That last post was about to go somewhere interesting, I think, but kind of missed its bus. It's surely true that we shouldn't be judging politicians harshly for needing attention ("And after all, isn't it something we all need?"), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be judging them on the subject at all ("And aren't they trying to get it by being good?" Not all of them, Sunshine!).
The naked neediness on Chuck Schumer's face as I saw it in 1998 is a part of who he is and how he's as effective as he is, [jump]
which is not half bad. It's true that his views on the Middle East are as slavishly AIPAC as anyone's (I don't know why this is, it is far from the case that all Jews in New York are card-carrying members of Likud, but all New York politicians seem to think they are, with the heroic, if only partial, exception of my own representative Jerry Nadler), and other bloggers make a not unjustifiably big deal over the quantities of money he takes in from the finance sector, but I've honestly never minded voting for him. He's famous for the enthusiasm with which he brings home the white steak (as Israelis call the flesh of the swine, assuming the Jewish Taliban hasn't gotten rid of it), and I mean this in the good sense; and for standing up for jobs and justice (my favorite: when he stopped the Bush administration from firing all the government-servant janitors at West Point and turning the job over to a Georgia contractor). As much compassion as he may feel for the hedge fund manager, he displays a lot more for the working stiff, including the one that happens at the moment to be out of work
I think we need to distinguish the question of how needy they are for attention from those of how they go about getting it (do they jostle one another for the cameras? OK. Do they start wars? Not so good) and who they are trying to get it from (voters vs. donors). Got that? Good.
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| "Tony Bennett, attention whore" from the somewhat eccentric, not to say appropriately named, Diary of a Mad Person |
The naked neediness on Chuck Schumer's face as I saw it in 1998 is a part of who he is and how he's as effective as he is, [jump]
which is not half bad. It's true that his views on the Middle East are as slavishly AIPAC as anyone's (I don't know why this is, it is far from the case that all Jews in New York are card-carrying members of Likud, but all New York politicians seem to think they are, with the heroic, if only partial, exception of my own representative Jerry Nadler), and other bloggers make a not unjustifiably big deal over the quantities of money he takes in from the finance sector, but I've honestly never minded voting for him. He's famous for the enthusiasm with which he brings home the white steak (as Israelis call the flesh of the swine, assuming the Jewish Taliban hasn't gotten rid of it), and I mean this in the good sense; and for standing up for jobs and justice (my favorite: when he stopped the Bush administration from firing all the government-servant janitors at West Point and turning the job over to a Georgia contractor). As much compassion as he may feel for the hedge fund manager, he displays a lot more for the working stiff, including the one that happens at the moment to be out of work
I think we need to distinguish the question of how needy they are for attention from those of how they go about getting it (do they jostle one another for the cameras? OK. Do they start wars? Not so good) and who they are trying to get it from (voters vs. donors). Got that? Good.
Sorry about the video quality.
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