Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Aftermath


Yesterday was just a little bit eventful, no? There are more things to chew on than time to chew, so rather than look at one topic in depth, it's time to pull out the bullets and start strafing.



  • I heard that Brett Favre retired. Apparently it was in all the papers.

  • Mrs. Clinton appears to be back in the race, following wins in the big states of Ohio and Texas. While it will take a while for the paid punditocracy to tell us what we're supposed to think about all this, I am really starting to think that what turned things for Mrs. Clinton was the attention of Saturday Night Live. It's ludicrous to consider Mrs. Clinton a victim, of course -- she has money, prestige and a still-realistic chance to be the next POTUS. Still, one got the sense that she wasn't able to get any traction against Senator Obama and that her eye-glazing speeches and the bleatings of her operatives were simply getting washed away in Obamamania. Mockery remains quite effective and while SNL has historically been pretty sporadic in hitting targets, when they mock something that is true, it usually works quite well. The bigfoot news media seems to be realizing now that there are stories to tell about Obama, especially from his days in Chicago. And now some of them may get told, to the detriment of the Obama candidacy.

  • Speaking of Chicago, I lived there for five years and one of the people I remember best was Carol Marin. Marin was one of the lead television anchors on WMAQ in those days and she is back there again as an investigative reporter, as well as writing a column for the Chicago Sun-Times. What I remember most about Marin was that she was utterly fearless. During the time I lived there, she spent a lot of time detailing the strange story of the Blackstone Rangers, a 1960s Chicago street gang that morphed into El Rukn, an organization that attempted to get money from the Libyan government in exchange for a promise to undertake terrorist activities in Chicago and elsewhere. The majordomos in El Rukn were pretty nasty people and were responsible for a lot of mayhem and worse in the neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago, but Marin was not intimidated and provided some outstanding reporting about the group and its activities. Because Marin is absolutely fearless, I wasn't surprised in the least that she has been one of the primary reporters bird-dogging the relationship between Tony Rezko, currently on trial in Chicago for corruption, and Sen. Obama. I've had the sense that a lot of reporters don't really want to really look hard at the Rezko-Obama relationship. Carol Marin will.

  • So, anyway, about this Favre guy.... I'm not sure that the world really needs any more gushing enconia about the guy. My brother wrote a nice piece on his blog that says about as much about ol' number 4 as needs to be said. I'm just a little too young to remember the Lombardi era, which meant that I grew up watching this guy and this guy run circles around my beloved Packers, who were usually putting people like this guy on the field. Favre changed all that. With the concurrent rise of the Wisconsin Badger football program under Barry Alvarez, being a football fan has been pretty enjoyable for Cheeseheads for a very long time now. We've been fortunate. I don't mind that Favre is retiring -- goodness knows he's earned it. I just hope that Aaron Rodgers doesn't turn out to be like this guy.

  • One last thing -- I have to admit that I thought this picture was pretty funny.

4 comments:

Daria said...

If you really want to "pull out the bullets and start strafing" you'll need some hardware that is up to the task...

- D

Gino said...

to be fair to obama, this rezko thing is small taters compared to all the dirty scoundrels hillary has been involved with through out the yrs.

media fairness insists that any rezko report also include mention of hillary's cronies.

normally, i wouldnt say this. but, since the two are locked in a bitter fight at the moment, and the election may hinge on this story, its gotta be balanced to be fair.

Anonymous said...

Don't mess with conservative chicks! The strafing capability of that AA12 is nothing short of awesome.

No question Hillary is dirty. If she gets elected she and Bill will spend millions of tax dollars keeping their sorry butts out of jail. If it's any consolation it may be enough of a distraction to hold off doing too much damage until her term runs out. On the surface it looks like Obama is following in the long line of Cook County politicians.

I don't care if the coverage is balanced. Both are dirty and need to go. The only difference is that Hillary has been at it a lot longer and may be able to run better interference against prosecution, though Obama will not hesitate to play the race card right off of the bottom of the deck if he needs to.

Two independent prosecution teams can concurrently go after both of these poor excuses for a presidential candidate. Maybe Algore will try and pull an Arne Carlson and try to steal the election by jumping in at the last minute billing himself as Mr. Clean and Green, the savior of the planet who is above it all.

We certainly live in interesting but troubled times.

Mr. D said...

Daria,

That's impressive.

Gino,

I take your point - all I'm thinking is that Obama needs a little scrutiny and I'm glad he's getting it now. It's just heartbreaking that HRC and Obama are having to fight so hard for the nomination, no? :)

Right fielder,

I wouldn't have thought the Algore thing possible until Tuesday, but now it is. You could have two very wounded candidates limping into Denver and if it looks like they would have problems matching up with McCain, there will be some people who are looking for a deus ex machina to pop out of the lockbox. We do live in interesting times, as the old Chinese curse has it.