In the forest of the night

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20rich.html?em

Frank Rich had a column in the NYT comparing Tiger Wood's bamboozling of the American public into believing his clean image to the fraudulent behavior of Enron and the Bushies pushing of the Iraq war. Sorry, maybe people shouldn't be so celebrity obsessed, but really does it matter Tiger fostered and image of being a squeaky clean family man? I mean, is he to blame for promoting a clean image, after all what celebrity is going to promote an image of being a whore master? Wanting to believe that a sublime golfer had an unblemished personal life is not the same as being lied to about weapons of mass destruction or people being taken for all their money. Newsweek has a cover picture of Tiger with the words, "Why We Can't Look Away." Well I can. Hearing the salacious details of his sex life and the destruction of his personal life are not entertaining to me. I think it is the press who can't look away.

House of Shame

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?hp

This is a long and depressing article in the NYT detailing some of the intense crony capitalism that went on in the Bush administration, and his blind faith in unregulated markets. The extent to the damage that the Bush administration has done is unthinkable. I lay the entire Wall Street debacle at his lumbering feet. So much for the CEO presidency. The rampant stupidity and disregard for warnings about the house of cards that was sure to collapse is astounding. Was it willful ignorance or did they ignore every warning because they were getting rich. This bone ignorance brought the world Bernie Madoff who used his connections at his Fifth Avenue synagogue to find victims for his ponzi scheme.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21rich.html?ref=opinion
Frank Rich's column details the absolute rampant crookishness and the different worthy charities, universities, pension funds, and people of Madoff. What on earth could he have been thinking? He reminded me of that horrible pharmacist in the mid-west who watered down chemotherapy drugs, so he could be a big cheese at his church. How can these people live with themselves.

Avoiding group think

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09rich.html?ref=opinion

Frank Rich has a wonderful column in the NYT today about how most of the conventional wisdom about the election was wrong. I think another strength for Obama was his tuning out the gasbags, and their endless supply of group think. Maybe not having been inside the Beltway for a long time and being grounded by family and friends in Chicago, made it easier to think clearly. There was one moment in the campaign when McCain suspended his campaign to deal with the financial crisis. I worried that Obama would fall into a reactive trap, but he didn't and wisely said, A president should be able to do more than one thing at a time. He kept on talking about policy instead of getting tangled up in the minutiae of attack ads, tempting though it might have been. Can you imagine looking at the 'celebrity' ads and not succumbing to, What are you talking about - you have been THE most frequent political guest on ALL the late night shows, and you were the one that called the press your base. But he was right not to - this time the American people were not bamboozled into voting for the fear and smear candidate.

Long memory

I alluded to having a long and unforgiving memory when writing about Paul Krugman. My daughter asked me the other day how I felt about Frank Rich. I said that although I rise early every Sunday to read his column, I still hadn't quite gotten over his meanness about Al Gore. Of course just about everybody in the msm dripped and oozed contempt for Gore, the dreaded conventional wisdom being that he was a terrible bore, and that it didn't matter all that much who was elected president. Hah! I bet they are singing a different tune these days. It seems that everything Bush touches turns to ashes. I wake with fear and trepidation to see what new horror the Bush administration has wrought. Let me put it this way - I am counting the days (and crossing my fingers, holding my breath, and whatever else I can think of that will bring luck.)