Earth Tones Out, Jewel Tones In

Writing in the September 27 New York magazine, Naomi Wolf . . . well, you just have to admire her, don't you? No matter how often she fails, no matter how many people laugh at her--doggonnit, she just picks herself up, dusts herself off, and takes another swing at sounding smart.

This time, unfortunately, it's the same old pitch Ms. Wolf has been whiffing at for years. Did you know that "gender imagery" and, yes, even color schemes have a vitally important effect on American voting behavior, especially where women are concerned? It's true!

Republicans understand this better than Democrats, Wolf ruefully notes: "A key tactic is wife deployment. Is Dick Cheney a scary, old-guard, male-dinosaur guy? Send out Lynne to talk about how he whips up brunch." And look how "Karl Rove makes eggs with bacon for Mary Matalin!"

(THE SCRAPBOOK must confess it's a bit confused by this eggs-and-bacon business. Perhaps the gender imagery of Mr. Rove cooking breakfast for Ms. Matalin reassures swing voters because they'd otherwise have to think about Mary in the kitchen with her actual husband, James Carville?)

Ms. Wolf continues: "While Bush Inc. understands the power of the vivid visual image--dressing the entire GOP convention, for instance, in matching tangerine and turquoise" and using "jewel tones on Laura Bush and other women associated with the administration," the Democrats "keep being bumped to the inside pages because they send out their candidate and his wife in neutrals."

And speaking of the Democratic candidate's wife--jeez, Teresa Heinz Kerry has done "more to emasculate him than the opposition ever could."

Let's start with "Heinz." By retaining her dead husband's name--there is no genteel way to put this--she is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man--a dead Republican man, at that. Add to that the fact that her first husband was (as she is herself now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband. Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a color that no woman wears in the heartland, and you have a recipe for just what Kerry is struggling with now: charges of elitism, unstable family relationships, and an unmanned candidate.

Oh, dear. Even THE SCRAPBOOK wells up with sympathy--winces, actually--at the thought of Senator Kerry being "unmanned." Quick, Mizz Teresa! Drop those blacks and neutrals. Try something in tangerine or turquoise instead.

Good Morning, America!

Like millions of ordinary, just-plain-folks all across America, THE SCRAPBOOK bolted out of bed September 17, rushed right to the computer, called up the TV Guide website, and learned--oh, joy!--that former ABC "News" blonde person Joan Lunden, 54, is expecting twins. Again. From the same surrogate mother who just last summer delivered a first pair of twins to Lunden and her second husband, Jeff Konigsberg.

Ms. Lunden has three other children by a previous marriage. And Ms. Lunden's surrogate, Deborah Bolig, is known to have delivered at least two other children, a third set of twins, for at least one other couple. If we're counting right, that will make nine children in all. Some number of whom would almost have to be related to one another in the ordinary, just-plain-folks sense of that phrase. Wouldn't they?

The famously discreet and well-bred Ms. Lunden won't say.

As she has subsequently explained to Newsweek: "We had all these embryos left over," see? "Jeff and I have been banking these embryos for a while. It's funny, you pay freezer storage on embryos and I got the 'Do you want to re-up on your freezer storage?' and Jeff and I said, 'Oh, there's a little sibling in there somewhere very, very cold.'"

Asked by Newsweek's amazingly cheeky Jac Chebatoris whether the embryos in question were the product of eggs from her very own ovaries, the elegant Ms. Lunden waved the question off. "They were our embryos," she curtly replied. "I don't ever discuss any more than that."

That, after all, would be vulgar.

Heavy Weight Spin

Remember, back in June, how the Los Angeles Times released a poll showing John Kerry with a sizable 51-44 percent lead over George W. Bush in the presidential horserace? Weirdly enough, the same poll also showed Bush simultaneously ahead among independents, and running better among Republicans than Kerry was running among Democrats. How could this be?

Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's top pollster, offered one obvious answer: Democrats were wildly overrepresented--there were one-third fewer Republicans--in the pool of voters the Times had surveyed. Had the Times properly "weighted" its results--adjusted them for the actual party-ID breakdown thought to exist across the country--things would have come out differently. Dowd called the Times poll a "mess."

Piffle, replied wonkishly inclined Demollectuals. Ruy "Emerging Democratic Majority" Teixeira, for instance, insisted that there was no need to "weight" the Times poll's peculiar party ID numbers because "there are ample grounds for thinking there is, in fact, a surge toward the Democrats . . . among the broad electorate" (props to blogger and Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal for resurrecting this quote).

But that was then. Modern statistical science has apparently since discovered that party ID "surges" are only real when they benefit Democrats, and that it therefore is sometimes appropriate to "weight" poll results--like whenever that's the only way to make an apparent Republican advantage disappear.

Two weeks ago, for example, a new CBS/ New York Times poll put Bush on top of Kerry by eight points, based on responses from a pool of voters with slightly more Republicans than Democrats. Teixeira cried foul: CBS and the Times had failed to "weight" their poll!

Actually, the race is tied, Teixeira argued on his website--"if you weight their data to conform to the 4-point Democratic party ID lead which we have good reason to believe is the underlying distribution in the voting electorate. . . . Once you adjust for the apparent overrepresentation of Republican identifiers in some samples, the polls all seem to be saying the same thing: The race is a tie or very close to it."

A man can do wondrous things with statistics. Especially if he's not too worried about looking like a hypocrite.

Parody Update

Our back-page PARODY last week featured that now-famous photograph of teary-faced toddler Sophia Parlock atop her father's shoulders at a John Edwards rally in Huntington, West Virginia--holding what remained of a Bush-Cheney placard that had moments before been ripped from her hands and destroyed by a man wearing an International Union of Painters and Allied Trades T-shirt. The president of that union quickly apologized to the Parlock family "for the distress one of our overzealous members caused."

But suspicious bloggers almost immediately questioned whether the apology wasn't premature. Phil Parlock, they pointed out, had a history of provocative, Republican-sign-holding appearances at Democratic rallies. He'd gotten roughed up for it--and made news--in 1996 and 2000, as well. So was the whole thing a set-up? Maybe the man in the union T-shirt wasn't actually a union member at all?

Nope. Columnist Michelle Malkin called the IUPAT a few days later and asked about it. They told her that they'd "identified the union member who grabbed the Bush/Cheney sign from Phil Parlock's daughter and threw the pieces at the family as they left the event. 'We are taking steps to deal with the individual,'" the union said.

Meantime the president, in fine Bush 41 fashion, has written a note: "Dear Sophia, Thank you for supporting my campaign. I understand someone tore up your sign. So I am sending you a new sign and a signed picture. Please give my best to your family. Sincerely, George W. Bush."

Awww.