The premise has been asked hundreds of times since November: Will political comedy be funny during an Obama administration? The first waves of responses were logical — conventional satire will have less material since the conventional targets won't be as easy. Then came the counter-intuitive backlash — political comedy will be funnier, or at least the same amount of funny, because comedians will have to come up with new and innovative ways to skewer the next administration.
And now, only days away from the presidential Inauguration and we're left with … what, exactly? A feeling of restless dread for the fate of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? A general disinterest in the humorous side (if there is one) of electing our first black president to the White House? Or a thankful feeling in our gut that Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin never had the chance to blossom as it could have under four years of the Alaskan VP? CONTINUED »
Poor Barack Obama. Every time the president-elect wants to take his family on vacation to visit his Hawaii stomping gorunds, some member of the conservative press is on his case about the state being "too exotic" or "too elitist." Yes, like Obama, Hawaii is uppity.
Funnily enough, our great nation was founded on leaders who liked to skip out on their duties and take tropical vacations. And even the POTUSes who stay in the country (like Barack Obama!) for their sojourns often find themselves holing up near the water.
Below, the top five elitist getaways and the presidents who dared to venture off our continent for a little "me" time. CONTINUED »
The reason Chicago politics is so corrupt is because, in modern American history, it's never not been, which makes it very difficult to clean up. Especially because every politician who says they're going to try and straighten Chicago out ends up lying and cheating worse than the pig who came before him. Imagine trying to clean up a greasy stove with a sponge covered in used Crisco and you'll understand the job of cleaning up Chi-town. Basically, it's the Frankenstein's monster of political machines—a thing, composed of scrap materials functioning for a common cause (money), that will only be stopped if it commits to self-immolation.
Here's the back story: starting about 100 years ago, Chicago's elected officials started to realize they could play the city's increasing number of immigrants off one another for financial and political gain. Shrewd politicians would employ ward heelers, people who implanted themselves into ethnic enclaves and promised government handouts in exchange for votes. "Vote for [insert name of rotten prick here]," they'd say, "and you'll get a leg up on those no-good Eye-talians." This is why so many Irishman became Chicago police officers.
From there, the favors and money flowed as freely as Capone's bootlegged liquor during Prohibition, eventually leaving the Windy City where it is today, with the goddamn Illinois governor auctioning off high offices.
If you're smart, you should be saying, "But that stuff happened in New York, too. Why isn't Albany full of criminals?" Good question! The short answer is: Albany is full of criminals, just like all of politics. (Remember Spitzer, the hooker-fucker?) The long answer comes from Slate:
… machine politics faded away in New York, due in part to external pressure from former New Yorker Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected president in 1932.
Boston's pretty corrupt, too, as evidenced by this state senator stuffing a bribe into her bra just last month, but it's nowhere near as bad as Chicago, which has seen dozens of elected officials face criminal cases in the last three decades.
With the "WHY" out of the way, here's some of our favorite Chicago scandals from history.
CONTINUED »
Tomorrow is the 45th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's shooting in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald (and maybe some other people). In memoriam, PBS re-screened a documentary called Oswald's Ghost last week, which some viewers found to be in poor taste. Cuz, you know, golden boy president, crazy assassination attempts…it sort of brings a little big of neg energy into the air, ya know?
Then again, it was an important even in history, and it's not like you wouldn't remember 9/11 just because we built some similar towers in New York, right? Or does that analogy not work at all?
After the jump, so viewer hate-mail, and the PBS Ombudsman's response.
CONTINUED »
Superman. Batman. Barack Obama. Our nation's 44th president is a geek, says Matthew Yglesias, because he is a huge comic book nerd. Of course, when Yglesias says "geek" he means it as a compliment, because obviously Obama is just like James Bond or something, so the fact that he reads Spiderman comics doesn't make him a loser, it's just one more of his awesome quirks, like listening to Lil' Wayne or being black.
So I thought, what are CONTINUED »
What is going to happen to Rush Limbaugh now that Barack Obama has won both the media's heart and the presidency? We've already posited that he might actually gain some ground during a liberal term, since people always love the opposition.
But so far, the honeymoon for Obama is still going on, and anti-Barack rhetoric is no more or less popular than it was a week ago. So how does Limbaugh and his conservative ilk explain the love for Obama, despite his win? Shouldn't The Daily Show be preparing for cancellation while Matt Drudge and Limbaugh get read to take over the air/Internet waves?
Not if the media is just a lonely young teenage girl, and Obama is the young gangster from the wrong side of the track. It's the stupidest metaphor ever, but don't blame us, blame Rush.
CONTINUED »
So if you watched last season of Mad Men (and you did), there was that whole subplot of Nixon vs. Kennedy in 1960, and how to market a candidate (Nixon) that was less media-aware than his opponent. The presidential debates coincided neatly with the rise in personal televisions and mass media, meaning for the first time Americans could watch the great debates unfold from home, which some speculate is the reason Kennedy won. Kennedy was way hotter than Nixon.
Similarly, today the race to the White House is being fought on different technological battleground than it's been in previous years. And like JFK, Barack Obama knows how to play the new mediums to his advantage. The MSM may not always like it, but Obama's camp is changing the face of electoral process in a way that Marshall McLuhan would have been proud of. Here's how: CONTINUED »
John F. Kennedy airport could be the next institution that runs on the eBay model. Hoping to ease air traffic congestion, the FAA is at last taking a stand on your needlessly delayed flights, while New York's Sen. Charles Shumer says, "All indications point to them proposing auctioning off slots at John F. Kennedy Airport." Not that any changes would be made until summer. And, somehow, the plan "will have minimal or no impact" on the actual number of flights. Cake tastes better when you can eat it, too.
No, no, I'm not saying I didn't know. I'd heard the rumors. You know, everybody—I can remember my old man saying, "What about this Jack Kennedy being such a fearful girler?" … I just loved that.[Bradlee's second wife] Toni Bradlee and I saw a lot of the Kennedys—we saw them almost all the time as a foursome. And fucking around doesn't come up a lot [with the wives present]. So I really didn't know much. But I remember having to leave the White House once at 9:30 after dinner. And I said, what the hell? He's not going to bed. I knew goddamn well he wasn't going to bed!
–Legendary WaPo editor Ben Crowninshield Bradlee on rumors of John F. Kennedy's indiscretion. [Radar]
• Sure, Dreamgirls is going to be an Oscar shoe-in. But we can wait a few weeks for the tickets to drop from $25.
• Revamping the TWA terminal at JFK sounds as plausible as Moynihan Station ever coming to fruition.
• Marc Jacobs follows Karl Lagerfeld's lead and cleans up his act.
• Reader's Digest pricetag of $2.4 billion doesn't even require the large-print edition to be shocked.
• Radar's Tyler Gray continues the Perez Hilton beat with news of three-pronged attack by paparazzi agency Splash.
• Not surprisingly, the family of Ron Goldman find O.J. Simpson's book smarmy and disgusting.
Know what gets us riled up? Giving ourselves two hours for transit time when taking the E train to JFK and still managing to miss our flight. Sure, we could throw down the $55 on a towncar, but if we wanted to toss out the JetBlue savings on transit just to get on the plane, we can think of plenty of other commodities to splurge on. Like fedoras.
And then there are those folks whose expense accounts keep them from even having to worry about the cost of airfare, let alone the cost of the transportation to to the tarmac. Which is where U.S. Helicopter Corporation comes in.
The chopper outfit is teaming up with the federal government to launch a new service next month that will whisk Wall Streeters from downtown to JFK in just nine minutes. Even we wouldn't call the $140/one-way price tag completely extravagant, and neither will the Morgan Stanley types. But the real benefit goes beyond the quick trip: Boarding a helicopter to JFK will also get you through security screenings faster, since your bags will get the bomb-sniffing treatment on the helipad, not outside the terminal.
But fear not, Midtowners. A 34th Street "federalized" helipad is on the way at a pricetag of $560,000. Yep, that's $560k toward improving the travel experiences of the wealthy and elite, while the rest of us will continue to be subjected to TSA security officer Bernie, who we're pretty sure was instructed – twice – not to make contact with our crotch when she waves the wand over it.
New Helicopter Service Promises Wall St. to J.F.K., in 9 Minutes [Patrick McGeehan, NYT]
