It was hard not to think of Gore Vidal’s aperçu when I read this piece on Cory Booker in the New York Times this morning. When snow blanketed this city two Christmases ago, Mayor Cory A. Booker was celebrated around the nation for personally shoveling out residents who had appealed for help on Twitter. But here, his administration was scorned as streets remained impassable for days because the city had no contract for snow removal. Last spring, Ellen DeGeneres presented Mr. Booker with a superhero costume after he rushed into a burning building to save a neighbor. But Newark had eliminated three fire companies after the mayor’s plan to plug a budget hole failed. In recent days, Mr. Booker has […]

Michele Bachmann claims that Gore Vidal’s novel Burr made her into a Republican. “It’s very interesting because I had been a Democrats — and I’d actually worked on Jimmy Carter’s campaign. And I was reading a novel by Gore Vidal, and when I was reading it he was mocking the Founding Fathers. And all of a sudden it just occurred to me: I set the book down on my lap, I looked out the window of a train I was riding in, and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t think I’m a Democrat. I think I really am a Republican.’ Because the Founding Fathers were not the characters that I saw Gore Vidal portraying in his novel. “And that snotty, mocking […]

Some bits and bobs for the holiday weekend… 1. Against my better inclinations, I’ve written a short piece on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It’s in the journal Democracy, along with reflections from Orlando Patterson, Michael Kazin, Avishai Margalit, and other smart people. My conclusion? The politics of fear is dead; the politics of fear is alive and well.  Or, as Ed Tufte, a professor of mine at Yale, used to say: Some do, some don’t. 2. On this Labor Day weekend, it’s useful to remember that virtually nothing about the economy that we’re talking about these days is new.  Thanks to Roseanne for the reminder!   3. Speaking of comedy from days gone by, Dennis Perrin, a FB friend […]