Monday, December 15, 2008 - Posts
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Have to say, Emily, that your case against Caroline Kennedy for Hillary's Senate seat is a lot more convincing than Richard Bradley's argument that she'd been too tough on him but might not be tough enough to campaign or legislate. (Huh?) And when she heard that Gary Ackerman had compared her to J.Lo., I hope she laughed her tushy off. (Cee K from the Block for Senate? Isn't that a lot like John McCain comparing Obama to Paris Hilton?) Still, I find the whole idea of her second act in Obama's Democratic Party completely irresistible.
She's already come a long way since she stood by her Uncle Teddy at American University last year and endorsed Obama; in retrospect, that seems to have been a turning point both in the campaign and in her life, just a beat ahead of her uncle's cancer diagnosis and her discovery that she not only wanted to pass the baton, but run with it. I find it moving that it took Obama to call her to public service, and think it would be awfully compelling to watch her function as both keeper of the flame and confidante of the change-agent-in-chief. As someone who never wanted to get in the game before, she could be a bridge between the old guard and the new politics.
It is true that suffering and experience are not the same thing—though they were confused often enough during all those arguments about why Hillary ought to get this or that job simply by virtue of all she'd been through. But for me, the question isn't so much whether Kennedy "deserves" the seat. (If politics were about deserves, Nita Lowey would be in her second term as New York's junior senator, and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.) The more important question is whether she'd be any good at it, and I'd have to vote yes on that—then watch with intense interest to see if she proved me right.
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In a weekend New York Times op-ed on hook-up culture in high schools and colleges, Charles M. Blow writes as if casual sex instead of dating is a new-millennium thing: "Dating is dated. Hooking up is here to stay. ... When I first heard about hooking up years ago, I figured that it was a fad that would soon fizzle. I was wrong. It seems to be becoming the norm."
It's not so new, Mr. Blow. From the Vows column from this weekend's NYT, on a couple who met in 1975, married in 1985, divorced in 1995, and remarried on Nov. 29:
They first went "moon eyed" for each other in 1975, skipping past the dating phase, and, in the spirit of the times, jumping into a live-in relationship.
"People didn't date," remembered Ms. Kallir, 54. "You hung out and then you slept together."
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So, Caroline Kennedy has apparently decided she would like her Uncle Robert's Senate seat (about to evacuated by Hillary Clinton). One of the refreshing things about Caroline supporting the presidential race of Barack Obama over Clinton was that it signaled a rejection of dynastic politics. Yes, that was ironic coming from the Kennedys, but, fool that I am, I thought it meant that they, somehow, were recognizing the end of their own dynastic ambitions. Shortly afterward Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer, and I read that said upon his death, he wanted his wife, Victoria, to get his seat. And now Caroline Kennedy, who has famously led a very private life, has deigned to allow that she will accept an appointment to the Senate. This depresses me. One wonderful thing about Obama's election is that is says in America if you have the drive, the smarts, the will you can come from nowhere and get to the top. The appointment of Caroline Kennedy just says what we all know—if you want to get to the top, the trip is a lot easier and shorter if you're born there.
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