Wednesday, November 02, 2005

That Big Spicy Italian Meatball

For whatever it's worth, I am amazed---truly---at the political stupidity of the Dems, the latest manifestation of which is this (draft?) memo arguing or suggesting that Alito as prosecutor went easy on the gangsters because they're all part of that big happy Italian spicy meatball family. Or something. I just cannot believe that anyone with more IQ points than teeth thought that this would be a winning argument. Am I missing something? Or was politics more fun when the disingenuousness was subtle? And all those Democratic Senators from the Northeast who have lots of Italian constituents? How fast will they be able to backpedal away from this?
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12 comments:

  1. Hunter Baker11/2/05, 11:35 AM

    If the Dems really want to play that card, they need to go see the unions and mafia and decide which high profile Dem gets hit to make the sell feel real.

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  2. James F. Elliott11/2/05, 11:39 AM

    Could someone link to this? I really hope that it's just a draft or some idiotic fringe group, if it's true and not some Republican plant. That sounds just plain dumb, as well as playing right into Orrin Hatch's hands, and as fractured as the Democrats are, I can't believe they'd be that stupid.

    Alito has been getting some very polite and comprehensive coverage at The New Republic. I've come to trust their opinions on judicial matters, and the more information I get, the less objectionable Alito appears on the social front. The business front? Now that's something else entirely.

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  3. Kathy Hutchins11/2/05, 11:58 AM

    The best part of this story? At the very moment DNC is denying they had anything to do with this memo, the same blogosphere that exposed the Rathergate memos as fakes is hacking the Word document metatags and discovering not only who wrote it, but everyone who edited it. And their institutional affiliations. The supposedly stodgy, antiquated conservatives are kicking the left's behind with superior geekitude.

    Compare the response of Democrats like Geraldene Ferraro when it's not only implied, but demonstrated, that you've got Mob connections: you accuse the other side of bias against Italians (even when your accuser is named d'Amato!) and then prominently ignore the whole thing.

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  4. James F. Elliott11/2/05, 1:34 PM

    Thanks, T. The memo is here (it's even a right-wing website) and it's just a meta-data document intepreted through liberal talking points. There's nothing in it that's even marginally offensive or objectionable if you actually read it. The whole hoopla is much ado about nothing.

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  5. Hunter Baker11/2/05, 2:08 PM

    I jumped too quickly in my comment on the post. Looks like the GOP side hit the spin bottle quickly, powerfully, and apparently, unfairly on this one. The fair reading is that he was ineffective, not that he was mafia-friendly.

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  6. Kathy Hutchins11/2/05, 2:16 PM

    Looks like the GOP side hit the spin bottle quickly, powerfully, and apparently, unfairly on this one.

    The strange thing is, the guy who spun the bottle first was Chris Matthews. Or maybe not so strange -- Chris is a very excitable guy but he's also been around the block more than a few times, and I'm sure his days with Tip O'Neill taught him a thing or two about how marginally unflattering stories play in blue collar Boston, etc.

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  7. James F. Elliott11/2/05, 2:21 PM

    Welcome to what liberals have known for a while: Chris Matthews is an idiot.

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  8. Matt Huisman11/2/05, 3:36 PM

    James...we've all known he is an idiot...occaisionally useful, but an idiot nonetheless(he's your side's Bill O'Reilly).

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  9. James F. Elliott11/2/05, 4:10 PM

    I'm not so sure he even qualifies as "on my side." He doesn't even pretend to have an ideological basis anymore. He's just a hack.

    My personal Bill O'Reilly is Stephen Colbert...

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  10. Kathy Hutchins11/2/05, 4:46 PM

    I'm not so sure he even qualifies as "on my side."

    I have no intention of allowing Bill O'Reilly to be assigned to "my side" either. It would be kind of fun to lock Matthews and O'Reilly in a closet and take side bets on how long they could shout at each other before their vocal shock waves reduced the door and walls to their constituent molecules.

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  11. Barry Vanhoff11/3/05, 11:55 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  12. Barry Vanhoff11/3/05, 1:25 PM

    I'm with Kathy ... I do not agree that O'Reilly is on "our" side.

    He is probably more on our side that the other, however. He is in it for ratings, and does a fine job on that count.

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