The crazy cat lady of the New York Times is back with a new heaping gob of crazy to bludgeon us with. Always fun.
Lessons Learned. Already.
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: October 27, 2010
It is not too soon to
Learn to start columns with unambiguous sentence subjects?
consider what we’ve learned from the 2010 elections.
Sane observers already know: unmasked liberalism is an electoral train-wreck. The American people, when they see it in action, find progressivism hateful. This is worth saying, because this column is designed exclusively to obfuscate this manifestly obvious truth.
This is actually an old journalism trick.
Yes. It is. Thanks for cluing me in. I really feel like I’m engaged with your process.
If you
Second person? Really?
want to do a retrospective of an important event,
I don’t; the retrospective column is a confession to the readers that you are losing the battle with writers block.
it is really much better to do it well before the appropriate date,
I’m taking this as a tacit acknowledgement that the column is inappropriate.
when you have the field all to yourself.
I’m taking this as a tacit admission of the anti-competitive ideology that’s rampant in the print media.
I learned this from one of my first editors, who made me write a year-later piece about a famous murder a little more than nine months after the crime occurred. It was a big success.
Thanks for the history lesson. Can we talk about who signed your High School yearbook next?
So, the elections.
Christ, this isn’t a fucking sentence, Gail. Inconsequential side notes to the reader do not distract from this column’s meandering morass of verbal diarrhea.
When we look back on the elections of 2010 —
And finally, having tortuously slogged through all those needless asides, we’ve made it back to something resembling a point. This is a writing style more labyrinthine than a tweenage girl’s machinations to date Justin Bieber.
and we will look back, people, I promise you it really is going to end —
…Told you.
we will all have our lists of best and worst moments.
Question: Is a premature retrospective column eligible for the ‘worst moments?’
For best,
This sentence construction makes my stomach turn.
one of my favorites was the discovery that Bill and Hillary Clinton are now the Republican Party’s favorite Democrats. You will remember Jennifer Steinhauer’s story in The Times
I most certainly do not. I never read that rag. Wait…
about how Republicans in Congress are speaking nostalgically about the great bipartisanship of the Clinton years, and how Sean Hannity recently referred to the ex-president as “good old Bill.”
For future reference, the tone is how you can tell it’s facetious. For the reader’s convenience, I have read about half of Steinhauer’s column; it’s trash.
Meanwhile in Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, when asked to point to a Democratic senator she could work with, picked Hillary.
As a point of fact, before even mentioning Hilary’s name, O’Donnell preceded it with “well, she’s not a senator anymore, but”. Clearly it wasn’t a good answer, but it wasn’t an absurd one. She painted the image of the type of Democratic senator that she believed she would work well with, not a bad response considering that she, as a relatively unknown longshot candidate, has had very little occasion to interact with Democratic senators. While it didn’t answer the question, the idea of a sitting US Senator working with the sitting US Secretary of State is downright reasonable.
Who is of course not in the Senate any longer, but I’m sure she appreciated the shout-out. Earlier on Fox, O’Donnell had expanded on her admiration for the secretary of state, who she said “was a great senator.”
I’m starting to think that Collins is basing her columns off the water-cooler talk of the interns.
This is an important life-lesson for all of us — except the Clintons, who clearly knew it all along. Victory comes to those who hang in there.
So, achievement is inaction and a stubborn refusal to provide substance? Great! We’re already teaching it in public schools.
Today, you
Again with the second person…
may be the most loathed person in America who is not wanted for a capital crime.
This is an excellent opportunity for a conjunction. Just sayin’.
But tomorrow the people who are attempting to impeach you will get over it.
Technically, Clinton was impeached.
And the ones who claimed that you organized the assassination of your good friend Vince Foster will forget.
The universality of this advice just took a bit of a hit, but I’ll make sure to remember this if I ever meet a guy named Vince Foster.
Then a year or 10 down the line they will be ticked off at someone else and talking about you as if you’d been best pals since sleep-away camp in the third grade.
The most glowing praise for Clinton in the Steinhauer column came from Trent Lott: “You know with Clinton the chemistry was right…He was a good old boy from Arkansas, I was a good old boy from Mississippi, and Newt, he was from Georgia. So he knew what I was about and I knew where he was coming from.” While this was hardly a ringing endorsement, we all know what happened the last time Lott openly praised another ‘good old boy.’
There have been so many possible worst campaign moments that it’s impossible to pick a favorite.
Oh right. This isn’t a column about Clinton. I got lost for a second.
The woman who got stomped by a Rand Paul supporter?
This is a favorite moment? That’s kind of dark.
Rand Paul’s head-stomping response? (“It is an unusual situation to have so many people so passionate on both sides.”)
He condemned the incident. http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7143033-rand-paul-response-to-stomping-of-womans-head-it-was-a-crowd-control-problem , What do you want to do? Personally apologize as though he was the one doing the stomping.
The political operative in South Carolina who felt compelled to go on television and confess to a one-night stand with the gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley?
Well it’s not like he’s a consultant for the opposition…wait…
Sharron Angle’s “some of you look a little more Asian to me” remark to the Latino students?
There is no defense for this. It was flat-out dumb.
Sharron Angle’s announcement that Dearborn, Mich., is governed by Islamic Sharia law?
There is no defense for this. It was flat-out wrong.
Sharron Angle?
What can I say? Despite indefensible gaffes, she’s still going to take down the Senate Majority Leader.
My own personal worst campaign moment came at the New York gubernatorial debate,
Excessive comma usage.
when the lights went up to reveal seven contenders vying for the right to lead the state, one of whom was famous only for her claim to be the madam who supplied Eliot Spitzer with prostitutes.
Pairing those two up is a CNN show I’d actually watch. Not a fan of Kathleen Parker.
This was possibly the worst debate I ever saw,
No argument here.
and while some of that was due to the fact that the Republican, Carl Paladino, was preoccupied by his need to go to the bathroom,
If you were on the stage with those crazies, I’d try to distance myself from the three ring circus too.
the big problem was all those third-party candidates clogging up the stage. I’m beginning to think we make it too easy to clutter the ballot
Like this?
with names of people who want to run for office only because they lack the money to achieve their true objective, which is to have a large poster of their face looming over Times Square year round, or at least get a continuing part in a reality TV show.
I’m going to need a drink after that sentence.
Let’s return to the bright side.
I’d prefer to return to relevance, but anything to keep this moving along is fine by me.
Another really good
Collins is known for her precise adjectives.
outcome in 2010 may be the decimation of the filthy rich candidate.
This is good why?
Meg Whitman (running for California governor), Rick Scott (Florida governor) and Linda McMahon (Connecticut senator) have together spent almost a quarter billion dollars of their own money trying to get elected.
Serves them right for being dirty capitalists. Just for the record, seven of the top ten richest politicians are Democrats. Just sayin’
Whitman and McMahon are both running far behind while Scott is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent. We may be looking at nearly $250,000,000 in thwarted ego, folks.
Let’s call it a private sector economic stimulus.
So on election night, keep an eye on Scott’s fortunes, even if you don’t live in Florida and could not care less that when he was making all his money in the private sector,
Should we hold the “private sector” thing against him?
he oversaw the biggest health care fraud scheme in the history of American government.
He was in charge of public relations for the Obamacare push? [Insert rimshot here]
So, to conclude: This election has taught us that not only are there second acts in America, there are third acts. And really spectacular curtain calls.
This is absolutey gibberish. This isn’t even remotely what this column was about.
Also, that there is nothing cool about running for high office on the Look At Me Ticket.
Really? That’s what you’re taking away from this election cycle?
And finally, that money does not buy happiness.
I emphatically disagree.
Or maybe even the governorship of California, which in a sane world you would not be able to give away.
Is Gail Collins even paying attention to this election cycle? The news out of the left recently has all been about secret money buying elections, Citizens United, the evil Chamber of Commerce, the deplorable Koch brothers, and the poor Democrats being outspent by the Republicans (which turned out not to be true http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/27/democrats-outspend-republicans-on-campaigns/)
The idea that a recap of this election ends with “money is irrelevant” is completely nonsensical considering the tidal wave that’s about to hit. If money is, after all, as irrelevant as Collins suggests, then the thumping Democrats get on Tuesday is, when push comes to shove, a referendum on liberal policies.
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