Good word

"When Republicans aren't complaining about someone's lack of experience, they are calling for term limits."

-- Michael Kinsley

Arugula-induced amnesia

I'm as effete a Blue Stater as you'll find, but I'm regularly dismayed to see members of my latte-sipping cohort willfully misunderstand their fellow Americans. I'm thinking most recently of today's Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times on Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who's John McCain's vice presidential pick. Here's smug Dowd:

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter.

Now Dowd and I may be impressed by Obama's Harvard Law Review credential. (Especially Dowd, who went to Catholic University of America (where?).) But does she remember why Republicans took over the government some years back? Because Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and a couple of generations' worth of Western and Southern Republican politicians mobilized a great many voters who either a) didn't care about Harvard or b) hated Harvard a lot, and either way thought a University of Idaho education was a fine thing.

If Obama wants to win, what he must do is expand his base beyond Prius-driving, Harvard-enthralled gays and lesbians and convince a whole lot of voters that he's a great guy despite having been president of the Harvard Law Review.

There's always YouTube

I skipped the Obama speech. Instead I watched Unfaithful with Diane Lane on Lifetime, where she cheats on Richard Gere with an impressively stereotypical French guy and manslaughter most foul is committed with a snowglobe.

Good word

"Who knew that Alaska even had a governor?"

-- David Blaska

Can you hear me

Even though Doris Lessing's shattering first novel The Grass is Singing is set in 1940s South Africa, I can't help imagining that in this paperback edition's cover illustration, Mary Turner is talking on her cell phone.

Burns in the news

"One guest, Kenneth Burns, brought in a lunchbox filled with 45s, half of it disco. It inspired a group jam of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen.'"

I was just sorry we didn't have time to listen to my Charlie Daniels 45s. Read all about it here.

That old thing?

Disregard any suggestion you read on the New York Times' web site that your crappy rabbit-ears antenna won't work after the digital television transition in February. It will. But you may need a convertor to plug it into. It's surprising that the Times is still getting this wrong, with the transition just months away. But there's been a lot of confusion.