A VOICE of BALTIMORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY

 

Harvard Law Prof. Elizabeth Warren, the first female U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

CERTAIN POLITICIANS’ NAMES JUST NEVER
SEEM TO COME UP THESE DAYS ON TV

Elderly feminist endorsements for Hillary,
also/known/as Female Fogeys for Clinton

OLD HARPIES SCOLDING YOUNG WOMEN
FOR NOT VOTING ON THE BASIS OF GENDER;
JOHN KASICH NAMED ON “MORNING JOE”
 
By Bjarne Rostaing
 
As the New Hampshire primary proceeded I hopped from channel to channel thinking about a name that had not been spoken in months, a crucial name for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders:  Elizabeth Warren.

It was apparently unpronounceable by talking heads, or unspeakable, or unauthorized, and never came up.

As elderly feminist endorsements flowed for Mrs. Clinton, I imagined the lot of them being brushed aside by the shining spotless escutcheon of our 21st century Ms. Galahad, whose strength is as the strength of 10 because her heart is pure: Elizabeth Warren, a/k/a The Sphinx.

Who, as a woman active in today’s politics, ranks those old harpies who are busy scolding young women for not voting on the basis of gender.

Yes — they really seemed to think that was a key issue; not Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, not the idiotic insecure private email server, not Clinton’s failed hawk tenure as Secretary of State, not her vote for the cockamamie corporate invasion of Iraq that split Sunni and Shia to create ISIS.  (Don’t believe it? Read Joby Warrick’s Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS)

Not even Victoria Nuland’s regime-change blunder in Ukraine that severely disrupted the European Union’s working trade and energy ties with Russia, created an ethnic civil war, and elevated Putin’s status everywhere but here.

No matter, they are Female Fogeys For Clinton, while Warren is a woman with a name that is apparently unmentionable, never to soil the tongue of major media people, or even minor ones. But hey, it’s only a presidency.

What did Warren think about the Sanders phenomenon? God only knows, and He/She/It ain’t talk’n any more than Warren is.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich suprised everyone by placing 2nd in the New Hampshire primary.

As I tripped the light fantastic from channel to channel, another unpronounceable/unspeak- able name came into focus for me, if not the media.

This not-to-be-mentioned governor of a huge swing state has a most peculiar record: effective budget-balancer on the national level who seemed to forget he was a Republican and collaborate with the enemy across the aisle.

Then this mystery man became a governor, with an awkward Democratic legislature in difficult economic times. Somehow he did his across-the-aisle thing, and damned if he didn’t get re-elected, balance the Ohio budget, and create a lot of those jobs that other wannabe candidates keep talking about in the abstract.

Three big sins: fracking, telling the truth in an everyday kind of voice, and not much money.

So okay, he can govern, but so what? Like it’s Showtime, baby, and the media are reveling in it. Giddy, loving their master, Candidate Trump, and sparing him the expense of advertising by covering his every regular-guy-billionaire belch.

Does Donald Trump own “Morning Joe”? Big majority interest.

Only thoughtful old-school thinking-man’s guy Willie Geist would utter Gov. Kasich’s unspeakable name, but it was lost in the general flow as Joe Scarborough and Mika-the-Chic Brzezinski praised themselves for being in the Trump vanguard. (Not as allies, of course, very unseemly, but pretty breathless just the same.)

Jersey Boy Chris Christie, smarter than them, saw Kasich coming and formed an alliance with a billionaire hedge-fund crook to head Kasich off at the gap.

Weren’t no use. New Hampshire had a long look at the invisible Governor Kasich, and it didn’t work. They liked him real well.

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Mika’s the one on the table; her father was an adviser to Jimmy Carter.  (Photo/Vanity Fair)

Unlike Warren, Kasich took a chance. With a damn slim purse, he took on the magical Big Names — Bush, Rubio and Christie — and cleaned their clocks. Clearly impossible, and it took many hours for the talking heads’ master to permit his name to be spoken. In a demeaning way — after all, the man has no money.

Finally the Republican Party saw him from the mire of well-financed mediocrity, with his proven ability to govern and probably deliver a most crucial swing-state, right? And took him into their hearts, right?

Wrong!  Like the media, they are that slow, that dumb, that much in thrall to glamour and money and branding, and everything else that has failed them.

Perhaps they suspect Kasich may not be for sale, which is not ever okay. Perhaps they can’t pronounce his name.

Reince Priebus — your name may or may not be pronounceable — Where are you now?  Out having lunch with Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Why not? You’re both in bed with yesterday’s sold-out has-beens.
 
bfrostaing@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
EDITOR’S NOTE:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz represents Florida’s 23rd District in the United States Congress and is Chair of the Democratic National Committee; Reince Priebus is her counterpart at the Republican National Committee.  “Morning Joe” is a weekday A.M. talk show on MSNBC that features host Joe Scarborough, a former Florida Congressman, discussing the news of the day with co-hosts Willie Geist and Mika Brzezinski, a journalist and author whose father was former President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser.

When Edward Kennedy, pictured here, died in mid-2009 he was re- placed in the U.S. Senate by conservative Republican Scott Brown, who won an upset victory to take over the long-term Democratic seat in Feb. 2010. Less than three years later, despite a commanding lead in the polls, Brown lost the seat — to Elizabeth Warren — by a margin of 54-46 percent.  In 2014 Brown ran for the Senate in New Hamp- shire, losing a hard-fought election to incumbent Jeanne Shaheen, marking his second senatorial loss to a woman in just two years.

Republican John Kasich is Governor of Ohio and is running for the GOP nomination for President. He stunned nearly everyone by placing second in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.  Former Harvard Law School Prof. Elizabeth Warren is the senior Senator from Massachusetts. A Democrat and the state’s first female in the U.S. Senate, she defeated the Republican who had been elected to finish out Ted Kennedy’s unexpired term when the long-time Senate leader died in 2009.  Victoria Nuland is Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
 
Bjarne (Barney) Rostaing is the author of Epstein’s Pancake, a novel published by St. Mark’s Press and available for purchase on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble — click here  and  here.

He was an editor at the SoHo Weekly News, won a First Place AFI Award for a sports video, and worked with Uma Thurman in her film debut in “Kiss Daddy Goodnight” (1987).  As a sports writer, Rostaing exposed — in Sports Illustrated — the 1984 U.S. Olympic blood doping scandal.

His earlier works include Breeders (St. Mark’s Press/2011), a crime novel set in the world of horse racing; Phantom of the Paradise (Dell), based on the 1974 horror film written and directed by Brian De Palma; and Bill Walton’s Total Book of Bicycling (Bantam Books/1985).

Originally from Bantam, Conn., the “Red Diaper Baby” lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y.

To learn more about Epstein’s Pancake,  click here.