The Long Arm of Karl Rove

THE SCRAPBOOK is relieved to learn that some assertions are so preposterous that, yes, even the New York Times has to catch its breath. Case in point: A recent "Questions For" interview with folk-rocker Sheryl "All I Wanna Do" Crow in the Times Magazine. This is a weekly feature where writer Deborah Solomon asks a dozen smart-alecky questions of some eminent personage--our own John Podhoretz was recently interrogated--whose head-to-toe, full-color photograph takes up half the page.

Until recently, Sheryl Crow was best known (apart from her singing) for keeping company with cyclist Lance Armstrong (they've since parted). But readers will be gratified to know that she's joined the ranks of Hollywood political activists. Alas, this second career has not been quite as rewarding as the first. She was embarrassed by the revelation that one of her proposals for saving the planet is to restrict the use of toilet paper to one square per visit to the bathroom. And some months ago she and fellow celebrity-activist Laurie David made news, of a sort, at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington. The pair marched up to the table where ex-White House guru Karl Rove was eating, and proceeded to berate him, loudly and at some length, for the benefit of nearby cameras.

To be sure, Karl Rove is no favorite of the Washington press corps, but the consensus opinion the next morning was that Crow and David had been bumptious and rude, even by the standards of Hollywood political activists.

That, however, is not quite the sequence of events, as Sheryl Crow sees it. Claiming that her toilet-paper proposal was intended as a joke, she complained thus to the Times: "I think it's a fantastic and eye-opening example of how the media is operated by political figures, of how Karl Rove was humiliated in the media and how, within 24 hours, he was able to humiliate me and take any sort of credibility away from me."

THE SCRAPBOOK can just imagine Deborah Solomon's eyes popping, and jaw dropping, as she exclaimed: "What are you saying? You think Karl Rove leaked the toilet-paper story to the press?"

To which Ms. Crow responded, "I cannot tie him directly to that leak, but within 24 hours of our exchange, as we were leaving D.C., it was on the CNN ticker tape: 'Sheryl Crow has proposed that we legislate toilet paper to one square.' "

Of course, THE SCRAPBOOK is obliged to report that Sheryl Crow's toilet-paper activism was known before the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, and that CNN is as likely to take its marching orders from Karl Rove as the New York Times is to do what THE SCRAPBOOK tells it to do. So we can safely consign Ms. Crow to the ranks of Hollywood airhead/conspiracy theorists. But we are obliged to her for momentarily exposing the way she and her fellow airhead/conspiracy theorists think, and letting a stupefied Deborah Solomon of the Times take a peek inside.

Great Moments in Clintonian Deceit

A tip of THE SCRAPBOOK homburg to Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr. of the New York Times for their comprehensive January 31 story on Bill Clinton's dealings with a Canadian financier who pledged more than $100 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation after the former president helped him strike a uranium-mining deal with the thuggish government of Kazakhstan.

Our favorite passage: "In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. [Frank] Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share. That same month, Mr. Dzhakishev, the Kazatomprom chief, said he traveled to Chappaqua, N.Y., to meet with [Bill] Clinton at his home. Mr. Dzhakishev said Mr. Giustra arranged the three-hour meeting. .  .  . Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra at first denied that any such meeting occurred. Mr. Giustra also denied ever arranging for Kazakh officials to meet with Mr. Clinton. Wednesday, after the Times told them that others said a meeting, in Mr. Clinton's home, had in fact taken place, both men acknowledged it."

Memories of Camelot

A taste of what you're missing if you're not a regular reader of the Campaign Standard blog on our website: Philip Terzian, provoked by the site of Edward Kennedy endorsing Barack Obama before a roomful of shrieking undergraduates, reminisces about the winter of 1967-68, when he was working as a student volunteer at Eugene McCarthy headquarters in downtown Washington.

My primary task was to open mail, collate documents, and purchase jelly donuts to satisfy the appetite of the campaign's slovenly press secretary, Seymour Hersh. At the time, it will be remembered, McCarthy had decided to run for president because the sentimental favorite of the antiwar Democrats, Robert Kennedy, could not stir himself to challenge Lyndon Johnson. More profile than courage, it was said at the time. And of course, it was only after McCarthy had come close to defeating LBJ in the New Hampshire primary--prompting Johnson, shortly thereafter, to withdraw from the race--that Kennedy "reassessed" his position and announced his own candidacy. Among those McCarthy enthusiasts who had "come clean for Gene," and embarked on what had seemed like a suicidal venture (among whom I counted myself), Kennedy was held in considerable contempt: His cute disavowals of interest in running amused no one, and his swift appropriation of McCarthy's capital caused indignation. When Kennedy finally announced he was running in the Senate Caucus Room, with his miniskirted wife onstage and their dozen children crawling among the wires and cameras, it seemed less a political act than a chapter in celebrity melodrama. Which, to his credit, Kennedy seemed to perceive. He is said to have complained to associates that McCarthy enjoyed the allegiance of the A students while he was left with the B students. Certainly, we campus McCarthyites saw it that way, and noticed that when Kennedy spoke in public he seemed to attract what we called "screamers"--the sort of girls who had greeted the Beatles at the airport--and their slightly bewildered boyfriends, whose interest in Bobby did not seem political. McCarthy was accompanied on the campaign trail by Robert Lowell; Kennedy enjoyed the company of Roosevelt Grier, and Sonny and Cher. Whether this specimen of Democratic snobbery has any application to the current election cycle I cannot say. Just as Robert Kennedy's crowds were larger and louder than Eugene McCarthy's in 1968, it is undoubtedly true that the saga of the Kennedy family--especially in the half-century since the assassinations of John and Robert--resonates with a certain kind of Democrat in 2008. But it is difficult to say how deeply such emotions run, and whether the excitement of a televised rally translates into anything like political action, conviction, or allegiance. .  .  .

Read the whole thing, and much else besides, at campaignstandard.com

Cue Violins

The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women wakes up to find that it has been romanced, used, and then abandoned by a cad: "Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. .  .  . And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment!"

Imagine that! Taken for a ride by Ted Kennedy, and then left, so to speak, by the side of the road.