I’m not sure “nepotee” is a word, but if it’s not, I claim credit for coining it. The alternative was “beneficiaries of nepotistic largesse,” which was gonna overrun the bounds of my title box.
So anyway, this morning I was reading Glenn Greenwald’s latest column, “It’s Time to Embrace American Royalty,” occasioned by NBC hiring Dubya’s daughter Jenna as a news reporter, and his links led me back to an older post, where Greenwald counted 15 Senators who had benefited from nepotistic succession.
Note that we’ve now got 17 female Senators, an all-time high. But when you consider that women make up over 50 percent of the population, it would make sense to pick one’s husband wisely if one hoped to become a Lady Senator. Merit, schmerit. (Oh, and gentlemen? You might want to choose the right daddy, thought that’s a bit trickier, I know.)
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If I sound extra cynical today, it’s because I’m pissed off and discouraged. I spent half the morning dealing with an irksome legal problem with a superdouche contractor who failed to finish a job, then put a lien on our house; we should prevail because he never served us, being a rather unbright douchebag, but it’s still a nuisance, and it’s going to cost us some money in legal fees. Then, by late afternoon my children, tired from the transition back to school, were beastly to me while I tried to cook dinner even though the menu totally pandered to them! In between I made some pdf documents for my fall classes. To alleviate the drudgery, I switched the TV on. MSNBC: Michael Jackson’s death. CNN: The ordeal of Jaycee Lee Dugard. Fox: Ditto, plus Cheney defending torture. It’s depressing when only Fox is providing some semblance of political news.
Honestly, I was so down, I had nothing to say. I would’ve taken the day off blogging except for a cheering conversation with my friend (and occasional commenter, Hydraargyrum) about the use of vast vats of pork lard in making pancakes. (No, either of us actually does this.) If you think I’m bleak now, you should’ve seen me two hours ago, before the big pork lard LOL.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
I guess I better try me some pork lard.
No, just try riffing on the concept of pork lard. Do not under any circumstances try actually eating it, hoping for a cure for melancholy!
Also, any tonic effect depends on having a Scottish friend who can say “lard” with enough gutteral sounds that the “r” rolls right off the next hillside.
Hugs and lard to you, Hysperia!
The means of optimum delivery and hence therapeutic properties of pork lard have thus been proven!!!!
Yeah, the stuff just slides through the intertubes, greasing us into a happy mood.
Now, Kittywampus, for shame!
You should know that the fate of Michael Jackson, eaten alive like Sebastian in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, is a political story for our Ballardian times.
And the case of Jaycee is EXTREMELY political, as people in a nice white middle class neighborhood IGNORED THE FACT that CHILDREN were living in ramshackle backyard tents for YEARS. Christ almighty.
It’s like when Jeffrey Dahmer was in the process of drilling a hole in the skull of that Asian teenage boy and assured the cops that he was ‘in control’ and the kid was his boyfriend, over the protestations of the black women who knew him as their children’s classmate. Who did the cops choose to believe? Someone who looked and acted like them, of course. Several feminists wrote about this, including Patricia Hill Collins and Patricia J. Williams. IT IS FEMINIST to note that some people are above the law and questionable behavior right under the noses of cops is ignored.
I think it is very telling that two very low-level WOMEN law enforcement officers (one black) could call that shit in two seconds, after years of Phillip Garrido getting by with it. Amazing and yet, so typical somehow. If he had never gone to Berkeley and tried his silliness, Jaycee and her children would still be held captive.
Today, they found a bone in a nearby backyard that Garrido was a caretaker for (!) (kids living in his backyard and they ask him to be a caretaker!).. is he responsible for killing a number of prostitutes in the area? Possibly/probably. They are on his ass, now, and I hope they string him up in the town square.
Woman killing/kidnapping IS political. Talented black men driven insane and rearranging themselves to look like …well, whatever he looked like… and getting massive amounts of painkillers for his massive amounts of surgery, and then dying from them, IS political.
Thanks for letting me rant in your space. You have hit on one of my little (okay, big) pet peeves. These scandals are seized on by the masses, BECAUSE (IMHO) they articulate inchoate political realities that rumble beneath the surfaces of mass culture.
Damn, I miss JG Ballard. He said all this very artfully. Well, anyway…
Sorry to ramble on!
Oh, I agree that there’s a political dimension to all of these stories, especially Garrido’s. Jill Brenneman at Bound Not Gagged brought up the likely connection to the serial murder of local prostitutes. You have to wonder if he slipped through the system partly because of the perception that no one will miss a few dead whores.
The trouble is, none of the cable news networks help their viewer put these stories into a political framework. Yes, absolutely, these stories *can* “articulate inchoate political realities that rumble beneath the surfaces of mass culture.” (Very nicely said!) But without being framed as political, the stories remain on the level of sensationalism.
But without being framed as political, the stories remain on the level of sensationalism.
True enough. That’s where us bloggers come in.
Ron Kuby, Jami Floyd and certain other commentators on TruTV (ex Court TV) will dare to be political, but they are exceptions that prove the rule.
Oh, Daisy, I don’t know how telegenic you are (I’m not especially, since I like to stop and think, which is NOT GOOD for TV). But I would love to see you on the Rachel Maddow Show some evening! Or maybe even on CNN, since Rachel’s audience is us and our ilk. I think you would be *awesomest.*
One of the most depressing aspects of my midday foray into cable TV was to see how far MSNBC’s daytime programming strays from its evening lineup. Yeah, I’m glad Olberman and Maddow have their bully pulpits. Very glad. But it’s just a pebble in the ocean of demagogery and lowest-common-denominator pandering.
So today, while I was running my scanner, I just put on the classic rock station. It was a *much* better choice.