It Looks So Natural No One Can Tell
As readers may have noticed, the media have a proprietary attitude toward Barack Obama: Having invested so much in his election, they may now be seen as protecting their investment. Or, in selected instances, holding Obama in their loving arms and gently cooing.
Take, for example, recent stories in the New York Times and Washington Post which reveal that, since he announced his candidacy two years ago, President Obama has begun to show some telltale signs of gray in his hair, mostly around the ears. Of course, the fact that the president is in his 47th year might have something to do with it, but according to the press accounts it is clearly the crushing burden of the post-Bush presidency that is prematurely aging the current president.
Obviously, under these circumstances, there's only one thing to do, and as a service to this and future presidents, we offer these three examples of the ways in which veteran Washington politicos deal with gray hair. For this purpose we've recruited California's two U.S. senators, and a retired colleague from Kansas.
First, there's the Bob Dole route, which mandates that a legislator's hair look just as youthful as his face--but not too youthful. Notice how the darkness of Dole's dark, thinning locks diminishes slightly around the temples, which should fool any skeptics who suspect a dye job.
Second, there's the Barbara Boxer option, which is to give the hair some unnatural color but highlight it creatively--alternating streaks of brown and not-so-brown--and poof it hourly to distract from the obvious dye job.
Finally, there's the Dianne Feinstein solution, which may be described as honest deception: There's no getting around the fact that Senator Feinstein is 75 years old, but has hair the color of brown shoe polish. It may look slightly ridiculous, and is unquestionably a dye job, but you have to admire the courage required to be seen in public with a head of hair that would do credit to a youthful Labrador Retriever.
Those, in THE SCRAPBOOK'S view, are President Obama's three options. If he can't make up his mind, we should mention that Vice President Biden has years of experience to offer the White House.
The 'Times' and Charles Freeman
If you didn't hear about the controversy surrounding the appointment of Charles Freeman to serve as head of the National Intelligence Council and his subsequent withdrawal from that post in the face of bipartisan opposition in Congress, it may be that you're not checking THE WEEKLY STANDARD website often enough. It might also be because you're getting your news from the New York Times.
Even before Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, officially appointed Freeman, the pick was sparking concern on a number of blogs. Freeman had run a think-tank that was largely funded through the generosity of the Saudi royal family. At the same time he'd offered over-the-top praise of the Saudi royals ("I believe King Abdullah is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great") and over-the-top criticism of Israel ("Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace"). Freeman also had financial ties to the People's Republic of China that, again, happened to coincide with a series of bizarre statements in defense of that regime's conduct ("[T]he Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action").
Freeman's statements and his financial ties to foreign authoritarian regimes caused considerable concern in Congress, where all seven Republicans on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee signed a letter to Blair making clear their objections, while Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were quietly letting the White House know of their displeasure with the pick.
Still, as all this played out, not a word appeared in the New York Times to indicate there was any kind of trouble. Ultimately the Times was forced to report to its readers the scuttling of another Obama appointment without ever having covered how that scuttling had come to pass. The next day the story appeared on the paper's front page. Readers were curious--how could Freeman's withdrawal have been front page news but his appointment and the controversy surrounding it not be worthy of any coverage at all?
The Washington Post's Greg Sargent got one answer from Times editor Doug Jehl, who explained on Sargent's blog, "We did initially elect not to write a story about the campaign against Mr. Freeman. In deciding how to deploy our reporters, my initial judgment was that this squabble fell short of the bar, since the head of the National Intelligence Council is not a Senate-confirmable position, and it lies well below cabinet rank." (In fairness, the Times did have some of its best reporters--including Jodi Kantor--covering the critical "Michelle Obama Goes Sleeveless, Again" story.)
The Politico's Michael Calderone got another answer. Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet told him that Freeman wasn't a "high enough appointment to go nuts over in a big way. . . . Go Google his predecessor and see how much coverage he got."
We did. The Times covered the appointment of Freeman's predecessor, Thomas Fingar, the day after the announcement was made--and we suspect that if there'd been a massive controversy about his ties to Red China, they would have covered that, too.
Flush this Bill!
The next time you drive through the commonwealth of Virginia, you may want to think twice about downing that cup of coffee or Big Gulp. As a result of the downward economy, the state's lawmakers have proposed scrapping 25 of 41 highway rest areas, an idea that has more than a few concerned citizens hopping mad.
According to the Roanoke Times, Delegate Charles Poindexter called the proposal "silly, foolish, [and a] lack of common sense. If you have to go, you have to go. And that's what the people out in the country are saying right now." Not to mention the trucking industry, which refuses to take this sitting down.
As more and more complaints trickle in to Richmond, we hope the state's legislators have second thoughts and withdraw this plan. Otherwise, transportation officials may have more to worry about than the flow of traffic.