Friday, February 08, 2008 - Posts
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Ann, your daughter is surely right that nobody pressured Chelsea Clinton into making those calls on her mom's behalf—but I'm not even sure that's what David Shuster was saying. "Pimped out" is pretty harsh, and not something anyone would have said about Cate Edwards or the Bush twins or the Kerry girls, but why is that? I think it's because for a young woman who grew up in the White House, Chelsea has enjoyed a pretty impressive zone of privacy—so that when her parents, who've convinced everybody that she's still off-limits, even as an adult and even on the campaign trail, do seem to be bringing her forward for their own reasons, as they did at the height of Monica madness, it's seen as hypocritical. (Everybody wants to have it both ways, but Bill and Hill often actually get to, and not everybody admires their ability to pull that off.)
Calling Shuster's remark "beneath contempt'' is perhaps going a shade too far as well, no? MSNBC has suspended him for saying such a thing. And he's the latest in a long line of people who have regretted ever mentioning Chelsea—from the kid who was fired from the Stanford Daily for writing about her being on campus to SNL's Lorne Michaels for the infamous Wayne's World skit in which she was described as a "future fox'' to ... well, John McCain, whose awful joke about Janet Reno being her daddy will really come back to haunt him now.
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Here's one daughter's-eye view of the daughter now speaking out on the campaign trail: My teenager dismisses the idea that Chelsea suddenly has marching orders. Chelsea never felt she had to speak up or play a political role before, my daughter points out, so it makes sense to assume she's now in the fray because she's decided she wants to be. Perhaps it's worth noting (this is now me, not my daughter) that over in the Obama campaign, kids seem to be calling some key political shots these days. Caroline Kennedy made a point of saluting her teenagers as the galvanizing force behind her endorsement; Sen. Claire McCaskill's 18-year-old daughter pushed her off the fence. I hear similar stuff, again and again: Obama mamas and papas say they've signed up in no small part because he's their teens' candidate and has gotten the kids so excited. Now, I'm not saying Hillary is running because Chelsea urged her to, but with all these young people out there getting credit for being dynamos, I can easily imagine that Chelsea, almost 28 now, decided she'd hung back long enough and wanted in on the action.
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Emily B, I'm with you that I'm left feeling very uneasy about Chelsea's emergence on the campaign trail. She makes me think of Michael Corleone in Godfather III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" How many times can one person be First Child? She's waved goodbye to her Secret Service agents and the press hordes, grown up, started a career, and now the poor thing has been pulled back in. All these months, as she's stood there silently behind her mother, I've wondered about their dynamic. Did Chelsea say, "Mom, I want to do anything to help you win, but please don't make me speak"? Or did Hillary say, "Baby, I need you out there to prove that I'm a human being. All you have to do is stand there and smile; you don't even have to speak"? Now Chelsea is calling talk-show hosts begging them to vote for her mother and forwarding unhinged rants about sexism. Yes, she's now an adult able to make her own decisions, but I feel sorry for her. What must it have been like to grow up in the Clinton White House?
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The Clinton campaign may have shined the media glare on Chelsea this week by having her call up the hosts of The View, but that doesn't mean they're ready for the harsh lighting. David Shuster of MSNBC's Hardball said on the air that it's a "little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea's out there calling up celebrities" and superdelegates. Then he asked, "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" (Here's the full exchange with Bill Press.) A Clinton spokesman called Shuster's statements "beneath contempt" and said he can't envision the campaign participating in any more debates on that network.
Is this use of pimped out inherently offensive? Is that, in fact, what the campaign is doing with Chelsea? Are they now taking excessive umbrage so they can generate coverage and sympathy? Sorry to be so cynical, but the question about Chelsea's role seems pretty inevitable, if not the words Shuster used. If they expect her to be treated as the daughter in the bubble, doesn't she have to stay in the bubble? (Or maybe I am having a Friday afternoon moment of heartlessness.)
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Ellen, that is how I felt after I read an interview with The Sopranos' creator David Chase way back when, explaining that every word out of every character's mouth was a lie. (Up until then, I'd spent the whole hour going, "Well, that's not true ... and that's not either.'' So with that off my shoulders, well, I was freed up for whole other levels of viewing enjoyment. Sad, really.) And yes, Rachael, you are our rightful Elisabeth—even if I'm guessing it would take more than a congratulatory note on the birth of your baby to get you to reconsider Hillary Clinton. So now that your guy John McCain has the nomination, he knows he needs to make nice with Republicans well to your right, as he did yesterday at CPAC. But I think I finally get their McCain hatred after hearing an interview with the American Conservative Union's David Keene on Diane Rehm the other day. (And no, it is not the same as Hillary hatred on the left, over policy disappointments, political hedging, and Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.)
Keene was explaining that sure, some of the conservative anger toward McCain is over the issues—campaign finance, for instance, and initially opposing the Bush tax cuts as a ridiculously good deal for rich people. But a lot of it, Keene said, is only personal, because McCain is the kind of guy who can't seem to resist poking his finger in your eye, especially if you're someone he really ought to be sucking up to. (Sort of how Galileo's real sin was not as much his maverick views on Copernicus as his glee in making an ass of his pal Pope Urban in print. There he was, so enjoying his own bon mots, right up until the Inquisition arrived.) Unlike Hillary Clinton, in other words, McCain is the opposite of ingratiating. Suddenly, listening to Keene, I realized why I like this guy with whom I agree on so little. And why folks who do agree with him but have often felt his elbow in their ribs—hey, what was that for?—can go to pieces at the sound of his name. Keene said he personally is working on getting past some of the old slights, and I'm sure the GOP knows it can't wait 300 years to forgive him.
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I must admit, I was getting very frustrated by Lost last season, in the same way I used to be frustrated by The X-Files, namely: They just pose a lot of questions and they never answer them.
That is, until my colleague Juliet let me in on the Lost formula. Here’s how she put it:
I'm hardly the first person to notice, but it's set up like this: In the first few minutes something big happens that advances the thematic, or arc plot elements of the show (survivors vs. others). The next 30 minutes are filled with flashbacks (or not—flash-forwards) and melodramatic romantic tensions, personal crises, etc. The last few minutes returns to big events and introduces a new mystery (Who is that guy? Is he good? Why isn't he dead? ), which is answered slowly in the first five minutes and last five minutes of subsequent shows. That's why it's so addictive …
And voilà! Now I can enjoy Lost again. Case in point, last night’s episode. Our “something big” was four people landing on the island in four different locations. The next 30 minutes are about the four people as they try to find each other (peppered among unhelpful flashbacks of their interest in Oceanic flight 815) and melodramatic romantic tensions (Why did Sawyer leave Kate with Jack? Kate is peeved to see Juliet again!). And finally we return to our big event and introduce a new mystery (Spoiler Alert: Read no further if you have not yet watched the episode): How does Ben know these people and why have they come for him?
I’m a bit embarrassed I didn’t catch on to this before. Normally, I’d be sitting there wondering, “Who are those guys? What do they want?” and actually hoping and expecting to get some answers. Last night I sat back and thought, “Eh, they aren’t going to answer this …” and I relaxed and enjoyed the show … feeling a bit superior, I must admit.
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Melinda,
I thought I was our Elisabeth! Sadly, I'm not so young or blonde, but I am (mostly) conservative. I also missed the View episode in which the ladies mocked Chelsea for calling them in support of her mother, but here's what I'm wondering about. Why would ANYONE seek the endorsement of Sherri Shepherd, who once waffled on whether the Earth was round and another time confused Jesus Christ with Adam and Eve?
I just hope we don't have any Rosies lurking among us!
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