: the Senate hasn’t voted yet, a compromise bill might still be necessary, and then there’s the unpredictable way that market forces will respond once any new law is in place. So I’m holding off judgment on any reform effort for now, and probably for a while. I feel like b-school has taught me that even if there oughta be a law about something, it’s only when you see how everyone works with and around that law that you can really judge if it was worthwhile.
So for now: we’ll see.
I’m not the only one:
Hark! The Voters Speak!, New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009
I saw tonight — I’m still awake doing negotiations homework, good times — that the G.O.P. won in two governor’s races but lost the 23rd Congressional District race this Tuesday. My response: wait until 2010 to make any considered response.
While I think the 23rd Congressional race is interesting because of the internal power dynamics reflected in the G.O.P. big guns’ involvement, ultimately I feel like all three elections turned more on local concerns than on national ones. Gov. Corzine has been unpopular for a long time, and people were ready to see him go since way before he argued that he should win because his opponent is fat and he isn’t. The G.O.P. can be happy about the victory, but not too happy — to win a blue state like NJ, Christie’s still gotta be a Northeastern moderate Republican and not a conservative, so he’s exactly the type of politician that Limbaugh, Palin, Malkin, etc. were trying to drive out of the party when they beat on Scozzafava in the 23rd until she abandoned her candidacy. (She later turned around and endorsed Bill Owens, the Democrat and eventual winner – doh!)
Meanwhile, the conservatives’ guy lost, and while that might have some national significance, it’s not the be-all either: Hoffman only sorta lived in the 23rd anyway, and he jumped in at a late date, both of which would certainly affect things. As for Virginia, I think it’s pretty simple: the state just liked McDonnell better than Deeds.
The big lesson: these three (only three!) elections are going to have a lot less significance for 2010 than whatever the Democrats do over the next year. Nothing benefited the Democrats in 2006 like standing by while the G.O.P. screwed up, and that’s true for any minority opposition party anywhere, ever — the party in power has a lot more to do with your fortunes than you do, so you just gotta stay in contrast and wait and see.
Things I don’t like about the G20 in Pittsburgh today:
Things I like about the G20 in Pittsburgh today:
The other day I was thinking of famous people, so then I thought I might as well put together all the ones I’ve seen in person into a comprehensive but shameless post. So here you go.
Trent Reznor: Saw him at the Pittsburgh airport. (He grew up about an hour north, in Meadville.) He got his own bags. Short dude, but cool hair.
Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier: Driving an SUV and heading to a fried-seafood restaurant with a really skinny girlfriend, respectively. For some reason that trip to L.A. became the “see people from Entourage” trip. I also saw Mrs. Ari Gold on the trip before that one.
Whoopi Goldberg: She was walking up Sixth Avenue. That’s pretty much it.
Jim Lehrer: At a book-launch party in D.C. at Ben Bradlee’s house. (I met him too, but that’s an interesting anecdote for another time.) Lehrer = super nice and introduced himself as if the rest of us would have no idea who he is. (“Hi, Jim Lehrer, nice to meet you.”)
L.L. Cool J: Walking through O’Hare airport. The woman ringing up my gum bailed in the middle of our transaction to go stare at him.
Dennis Kucinich: Strangely, in 2.5 years in D.C., and even having lived on Capitol Hill, Dennis Kucinich was the only recognizable politician I encountered. (Presidential motorcades don’t count.) I was out on a run and the Rep from Ohio was walking with some staff. Seriously short dude.
Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour: I met them at the CNN 25th anniversary party in Atlanta. Wolf is pretty short, and Christiane drinks Miller Lite.
Bill Cobbs: I didn’t know his name either, but I just now learned it when I looked up the guy from Night at the Museum that I saw waiting for a car in NYC.
Joey Porter: Saw him in NYC when the gate agent called for “Passenger Porter, Joey.” He flew coach. I told him “Nice game” and he said “Thanks.” It was craziness!
Joe Biden: Getting on a plane to D.C. in LaGuardia. Since I saw him in NYC, he doesn’t count for D.C. politician sightings. Tall, and mo old.
Chris Noth: Eating lunch with some homeless-looking guy in the same Hell’s Kitchen restaurant as me and two female friends. The two friends completely flipped out. Chicks.
Blair Underwood: He was waiting to cross the street in NYC, then I think he got on a bus. But why would Blair Underwood ride the bus? So I’m only 90 percent sure it was him, rather than 100 percent. But if it was Underwood, I would say he has, in fact, gotten on a bus.
Don Cheadle: On the five-hours-later-than-scheduled flight I finally caught to D.C. on the same day as the Biden sighting. A coworker on the flight, sitting directly behind Cheadle, completely missed him even with all the people mysteriously hanging around his seat. Short dude.
Michael Stipe, Christina Ricci, Mike Tyson and Heather Graham: All seen at a Guggenheim benefit party in NYC that I attended thanks to a helpful friend who worked there. Unfortunately I was a bit out of place: me and Mike Tyson were the only people not in suits, and I’m pretty sure that he’s the one of the two of us who could pull that off. Whoops. But I did make eye contact with Heather Graham. She and Mike Tyson later went on to star together in The Hangover. Coincidence?!??!?!
Updated Omissions 8/19:
Michael Phelps: A recent addition; I was watching the first Presidential debate with some UMich sectionmates at The Blue Leprechaun bar, then Phelps rolled in with an entourage of 15 college-age party types and the bar owner kicked us out of our spot. When we left 10 minutes later, there was a line around the block to get in.
Ted Turner: He was down the hall at one of the TIME conferences. I also saw Bill Clinton and Bill Gates at this thing, but they were scheduled speakers, which would be cheating to include.
Bob Novak: I’m surprised I forgot him, since he just died yesterday. Saw him at the restaurant where I was eating dinner with some coworkers. No CIA secrets were revealed to me.
News Corp. to Charge for All Websites, Business Spectator (Australia)
In America, this could work to an extent, because News Corp.’s two big properties here are the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both outlets with a dedicated (read: rabid) readership that turns there for a specific take on things that really speak to them. But outside the U.S. and for most of the company, I think this is a really bad idea: I don’t see anybody paying to access Sky News online, or junk tabloids like The Sun or New York Post (American, but more reminiscent of a British or Australian News Corp. publication).
I don’t think the blanket approach is a good way to go, and this type of drastic change should have been evaluated on a per-publication basis. (Maybe it was and they went with this anyway, but that would be puzzling.) TIME.com tried this when I was there, and it was a big failure — TIME is going for such a wide volume of readers that they don’t create a really targeted, “I need my fix” demand, and Sky News isn’t exactly media crack, either. Even the NY Times couldn’t pull this off with their opinion section, and that’s at least at the heroin-level of punditry.
I read an opinion piece in the Washington Post criticizing the Obama-as-Joker poster, in which the author argues that the poster is playing on racial fears and says that this poster isn’t as effective as the “Hope” one from the election.
That seems wrong on two counts. First, even the article itself takes a way long rhetorical path before it can make a connection between the Joker and racial fear. The Joker has always been a white guy, except on the ’60s Batman TV show, when you could possibly say he was sorta-Latino thanks to Cesar Romero. This article just doesn’t convince me that there’s anything about the Joker that links to blackness at all — if you want to break this Joker dude down racially, Heath Ledger clearly depicted him as a source of random violence, a.k.a. terrorism, and I’d say there’s a defined ethnic group that has a clear monopoly on being considered terrorists. Also, the Joker is a sociopathic serial murderer, and “weird middle-aged white guy” is the depiction that immediately springs to mind with that term.
Second, the Joker poster is totally blunt, but that’s not really ineffective: the great bulk of people are going to think, “Joker bad and socialism bad, so Obama bad”. I’m already seeing it as online avatars, so clearly it’s blunt enough to work on some level. You could get into the fact that probably 70% of people who dislike socialism have any knowledge of the topic besides negative word association, but the point is the poster ties the president pretty effectively to two things Americans dislike. Fair or not, it’s effective, and it’s not racist.
This guy seems to differ from my opinion, but I think he will be surprised in the end. Or I will. The point is, surprise will happen at some point.
