| | Good
Saturday morning. The Ombudsman column in Sunday's WashPost reveals
that a PLAGIARISM rash that hit the paper's KidsPost poetry contest for
the second year in a row, even after the form included a big yellow box
saying "Original Work Only" and explaining: "It must come from inside
your head!" KidsPost Editor Marylou Tousignant even phoned and grilled
the two winners and their parents to be sure the entries were original.
One of the kids (a 6 year old) claims to have misunderstood and the
other (a 10 year old) "simply lied." A fifth-grade class discovered
that one of the winning entries was by Shel Silverstein, and the other
was "inspired by" a poem with a similar name.
It's Derby Day. And Gold Cup. (Will Martin rock his apple-green pants?)
And a great weekend for camping with Scouts or just with your kids.
Warren Belmar, Adam's dad, has friends in town for his birthday. As you might imagine, the videos will be cinematic quality.
N.Y. Daily News wood: "VINO FOSSELLA! S.I. congressman begs forgiveness
for drunken driving at twice the legal limit." (.17 - limit: .08)
Jon Ward of the WashTimes is on the front with 'Bush gets personal with
public: Talks about family matters at St. Louis town-hall forum.' Jon
astutely picks up on a passage from the event that will find its way
into a thousand newspaper articles.
An audience member asked Bush about his future plans. The President:
'Interestingly enough, it is a lot harder to have been the son of the
President than to be the President. (Laughter.) ... You know, one of
the great, really fun things we do is we welcome our pals from West
Texas to the White House, and they come to the Oval Office, they're
walking around; they say, man, I can't believe I'm here. And then they
take a look at me - (laughter.) So the first thing is I'm heading home.
... I guess I'll go home and mow the lawn. (Laughter.)
'I'm interested in promoting ... the whole philosophy behind the
freedom agenda. I think it's going to be very important to be kept in
the forefront of American philosophical thought. And I'm going to build
a presidential library at SMU - it's where Laura went to university,
there in Dallas. And I'd like to have a think tank. This isn't a
political precinct, this will be a place where we get the thinkers from
around the world to come and write about and articulate the
transformative power of freedom, abroad and at home.
'One of the initiatives that I'm very proud of is the interface between
government and faith-based and community groups. ... And so I'd like to
- and that's something else I'd like to foster.'
New scandal, from AP: "Just 16 months into his four-year-term, Ohio's
attorney general - Marc Dann, a Democrat - admits he was in over his
head as he acknowledged an affair with a subordinate and his failure to
stop problems that led to a sexual harassment investigation that
brought down three of his aides."
The cover of the NEWSWEEK closing tonight shows the back of the Statue
of Liberty, with main line, "The Post-American World," By Fareed
Zakaria, an adaptation of his new book. Jon MEACHAM writes in his
editor's note:
""Perhaps naively, I have always been skeptical of what you might call
the Gibbonization of America-that we are, like Rome, fated to
inevitable decline. ... Fareed has characteristically avoided both
blind optimism and predictable pessimism, instead offering a new and
compelling way to think about the world. His book, as he says, is not
about the decline of America but 'the rise of the rest'-the rest of the
world. The heart of Fareed's argument:
" 'We are living through the third great power shift in modern history.
The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century
... The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th
century, was the rise of the United States ... For the last 20 years,
America's superpower status in every realm has been largely
unchallenged and untested-something that's never happened before in
history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world
2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has
expanded and accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver
behind the third great power shift of the modern age-the rise of the
rest.' "
Bob HERBERT says the media are guilty of "Overkill" on Reverend Wright
and should get serious: "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and
regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we've
seen over the past week is major media overkill - Jeremiah Wright all
day and all night. It's like watching the clips of a car wreck again
and again."
Phil SINGER needled Team O yesterday with an e-mail that had OLD NEWS
in the subject line: "In their zeal to divert attention from their
recent troubles, the Obama campaign 'announced' this morning that
automatic delegate Paul Kirk is endorsing Sen. Obama. This is NOT a new
endorsement - Mr. Kirk has been publicly backing Senator Obama since at
least February." (Boston Globe, Feb. 12: "Kirk, an attorney who lives
in Marstons Mills and is a former chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, supports Obama.")
NO O
- Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown and Jeffrey Ressner report that Oprah
is unlikely to join Senator Obama on the campaign trail until the
general election: "At this late stage in the primary campaign, Obama no
longer needs help attracting thousands of people to an event. His
challenge now is proving his policy credentials and personal appeal to
constituencies that have favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, spending
the last two days in Indiana in small forums with working-class
families, senior citizens and farmers. The image he's trying to project
is more Terre Haute than Hollywood." Ron FOURNIER, online
political editor of The Associated Press, is acting Washington bureau
chief following the departure of Sandy Johnson, who said in a memo
posted by Romenesko that she leaves "with great sadness." The memo has
some cool lore:
"In the presidential election of 2000, it was Sandy and a team of AP
analysts who understood the voting patterns in Florida well enough to
know that calling that state for George W. Bush was premature. She knew
the vote could go the other way and she refused, despite enormous
outside pressure, to call that race. As a result, AP stood alone and
Sandy's judgment was ultimately proved to be the right one."
JUST WORDS? ABC's omniscient Jake Tapper: "Guam's four Democratic
delegates (not to mention its five superdelegates) are up for grabs in
Saturday's primary, and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary
Clinton, D-N.Y., has told residents of that Pacific territory that as
president she will work to give them the right to vote for president.
Residents of U.S. territories do not have the right to vote in
presidential elections, nor do they have full representation in the
U.S. Congress.
"In an interview with KUAM-TV, Clinton, asked about giving Guam
citizens the right to vote for president, said, 'It seems to me that it
is long past time that we remedy this inequity. It doesn't reflect
American values; it is out of step with the move towards equality and
full citizenship rights, and I will do everything I can to make sure
the people of Guam's vote are counted.' "
WIN OR LOSE, THAT NUGGET HAS TO BE IN THE POST-PRIMARY STORIES.
Michael Duffy of TIME magazine on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show":
"The dirty little secret of the McCain veepstakes operation is that the
choices just aren't very good. And they got worse this week when McCain
said that the bridge that fell in Minneapolis last summer and killed 15
people was the result of wasteful government spending. That made Tim
Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor who's on his short list, say 'You
know, I don't know where he got that.' Not a dream ticket yet.'
Vice President CHENEY has taken his comedy from the Radio &
Television Correspondents' Association Dinner on the road. At a
fund-raiser in Tulsa yesterday, he drew laughter with his opening line:
"I don't care what you say, I'm not running again."
Then he reprised some hit material from the Steve Chaggaris dinner:
"Senator Clinton has taken to calling me Darth Vader. (Laughter.)
Actually, I asked my - it was a little disturbing when that first
happened. I asked my wife, Lynne, the other day, 'But doesn't that
botheryou?' And she said, 'No, it HUMANIZES you.' (Laughter.)' '
SENATOR OBAMA'S DAY: He's giving SEVEN interviews to Indiana media
outlets, attending a picnic, a potluck and a campaign-staged ice cream
social, and will be introduced by an Amtrak machinist at a speech in
Indianapolis. The campaign says the senator will talk about "helping
working families succeed in a global economy by changing the Washington
culture of gimmicks and game-playing and creating a new kind of
politics that ends the influence of lobbyists, brings both parties
together, and tells the American people the truth about the challenges
we face. Obama will lay out his plans to provide real relief for
working families, create new jobs here in America, end our dependence
on foreign oil, and provide every American with a world-class
education."
SENATOR CLINTON'S DAY: She's joining her husband in INDY this evening
for a "Campaign Event with Special Guest John Mellencamp." Before that,
she does a town hall and three "Get out the Vote" events in NORTH
CAROLINA.
Before joining his wife, PRESIDENT CLINTON is doing SIX "Solutions for America" events in Indiana
.
PUNDIT PREP: At TIME's "THE PAGE," the inquisitive MARK HALPERIN ASKS:
"Where will the media place the expectations bar for an Obama 'win' in North Carolina?"
"Do eager campaign watchers (including Matt Drudge) realize how hard it
will be to accurately conduct exit polls in North Carolina, given how
long it has been since the state has seen a competitive primary?"
h
Our answers: "A win is a win" and "They do now."
The (London) Times: "Brown Bloodied in May Day Massacre."
Reuters has the deets: "Britain's ruling party pledged to learn lessons
on Saturday after suffering a crushing defeat in local elections that
newspapers said may signal the beginning of the end for Prime Minister
Gordon Brown's government. Brown's Labour Party lost the prestigious
post of mayor of London to the opposition Conservatives, capping
Labour's worst local election defeat on record. Newspaper commentators
said Thursday's election may mark a once-in-a-generation turning point
in British politics and mean the Labour government's 11-year hold on
national power is nearing its end."
THE BIG IDEA: The WashPost magazine cover is "The Secret Lives of Moms:
If you have bongs or thongs in your past, you also have a dilemma: how
much to tell your children," By Liza Mundy, who warns against
oversharing:
"When we read them fairy tales, we are, in a sense, lying. When we lead
them to believe every story has a happy ending, we are lying. Our
culture puts so much emphasis on frankness and sharing that it's easy
to forget the real uses of evasion and stalling and deftly changing the
subject, which are social skills on which civilizations - and,
sometimes, families - rely. Because the truth can be harsh and
destructive, and why force it upon them?"
CHEAT SHEET - Amber Wilkerson, RNC Deputy Press Secretary, reacted to
the Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Raleigh, N.C.: "Tonight the
Democrats continued their pattern of distortions and pandering to their
base with misleading rhetoric about John McCain's policies and
positions. Voters will reject Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's
attempts to distract from their own protracted battle by waging false
attacks against Senator McCain's record."
DESSERT - The N.Y. Times fronts Jim Rutenberg's "On Sunday TV, One Hot
Race Fuels Another," about the rivalry that "will play out when Mr.
Obama and Mrs. Clinton sit for competing hourlong interviews on Sunday
morning. It is the one between their interviewers, Tim Russert of NBC
News, who had scored a coup by having Mr. Obama sit down with him on
"Meet the Press" two days before the Indiana and North Carolina
primaries, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, who announced on
Thursday that he would interview Mrs. Clinton on 'This Week' about the
same time. ...
"Both went from politics, where they were aides to Democratic
luminaries, to the pinnacle of broadcast news, as hosts of venerated
public affairs programs. They also share something else, long and
complicated relations with the Clintons that have informed fierce
criticism this year - often from the echo chamber of liberal press
criticism on the Internet and sometimes stoked by the campaigns - that
the hosts have been shallow or unfair in some of their questioning. Mr.
Stephanopoulos, who worked in the Bill Clinton White House as a top
aide to Mr. Clinton, was attacked for being too hard on Mr. Obama last
month in a debate.
"Mr. Russert has frequently been accused of being too hard on Mrs.
Clinton, including in a debate he hosted this year. ... Mr. Russert
took a Rose Garden approach to this article and declined to comment.
... Mr. Stephanopoulos has gained new credibility with high-profile
interviews and aggressivebookings, typified by his lobbying of Mrs.
Clinton for the interview after NBC News had announced that it would
devote its program to Mr. Obama. ... Mr. Russert, an unrelenting
competitor who takes nothing for granted, is known to rebuke press
aides who dare to book their candidates on 'This Week' when he believes
that it should be his turn."
Happy weekend - headed to Silver Diner. | |
