Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Short Cuts

The Big Dude Did It: All hat and cattle, Arnold Schwarzenegger (remember when stars changed their names to get ahead?) turned a truncated political campaign in to a work of art and, like a proper action hero, won it all. It will go down as an extraordinary piece of political history and examined to death in the days to come. How did he do it? Do bimbo eruptions work as political tools anymore? Does an accent and nekkid pictures harm or help? (We have to say, the nude pictures helped us a lot. We like to know everything about our politicians.) In the end, Gray Davis looked small, creepy and skinless, like his daily chicken lunches and dinners from Koo Koo Roo take-out. This little icon says all we have left to say about him.

Algore Wants to Be Round and Bald? It's kind of fun to watch Algore trying to get traction in a new career mainly because we don't have to watch him do it at our expense in the White House. The NY Observer brings us up to date on his efforts to emulate Roger Ailes and the quote of the day goes to Howard Stringer. "To Mr. Gore and his dream of starting his own TV news channel, Mr. Stringer had this to say: "'You have nothing to lose but your loneliness.'"

Warning To Diabetics: No matter how interested you are in Valerie Plame Wilson, the maybe-spy at the center of the Frog-March-Novak scandalette, don't read this without your medication nearby. This is the woman who would rather "cut her arm off" than be interviewed. Her husband used that quote over and over again this weekend to describe how cloistered and shy his wife is. The Washington Post doesn't care and goes right ahead and writes about her in such detail the Domino pizza guy will recognize her.

The Ghost of Jayson Blair: Slow learners at the New York Times have another glaring Blairism on their hands. Michael Lewis, writing in the Times magazine about the recall effort used a "next door neighbor" of Gray Davis to hang his entire story on. But, in a letter from Davis' press secretary, Steven Maviglio points out that the woman wasn't Davis neighbor at all. Didn't some people get fired for this kind of thing recently?

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