You Say You Wanted A Revolution

Voters in New York gave Hillary Clinton a Senate seat a while back primarily on the basis of her being married to a famous man. Yes, like most politicians, she's a lawyer, and she certainly has the self-importance, smugness, and ruthless ambition that serves one well when running for office. Maybe that really is all it takes.

I still can't quite believe that her political career survived the "plantation" remark. For the blissfully unaware, in 2006 she was speaking at a predominantly black church and said, "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about." At least she managed to resist snapping her fingers and adding, "gurrrlfren' ".

Imagine for a second that Sarah Palin had said the same thing to a predominantly black audience. In that case, the mainstream media would definitely recognize the patronizing, condescending racism. Her career would have been over, and we'd never hear the end of it. But there's no double standard in the media, nosirree.

But since Hillary is a leftist, a woman, and a legacy, it all gets forgiven and forgotten.

Now Hillary is vacating her Senate seat, having been deemed qualified to handle America's international affairs based on her extensive experience having tea with a lot of wives of foreign dignitaries. The problem is that her possible replacement is another dynasty pick, Caroline Kennedy.

Caroline Kennedy may be a very nice lady, and she may even be reasonably qualified to sit in the Senate. She couldn't possibly be worse than some people who set up housekeeping on the Senate floor for decades (Ted Stevens, I'm looking in your direction). Let's get real, though. She's in the running because of her last name.

The American people seem to love their dynasties. Having the last name Clinton, Kennedy, or, yes, Bush, seems to somehow automatically entitle someone to public office. Maybe it's because they can get more free publicity during their campaigns by way of their names already being in every reporter's spellcheck dictionary. Canada is not immune; Justin Trudeau's name is already being bandied about as a leadership candidate.

Quick side note: the current front runner for leadership of the Titanic party Kamikaze party Liberal party is Michael Ignatieff. I really hope he wins and holds fast to the Coalition plan, so I can start calling them Iggy and the Stooges.


For the six of you out there in all of North America who get that, thank you.


Back to this whole "dynasty" thing.

Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, summed up the problem with Caroline Kennedy when he said, "When you look at her, and you know what the Kennedys are capable of and you know the family she comes from … think of the DNA." The saddest part is, I'm pretty sure he meant that as an endorsement.

For those with short memories (or history textbooks published in the last thirty years), America held a whole revolution a while back for the express purpose of getting rid of rulers who were supposedly entitled to their positions by divine right. Democracy has no room for this peculiar notion that some people are congenitally entitled to rule on the basis of accident of birth.

I also don't think that Koch should have brought up "DNA" in relation to the Kennedys, given what we now know about JFK's extramarital recreational activities. The most impressive thing about his DNA is that he occasionally shared some of it with Marilyn Monroe.

In light of that last joke, I probably shouldn't have said "congenitally" back there, right before talking about JFK, either. Oh, well, nothing that can be done about it now. One of these days I should invest the extra eighty cents and get a keyboard with Backspace and Delete keys.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my wife feeding the bird we saw last time out.