A Rational Animal

Okay, off politics for a minute here . . . .

Would someone please explain to me what the hell the Times Book Review is doing hiring Sprezzatura to review Norman Mailer’s latest?  And, worse, giving him cover placement?

For those of you unfamiliar with Sprezz, his name is Lee Siegel, and like so many  pompous, humorless narcissists, once worked for TNR.  He no longer does, owing to the fact that he was outed as his own sockpuppet, posting self-fellating comments under the name Sprezzatura and rabidly attacking commenters who criticized his pieces.  [Obsidian Wings has a good summary of the whole mess.]

The Times even ran a Q&A with Siegel about the scandal, in which he showed himself to be as whiny and self-pitying as any politican caught with his hand in the corporate cookie jar [or the congressional page’s cookie jar].  So what the hell are they doing hiring The Ultimate Sockpuppet to review real writing?  Worse, they’ve given eight - count ‘em, eight - freakin’ pages (Web pages) to do it!  And, of course, Sprezz spends most of it sucking up to The Great Man.

Sweet Jeebus, somebody get this guy an editor.

I saw late Friday night that the A.P.’s Nedra Pickler was reporting that Bill would announce today.  Of course, La Pickler as the source didn’t inspire the sort of confidence I normally might have felt.

So I was gratified to awaken this morning to the following headline in the "Braeking News" section of the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had a fairly substantial number of people ask me whether he’s running - and if so, when he’s going to announce.  I’ve told them the same thing I tell everyone else:  No, I’m not part of his inner circle; I’m not even at its fringes.  No, I have no "inside info," just the evidence of my own eyes and ears and my own take on his personality.  And with all those disclaimers, yes, I’m sure he’s running, and I think he’ll announce within [X] period.

Damn, I’m good!

Actually, a lot of state pols, flacks, and ops - including many who are far more in the loop than I - have believed this for a long time.   But I have to say that I truly believe one of the reasons that he made the decision to go for it is because of the massive grass-roots "Draft Bill" movement that has sprung up around the country.  Washington4Richardson is the first that came to my attention, and courtesy of Ken and Emmett, I learned of a whole country’s worth of "Draft Bill" sites.  They’re all blogrolled at right; if you are (or think you might become) a Richardson backer, go show ‘em some love and thank ‘em for everything they’re doing.  (And if you run a site that I’ve missed, leave me a note in the comments; I’ll get you blogrolled.)  Special thanks, though, are due to Ken and Emmett, who have done an incredible job of popularizing this effort beyond their home state.  Looks like the focus of our February Meetup’s changed a bit, huh, guys?

Sorry for the light - erm, okay, nonexistent - posting, folks.  I spent the entire week on the road, with only intermittent Internet access.  I now have to spend the day wading through a ton or so of e-mail messages before I head back to Albuquerque tomorrow.  (Yeah, yeah, I know - I can hear the screechy little violin from here.  And I know I have comments - I’ll get to ‘em; I promise.)

This time, I got back just before the latest storm hit.  The photo above is of one of the trees in the front yard; that’s what it looked like yesterday morning.  Of course, the sun’s out now, so the roads are less snowy than slooshy.  But the northern counties and Colorado were supposed to get hit last night, so we’ll see how well Albuquerque fared this time around.  Considering its inability to cope with the last storm, I think I’ll allot myself several extra hours’ driving time to get to my appointment.