The speculation around who's going to nominate whom for running mate is, as others have said before me, is an exercise not only in futility but in the pointless shell game of politics. They want us to care because it gives them something lame but important-sounding to mouth off about, but really, who gives a shit who the VP is? If you're that interested, the Medium Lobster has the low-down on why you, you know, shouldn't bother.
But it's very important to David Brooks. And as we all know, what's important to Brooks is important for the country. I know that because he just told me.
[F]or the good of the country, I hope [Obama] picked Joe Biden.
Joe Biden? Why? Well, he's common-man stuff, and you know how conservatives love to elevate the common man mythologically. (It's just when he moves in next door that it gets dicey.) Chardonnay Dave thinks it's important that he want to have a beer he would never otherwise soil his overpriced tastebuds on with a guy whose father used to fix boilers and shit.
[T]hrough a series of bad personal and business decisions, [Biden's father] was broke by the time Joe Jr. came along. They lived with their in-laws in Scranton, Pa., then moved to a dingy working-class area in Wilmington, Del. At one point, the elder Biden cleaned boilers during the week and sold pennants and knickknacks at a farmer’s market on the weekends.
Ooooh. He sold pennants. You mean, like a cheerleader maybe?
(There are pennants in the background, you just can't see them in this picture.)
Come to think of it, I can't tell if that's Bush or Brooks. Maybe it doesn't matter.
Anyway, suitably impressed with the way Biden has managed to straddle two worlds when he himself can't even straddle one without hurting his thingummy, Brooks waxes poetically passionate about how much Biden/Bush brings of his "working-class background" to his political career.
"Even today, after serving for decades in the world’s most pompous workplace, Senator Biden retains an ostentatiously unpretentious manner. He campaigns with an army of Bidens who seem to emerge by the dozens from the old neighborhood in Scranton. He has disdain for privilege and for limousine liberals — the mark of an honest, working-class Democrat."
Of course, Brooks overlooks a couple of details that are hardly important enough to mention, like, say, the little fact that it was Biden's father who experienced a period of working-class poverty, not Biden hisself, or that Joe Biden is the guy who is so deeply into the corporate craw that he pounded the thoroughly anti-middle-class, anti-working-class bankruptcy bill through Congress. That's the bill, by the way, that makes sure that in the event of personal misfortune you won't be able to protect your home from the financial vultures who will descend on it when you can't pay the mortgage for a few months. It is a bill crafted by those very vultures, and is the reason we're dealing already not just with foreclosures but with forcible evictions of people from their homes.
Yeah, Joe is certainly a "lunch-bucket Democrat ", as Brooks calls him.
And on it goes, and on and on.... Biden is loyal, Biden is honest (excuse me?!), Biden made the world in 7 days (oops, sorry, that was somebody else), Biden has experience and callow, idealistic young Obama needs to "balance his ticket" (pul-leaase) with an older, wiser head.
New administrations are dominated by the young and the arrogant, and benefit from the presence of those who have been through the worst and who have a tinge of perspective.
Right. And Brooks would know that...how?
But Biden has no equally dismissive disdain for limousine conservatives like Brooks.
Gail, you’re back from Ireland, I’m back from China. I don’t know about you, but my first impression upon returning from abroad is usually a sense of humiliation. I flew through the magnificent airports at Beijing and Hong Kong to land in the dump that is Kennedy International in New York.
The airport is in shambles. There was no decent signage so it was hard to figure out what line to stand in, and the workers around the luggage carts and in the food stands were surly.
At least I had the John Edwards affair to divert me.
As Mort Sahl noted during the Nixon years, it's hard to satirize people who are working very hard satirizing themselves. Besides, they do a better job of it.
Really, I think it's time to strike Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Maureen Dowd, and Tom Friedman from the rolls. They haven't any of them had anything useful to say in years and they're often embarrassing or even dangerous in their naive ignorance and catty superiority. Anybody who quotes them admiringly should be drummed out as well. These people are chancres on the lips of Liberty and should be made to go away.
A healthy dose of castor oil should do it.
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