Longtime denizens of the blogosphere will recall the strange case of Jessica Cutler, the one-time Senate staffer who briefly dished sex gossip as “Washingtonienne” and launched into 15 minutes of fame. Now, she’s a mommy.

Five years ago, Jessica Cutler’s anonymous Washingtonienne blog was the hottest thing in town. Make that hotttt! So hotttt! – spicy details of the Hill staffer’s active and varied sex life — that she lost her job, won a book deal, posed for Playboy and got sued by an ex-boyfriend.

She’s now blogging under her own name (”Nobody Cares About Jessica Cutler Anymore”), but just barely — four terse posts in two months — and you have to read between the lines to figure out why: The former party girl is now a mom.

Last December, Cutler, 31, married N.Y.C. lawyer Charles Rubio, 29, in a quiet Manhattan City Hall ceremony. “I’m not pregnant!” she volunteered at the time. (Swear we didn’t ask.) But, you know, famous last words: On Aug. 22, she told us, they welcomed their first child, Jessica-Louise.

“She’s too young to be in a gossip column!” Cutler wrote to us when we e-mailed to ask. “She can wait until she grows up and writes a sex blog of her own, or whatever it is kids will be doing in the future. Blogging is already passe, so I can’t imagine.” Otherwise, she reported, the baby is smiling a lot, and sleeping through the night.

Here’s hoping Jessica-Louise does not in fact start a sex blog.

And, um, that “sleeping through the night” thing?  It doesn’t last.

In my early morning Teddy Kennedy Dead at 77 media roundup post, I observed, “That the Chappaquiddick scandal didn’t make the first several paragraphs — or even first page — of several of these obits is quite remarkable. It would be like writing an obit for Richard Nixon that didn’t mention Watergate or one for Michael Jackson that glossed over repeated allegations of pedophilia.”

Hanna Rosin expands on that point quite a bit, including implicitly pointing out that it was a rather large elephant in the room:

Google Trends this morning is a perfect window into our tabloid culture and the recesses of our depraved minds. While the papers are full of words like “dynasty” and “legacy,” Mary Jo Kopechne, according to Google Hot Trends, is uppermost in our thoughts. Her name comes up as number one in the ranking, and several more places on the list, misspelled. Chappaquiddick shows up high and often, too; once correctly, and then in several illiterate incarnations.

Partly, I blame this discrepancy on the American papers, which are still bent on hagiography. I prefer British obituaries, which tell it like it is. And partly, of course, this is the fault of our vapid tabloid culture. The only surprise today is that Kate Gosselin has been knocked back all the way to number 30. “Michael Jackson alive” is a popular trend. Yeah. Jamming with Elvis.

Finally, there is the issue of the obvious narrative the papers are not stringing together. In my mind, I’ve always equated Ted Kennedy with Chuck Colson, the disgraced Nixon aide who went on to found an admirable Christian organization called “Prison Fellowship.” Public officials who do terrible things and then say they’re sorry (often in a press conference or book) are a dime a dozen. But the ones who do something terrible and then repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service are rare. Colson and Kennedy are just about the only two I can think of.

Mary Jo Kopechne is on our minds because this narrative about Ted Kennedy makes sense, in some intuitive, appealing way. Kennedy killed a girl. That’s his rosebud. He made up for it partly by declining the ultimate glory of running for president, and choosing the more humble path—helping the underclass using the slow, steady machinery of the Senate.

Other than the fact that Kennedy actually did run for president — in a bitter primary battle with President Jimmy Carter in 1980 — that all strikes me as right. And, indeed, the Guardian obit covers this neatly in a single paragraph:

Kennedy’s career was significantly blighted by the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 in which the car he was driving ran off a bridge and plunged into the water, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. While he never reached the pinnacle of power, Kennedy eventually shed his playboy image to become a serious political presence in the Senate. His death marks the twilight of a political dynasty and deals a blow to Democrats as they seek an overhaul of the healthcare system, one of Kennedy’s personal goals.

Teddy Kennedy lived an extraordinary life of tremendous accomplishment interspersed with some horrible scandals and family tragedy.  It’s why he was such a fascinating figure. But his story simply can’t be told without the word Chappaquiddick.

UPDATE:  E&P’s Sam Chamberlain tallied how far into the obits the first mention of the incident appeared:

NY Daily News- 13^th graf

Associated Press- 7^th graf

Boston Herald-  10^th graf

Boston Globe-  5^th graf

NY Times- 14^th graf

NY Post- 14^th graf

Washington Post-  9^th graf

Wall Street Journal-  6^th graf

LA Times-  12^th graf

Chicago Tribune-  12^th graf (same obit as LA Times)

Miami Herald-  10^th graf

Reuters- 18^th graf

USA Today- 19th graf

Politico- 24th graf

The Hill-NO MENTION

Roll Call-25th graf

National Journal-11th graf

Times of London- 8^th graf

In fairness, for a variety of reasons having to do with the printing and editing process from bygone days, a newspaper “graf” is often much shorter than a proper paragraph.  Still, the most notable single fact about Kennedy’s life was mentioned well after the average reader would have lost interest.

Huffington Post is catching some grief over a post by Anya Strzemien titled “Sarah Palin’s Toenails: What’s Painted On Them? (PHOTOS, POLL).”  Apparently, the Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee had some manner of decorative adornment on her nails which were in display in some orange strappy sandals:

While some are taking HuffPo to task for journalistic silliness and questioning whether they have a foot fetish, the most prevalent theme of the critics is whether it’s sexist to comment on how a female public figure looks.

We’ve said many times that focus on a woman’s body parts instead of her ideas and actions is sexist, and that such belittling is aimed at women on both the left and right by both men and women.  In this case, some will argue that HuffPo is just having a little fun.  However the comments posted after the stroy are classist, sexist, and hateful, which can’t be a surprise to Huffpo.  So what about encouraging comments that you know are going to be a mysogyny fest?  Is that sexist, too?

Teresa Kopec, who tipped me to the story via Twitter, observes, “There is a lot of anti-woman BS that is going around lately against Palin, Sotomayor, the women targeted by Playboy, etc.”

While perhaps it’s splitting hairs, I would distinguish between sexism and double standards.  There’s not much doubt that the way women look is more commented upon than the way men look.  That doesn’t necessarily translate into thinking women’s intellects or skills are less important than those of men.

I don’t think, for example, that Hillary Clinton or Sonia Sotomayor have been viewed as silly sex objects.  It’s certainly true that Clinton’s appearance has been at issue as long as I can recall her being in public life (which is to say, since 1991 or so).   When she was First Lady, her hairdo was especially commented on, as was her choice of pantsuits vice dresses. And WaPo’s Robin Givhan devoted a whole story on C1 to Hillary Clinton’s cleavage.  And then there was the case of Condoleezza Rice’s commanding clothes which, according to a C1 story in WaPo, spoke of “sex and power,” also from Givhan.

Do we comment like that on how male public officials dress?   No, we don’t.

To be sure, there’s the occasional story on John Bolton’s hair or Dick Cheney’s Auschwitz outfit or John McCain’s $520 Ferragamo loafers.   But they’re decidedly less common.

Still, Clinton is almost universally perceived as an extraordinarily bright and competent woman.  She catapulted to the United States Senate despite no real record of her own and was considered the hands-down frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination six years later.  And Sotomayor’s words and judicial record, not her toenails or fashion sense, are what we’re focusing on.

Palin is almost a separate case.  She was a virtual unknown on the national scene when McCain tabbed her, so her national image was forged by instant impression.  By vice presidential standards, she’s extraordinarily attractive.  She’s young and a former beauty queen. Further, she dresses in a way that plays up her sexuality.  Why, a recent scientifical study found that Palin’s sexiness hurt the ticket.  Naturally, the news of said study sparked a round of blogospheric discussion about Palin’s hotness and a backlash against bloggers talking about Palin’s hotness.

Still, while the focus on her appearance goes well beyond what would be normal for a male candidate, it’s not like there wasn’t plenty of commentary on her preparation for the job.  Indeed, I’m sure she’d rather we spent more time talking about her legs.

As to this particular controversy, it’s a silly blog post and some of the commentary it drew was particularly unattractive.  Palin is a polarizing figure, which doesn’t help.  Then again, one can scarcely imagine, say, Tim Pawlenty appearing at a public event in jean shorts and sandals, the male analog to what Palin was photographed in.

Angelina Jolie has topped Oprah Winfrey to become the World’s Most Powerful Celebrity, according Forbes magazine.  The methodology is, shall we say, unclear.  But here’s what they say about Jolie:

Eclectic actress and gossip-column favorite dethrones media maven Oprah Winfrey atop this year’s Celebrity 100. Jolie has always been able to attract tabloid attention and Oscar nods, but this year, she’s finally figured out a way to make serious money. Her most recent blockbuster, Wanted, proved this mother of six’s sweet spot is action films; the movie earned $340 million at the box office. Up next: Salt, in which Jolie plays a CIA officer accused of being a spy.

Oddly, Oprah earned a whole order of magnitude more money — $275 millionto Jolie’s paltry $27 — but, since they don’t tell us what factors were used or how they were weighed, who’s to criticize.  And, certainly, Jolie’s hotter.  (Were I employed by Playboy magazine, I would compile a list.  As it is, I shall pass.)

But here’s an odd one for you:

About halfway down the list sits a very familiar face: President Barack Obama. At No. 49, Obama’s the first sitting head of state to appear on this Forbes fixture because of his worldwide fame, his historic election and his career as a best-selling author.

On what planet is Angelina Jolie more powerful than Barack Obama?

George Carlin, a comedian known for his combination of raunchy language and intellectual humor, died of heart failure last evening. He was 71.

Carlin was an interesting guy, combining brilliant observational humor with political activism. Like too many comics in the HBO era, though, it often seemed that he was vulgar and outrageous simply because he could rather than because it served his art. It’s one thing to point to the absurdity of seven words that we all know being taboo in adult settings; it’s quite another to use them constantly simply for their shock value.

Dean Goodman, Reuters, “Edgy comic George Carlin dies in L.A., aged 71″

Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin’s routine were indecent, and that the government’s broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

The Grammy-winning Carlin remained an active presence on the comedy circuit. Carlin was scheduled to receive the John F. Kennedy Center’s prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November and his publicist said Carlin performed in Las Vegas this month.

His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species. “I don’t have any beliefs or allegiances. I don’t believe in this country, I don’t believe in religion, or a god, and I don’t believe in all these man-made institutional ideas,” he told Reuters in a 2001 interview. Carlin told Playboy in 2005 that he looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a “heavenly CNN.” “The world is a big theater-in-the round as far as I’m concerned, and I’d love to watch it spin itself into oblivion,” he said. “Tune in and watch the human adventure.”

Keith St. Clair, AP, “Carlin, counterculture comedians’ dean, dies at 71″

Carlin’s jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the “Seven Words” — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance. When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening. “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the “Saturday Night Live” debut in 1975 — noting on his Web site that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long” — and appearing some 130 times on “The Tonight Show.” He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” in 1989 — a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

“Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?” he once mused. “Are they afraid someone will clean them?”

His longtime comedic partner Jack Burns says that Carlin was “fairly conservative,” both politically and stylistically, until he saw Lenny Bruce perform in the early 1960s.

“It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction.” That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. “There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. … It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.”

Martin Weil, WaPo, “Comedian George Carlin Dies in Los Angeles at 71″

The New York-born performer, who also was an Air Force veteran, once summed up his approach:”I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”

Carlin’s entertainment career began in 1956 at a radio station in Shreveport, La. while he was in the service.

Mel Watkins, NYT, “George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71″

Mr. Carlin began his standup comedy act in the late 1950s and made his first television solo guest appearance on “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1965. At that time, he was primarily known for his clever wordplay and reminiscences of his Irish working-class upbringing in New York.

But from the outset there were indications of an anti-establishment edge to his comedy. Initially, it surfaced in the witty patter of a host of offbeat characters like the wacky sportscaster Biff Barf and the hippy-dippy weatherman Al Sleet. “The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast . . . dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”

[...]

In 1970, Mr. Carlin discarded his suit, tie, and clean-cut image as well as the relatively conventional material that had catapulted him to the top. Mr. Carlin reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine that, according to one critic, was steeped in “drugs and bawdy language.” There was an immediate backlash. The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas terminated his three-year contract, and, months later, he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned the nightclub circuit and began appearing at coffee houses, folk clubs and colleges where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.

[...]

By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade. In addition to his irreverent jests about religion and politics, he openly talked about the use of drugs, including acid and peyote, and said that he kicked cocaine not for moral or legal reasons but after he found “far more pain in the deal than pleasure.” But the edgier, more biting comedy he developed during this period, along with his candid admission of drug use, cemented his reputation as the “comic voice of the counterculture.”

Reactions from the blogosphere:

• Sean Hackbarth: “Carlin was entertaining enough, although I wasn’t a real fan. If I caught one of his acts while surfing HBO I’d watch a few minutes and laugh. He certainly found unique ways of looking at the world. He’ll be missed.”

• BNP: “What a loss for all of us. Carlin was more than a comedian: he was a brilliant critic in all sorts of realms.”

• Allie: “I’m going to miss George tremendously — rest in peace funny man.”

• Liza Sabater: “An amazingly simple legacy of free speech, civil disobedience, philosophy of language and culture criticism all wrapped up in the guise of stand up comedy.”

• Jill C.: “We’re living in a world of hypocrites, idiots, thieves, and morons — and now we don’t even have George Carlin to poke fun at them any more.”

• Kevin Aylward: “Carlin … mined comedy from the absurdity of words and fighting censorship.”

• Ann Althouse: “There are decades-old routines that spring to mind immediately as the most brilliant comic riffs I’ve ever heard…”

Memeorandum will doubtless have many more reax once people wake up to the news.

Breaking News from Reuters: Men don’t like bad marriages.

Bachelor Carl Weisman got fed up of being classified as a playboy, a loser or a commitment-phobe so he set out to find out exactly why he and a growing number of eligible men were steering clear of marriage. Weisman, 49, conducted a survey of 1,533 heterosexual men to research a book aiming to give women an insight into why some smart, successful men opted to stay single — and help lifelong bachelors understand why they are still the solo man at parties.

He concluded that most men were not afraid of marriage — but they were afraid of a bad marriage. “Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all,” Weisman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

If this sells, I’m going to pitch a book explaining why men prefer watching football games while sipping a cold one to doing yardwork in the hot sun. Indeed, this could spawn a whole series of books drawing incredibly obvious conclusions.

John McCain has received all the key newspaper endorsements for the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, despite being a non-factor in the polls in the former and trailing in the latter.

The Des Moines Register backed McCain despite his being in 5th place in their own polls; apparently, they’re not so much trying to influence the outcome as to go on the record.

McCain is most ready to lead America in a complex and dangerous world and to rebuild trust at home and abroad by inspiring confidence in his leadership.

In an era of instant celebrity, we sometimes forget the real heroes in our midst. The defining chapter of McCain’s life came 40 years ago as a naval aviator, when he was shot down over Vietnam. The crash broke both arms and a leg. When first seeing him, a fellow prisoner recalls thinking he wouldn’t live the night. He was beaten and kept in solitary confinement, held 5 years. He could have talked. He did not. Son of a prominent Navy admiral, he could have gained early release. He refused.

The one-time playboy emerged from prison a changed, more serious man. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1986, he has built an unconventional political career by taking stands based on principle, not party dogma, and frequently pursuing bipartisanship.

[...]

Time after time, McCain has stuck to his beliefs in the face of opposition from other elected leaders and the public. He has criticized crop and ethanol subsidies during two presidential campaigns in Iowa. He bucked his party and president by opposing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. A year ago, in the face of growing criticism, he staunchly supported President Bush’s decision to increase troop strength in Iraq.

In this campaign, he continues to support comprehensive immigration reform — while watching his poll standings plunge. Some other Republican candidates refuse to acknowledge that climate change is a serious threat caused by human activity. McCain has worked on the issue for seven years and sponsored bills to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

McCain would enter the White House with deep knowledge of national-security and foreign-policy issues. He knows war, something we believe would make him reluctant to start one. He’s also a fierce defender of civil liberties. As a survivor of torture, he has stood resolutely against it. He pledges to start rebuilding America’s image abroad by closing the Guantanamo prison and beginning judicial proceedings for detainees.

The Manchester Union Leader gave McCain its coveted endorsement a week ago.

Our next President should not be someone who needs on the job training when it comes to making military decisions. It should instead be someone intimate with military affairs who has a history of making sound decisions on matters of war and diplomacy. The only one who fits that description on either side of the aisle is Sen. John McCain.

Sen. McCain is much more than just a war hero who chose to endure years of abuse at the hands of a sadistic enemy rather than abandon his comrades. In his political career he has demonstrated real wisdom on foreign policy, and never more impressively than after Sept. 11, 2001.

Of all the candidates for President, it was John McCain and only John McCain who not only opposed Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq strategy from the start but offered a viable alternative for winning that ill-fated war. When the Democrats cried “Retreat!” and other Republicans shouted “Stay the course!” McCain listened to the commanders on the ground.

He discerned the path to victory early, and only after the President finally did what McCain had urged for years did the tide begin to turn in our favor.

That is the kind of judgment America needs in the oval office.

McCain is by far the most informed candidate on military and foreign affairs. In our interviews with nearly all of the presidential candidates, only McCain offered a comprehensive and detailed strategic vision for maintaining America’s position as the world’s lone superpower.

The Boston Globe — from frontrunner Mitt Romney’s state, no less — joined suit this morning.

McCain is a conservative whose views differ from those of this editorial page in a variety of ways. He opposes abortion rights. At least in the current election cycle, he has shown no particular quarrel with his party’s knee-jerk view of tax cuts as the cure to the nation’s economic problems.

Also unlike this page, McCain has strongly supported the current war in Iraq, including the troop surge. Yet the Arizona senator has never been an uncritical booster of President Bush’s policies. Early on, he accurately predicted that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t sending enough troops to maintain order after Saddam Hussein fell. Today, he straightforwardly acknowledges the fragility of the Iraqi government and the corruption that pervades that country. He understands that US failures in Iraq, along with President Bush’s torpid response to Hurricane Katrina, have damaged the nation’s credibility abroad and at home.

McCain’s honesty has served him well on other issues. As a longtime public official from a border state, he recognizes that illegal immigration is a complex problem – for which better border control is only part of the solution. His thoughtful stance may be a tough sell politically at a time when many Republicans (and many Democrats) are anxious about the number of people living and working in the United States illegally. But his opponents’ get-tough poses are unlikely to close the gap between immigration law and immigration practice; McCain’s comprehensive approach is far more likely to bring the two back in line.

I’m not sure how much these endorsements matter, or even how much they should.

McCain has hardly campaigned in Iowa, ceding it to the better financed Romeny, and is a distant fifth in the average polling in that state: 5.8 percent to Huckabee’s 34, Romney’s 23.3, Giuliani’s 9.8, and Thompson’s 9.5. Even with the vagaries and unpredictability of the caucus system, it’s inconceivable McCain will have even a respectable showing there.

New Hampshire is another matter. He’s climbed into distant second place there, trailing Romney 32-18.5, with Giuliani close behind at 16.5. McCain’s got a long way to go between now and January 8th. Still, on October 30, when the McCain blogger relations people sent along a Paul Bedard post “McCain Plans ‘Comeback Kid’ Surge,” outlining McCain’s strategy to win the race by putting all his eggs into the Granite State basket, I scoffed, wondering if they had a Plan B. Now, winning seems at least plausibly within reach.

Matthew Yglesias seeks to justify his “reputation in the blogosphere as a leading Michael Bay apologist” by providing a video of a Levis spot whereby readers might “truly glimpse the man’s skillz.” The commercial is rather entertaining.

Then again, I’m not sure where the near-consensus among movie critics that Michael Bay makes terrible moves comes from. For example, a profile in the most recent Details observes,

You most likely already have strong opinions about Bay, and not the good kind. People who care about culture and quality brand Bay and his oeuvre as shamefully, offensively hollow. It doesn’t matter that he owns a private jet, that he dates Playboy Playmates, that he lives bigger and badder than you ever will—he is Carrot Top with a megaphone.

Yet, of the handful of his movies I’ve seen, the only one I didn’t like at all was “Pearl Harbor.” I haven’t seen any of his various horror flicks, but then that’s not a genre I tend to enjoy. Nor have I seen “Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendall (One woman’s erotic, imaginative adventure)” but, really, how bad could it be?

“The Rock” was fun even if the plot was rather far-fetched. “Bad Boys” was funny; “Bad Boys II,” meanwhile, looked so obviously bad that I never bothered to see it. And I’m apparently the only one who liked “Armageddon,” which even star Bruce Willis routinely mocks.

Sure, none of them are exactly Shakespeare. And they’re not likely to have the long term cultural impact of “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” or “Rocky.” But so what?

Bay doesn’t pretend he’s making art; he’s just making entertaining movies people want to see. Judging by the results, he’s succeeding.

Michelle Manhart, the Air Force noncom who caused quite a splash by posing nude for Playboy, has been demoted and discharged from active service. Details and video, along with some levity, at Gone Hollywood.

The case is interesting from a military and political standpoint, leaving aside from the prurient interest that seems to be driving Internet traffic on the issue.

First, while the Air Force had little choice but to separate Manhart–it’s rather difficult to maintain the respect of one’s subordinates after having lost, among other things, one’s military bearing in this way–it is, as Steven Taylor noted when the story broke, ironic to be discharging otherwise competent military personnel during wartime, especially when recruitment has been difficult.

Second, this creates a new variant on the “Klinger strategy” for getting out of wartime military service. Those over a certain age–or who watch reruns–will recall the exploits of the fictional Maxwell Klinger of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, wearing women’s clothing in order to get a “Section 8″ discharge. The songwriter Arlo Guthrie detailed another variant, involving humming a few bars of the song in which he dispensed said advice, in order to create doubt about one’s sexual orientation.

Presumably, few have the requisite skill set to get published in Playboy. Still, it’s easy enough to start up a MySpace account or otherwise publish nude photos on the Internet. How many pageviews is necessary to violate the Manhart Rule?

Third, the case illustrates the complex nature of the Total Force. Manhart was reduced in ranks and discharged from extended active duty in the Air Force, thus returning to the Iowa National Guard. Presumably, Manhart would have been discharged from the service outright if she were in the Air Force Reserve. As a National Guardsman, though, she is now technically an employee of the state of Iowa. Presumably, however, she would not be eligible to recall to active duty and therefore useless to the Guard; I suspect, therefore, that she will be discharged soon enough.

ABC reports that John McCain will announce “veteran GOP campaign operative Terry Nelson as his pick to be his national campaign manager, should the Senator choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.”

Nelson served as national political director for Bush-Cheney ‘04. He has served in senior roles in both the political and field/grassroots organizing arenas at the RNC and the NRCC.

Nelson’s hire is clearly a huge get, but will not come without controversy. Nelson made political headlines in the 2006 cycle as the strategist tapped to head up the RNC’s independent expenditure which was responsible for that extremely controversial ad in Tennessee against Harold Ford, Jr. featuring a young blonde actress portraying a woman who met Ford at a Playboy party and who suggestively asks him to call her at the end of the ad. (It caused enough heartache for one of Nelson’s other clients, Working Families for Wal-Mart, that they sought and received his resignation after the episode.) Nelson was also tied up in the recently settled New Hampshire phone jamming case and in Tom DeLay’s TRMPAC troubles from his days at the RNC.

Matt Stoler jumps on the bandwagon quickly, with a post entitled “McCain Hires Lawbreaker as Campaign Manager.”

John McCain just hired the worst man in the world to run his campaign, Terry Nelson. Nelson was an unindicted co-conspirator in the TRMPAC scandal as a key point of contact between Tom Delay and the RNC. He was James Tobin’s boss during the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal, for which Tobin was convicted. He also worked at the head of opposition research for the NRCC this cycle, where robocalls from Republicans pretending to be Democrats were the norm all over the country. Nelson also produced the racist bimbo ad against Harold Ford.

While I saw nothing wrong with the Ford ad in question and think the pretense that robo-calling is anything unusual absurd, I must admit that someone with this kind of baggage is an odd choice to serve as the front man for McCain, a man who has built his career on smug contempt for politics as usual and a holier than thou stance on campaign ethics. Then, McCain’s actions have seldom matched his rhetoric.

An attack ad running against Harold Ford and sponsored by the Republican National Committee is generating controversy, with the Ford campaign calling it “racist” and his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, calling for it to be removed from the air.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the transcript:

(UNKNOWN): Harold Ford looks nice, isn’t that enough?

(UNKNOWN): Terrorists need their privacy.

(UNKNOWN): When I die, Harold Ford will let me pay taxes again.

(UNKNOWN): Ford’s right. I do have too many guns.

(UNKNOWN): I met Harold at the Playboy party.

(UNKNOWN): I’d love to pay higher marriage taxes.

(UNKNOWN): Canada can take care of North Korea. They’re not busy.

(UNKNOWN): So he took money from porn movie producers? I mean, who hasn’t?

(LAUGHTER)

(UNKNOWN): The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.

(UNKNOWN): Harold, call me.

Now, frankly, I think the ad is lame. The fact that Ford likes to attend parties at the Playboy mansion is hardly a disqualifier, either. But there’s nothing in the ad that is even remotely about race, unless “Playboy party,” “higher marriage taxes,” or “porn movie producers” are new code words with which I’m not familiar.

UPDATE: LAT’s Peter Wallsten explains it.

Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race, hoping to become the first African American senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy. “It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African American men and white women,” said Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the country’s oldest civil rights organization.

[...]

John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political scientist who published a book this year on attack ads, “In Defense of Negativity,” said he had watched the anti-Ford spot repeatedly in recent days. “I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “I don’t see how you can think it’s not playing a racial card. It’s making references to interracial sex. It’s an ad that is in some sense breaking new lows.”

And here I thought the white woman was just a caricature of a bimbo that one might meet at the Playboy mansion.

I might be pre-disposed to that view, though, because I’ve gotten a couple of e-mails from the RNC and various campaign flacks touting the news that Ford had gone to some Playboy parties. Since I’m much more offended by spam than by men who enjoy looking at hot women, I just figured this was more flogging of that issue.

UPDATE: A Democrat friend (who also doesn’t find the ad objectionable) points to Josh Marshall’s explanation:

The ad has a number of faux man on the street interviews. Each is a spoof based on GOP policy talking points. So for instance, a hunter is interviewed and he says “Ford’s right. I do have too many guns.” An older guy says “When I die, Harold Ford will let me pay taxes again.”

Not my cup of tea as far as humor goes. And I’d be surprised if Harold Ford is a big gun control man. But pretty standard fair for ‘funny’ political ads. And each addressed to a question of public policy.

But then you see that one ‘man on the street interview’ isn’t quite like the rest. It’s almost like those old Sesame Street segments, one of these things is not like the other.

It’s the one spot with the platimum blonde with no visible clothes on, vamping “I met Harold at the Playboy Party.”

What policy issue is she talking about? It’s not connected to anything. It’s just, ‘I’m a loose white woman. I hooked up with Harold at the Playboy mansion. And I can’t wait for him to do me again.’

Once you watch the ad again after realizing that, it sticks out like a sore thumb. What becomes clear is that the funny man on the street interview clips are padding, filler meant to make the ‘Harold does white chicks’ blurb appear to fit into a larger whole, just one of a number of ‘man on the street’ clips.

Two problems with that analysis, though. First, as noted above, the Ford-Playboy thing is a GOP talking point in this campaign. Second, the type of voter who still doesn’t know whether he supports Ford or Coker at this late stage of the game is what we in the business call a “moron.” These tend not to be people with a mastery of complex symbolism.

A more reasonable interpretation of the ad, I think, comes from Mark Schmitt (via Marshall): “He’s a pretty boy, he’s not from here, [he] has weird values.” Now, to be fair, Schmitt also sees “implied miscegenation” in the ad. But that summary seems to me exactly the message the ads running against Ford are conveying.

UPDATE: Replaced MSNBC version of anti-Ford ad with larger, more reliable version from YouTube.

It was forty years ago today (well, actually, yesterday) that Captain Roddenberry taught the band to play. Or, at least, created an iconic space western called “Star Trek.”

Cue the iconic theme music: Forty years ago, on September 8, 1966, “Star Trek” lifted off into TV and cultural history. Over the subsequent decades, the sci-fi adventure series has amassed millions of fans and emerged as a relentless entertainment empire.

Stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy sat down recently with the Associated Press and recalled “The Man Trap,” the episode that would kick off the show’s three-year prime-time run. “The first show that was on the air was a show with a creature that was a salt sucker,” recalled Nimoy. “It was somebody inside a weird-looking suit and it attacked humans because it needed the copper or the salt out of your body to survive or something like that.” “That was the first one?” asked Shatner. “Yes, that was the first one on the air,” Nimoy answered. “And it was because NBC decided that this series would be most successful if we had sort of a monster of the week to sell. What’s the monster this week? And so they put a monster show on the air the first episode, and I think it was a terrible mistake, because it was really not what we were about.”

To mark the anniversary, classic-TV network TV Land on Friday (8 p.m. EDT) will showcase four episodes from the original “Star Trek” series, including the premiere and the historic episode featuring TV’s first interracial kiss. “Star Trek” episodes will begin airing regularly on the channel on November 17. Episodes will also be available online at TVLand.com.

The biplay between Shatner and Nimoy in the rest of the article is fairly amusing. The show’s special effects and fealty to science are laughable by today’s Sci-Fi standards but, then, the original Trek’s magic was the interaction of the characters, not the great plots or encounters with “monsters.” The repartee between the ensemble cast, especially Shatner’s Captain Kirk, Nimoy’s Mr. (Commander) Spock, and the late DeForest Kelley’s Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy was unsurpassed.

The spin-offs, especially “Next Generation” and “Deep Space 9,” had bigger budgets, were much better science fiction and had more interesting plots, but they never quite had the chemistry of the original.

Related posts below the fold.

_______________

Star Trek – Monthy Python Spamalot Mashup (Video)
New Star Trek Movie in 2008, Prequel to TOS
George Takei, Star Trek’s Sulu, Discloses Homosexuality
James Doohan, Star Trek Star and D-Day Vet, Dies at 85
Card: Star Trek Was Bad Science Fiction
‘Star Trek’ Bit Players Cling On
How to Save Star Trek
UPN Cancels Star Trek: Enterprise
Jolene Blalock Playboy Interview
Better Than Star Trek
Star Trek’s James Doohan has Alzheimer’s
Straczynski on Trek
STAR TREK DIALECTIC
MERYL, MERYL, MERYL
TREK STRIP
TREK ECONOMY
VULCAN T&A
MAYBERRY MEETS TREK
LILEKS ON TREK
VULCANS IN ALABAMA
TREK HUMOR
TREK ETHICS
BAD SCI-FI
INVISIBILITY CLOAK

The Colorado Rockies are turning to Jesus in hopes of winning more games, reports USA Today in yesterday’s edition.

No copies of Playboy or Penthouse are in the clubhouse of baseball’s Colorado Rockies. There’s not even a Maxim. The only reading materials are daily newspapers, sports and car magazines and the Bible.

Music filled with obscenities, wildly popular with youth today and in many other clubhouses, is not played. A player will curse occasionally but usually in hushed tones. Quotes from Scripture are posted in the weight room. Chapel service is packed on Sundays. Prayer and fellowship groups each Tuesday are well-attended. It’s not unusual for the front office executives to pray together.

On the field, the Rockies are trying to make the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons and only the second time in their 14-year history. Behind the scenes, they quietly have become an organization guided by Christianity — open to other religious beliefs but embracing a Christian-based code of conduct they believe will bring them focus and success.

Of course, the team is at the bottom of the NL West at the moment, behind teams from sin capitals Los Angeles and San Francisco. Still, healing takes time.

Amusingly, the Rockies’ players are vehemently denying that they’re a bunch of Goodie Two Shoes in today’s Denver Post.

Character, not religion, is the critical factor in the Rockies’ chemistry, according to the players. That explains why so many players reacted negatively to the portrayal of their clubhouse in a USA Today cover story in Wednesday’s editions that stressed the importance of Christianity.

“It was just bad. I am not happy at all. Some of the best teammates I have ever had are the furthest thing from Christian,” pitcher Jason Jennings said. “You don’t have to be a Christian to have good character. They can be separate. It was misleading.”

Todd Helton and Jennings were quoted supporting the article’s premise regarding religion’s role in the clubhouse. But both said they never were asked about religion, and were questioned only in general terms about the clubhouse environment. “I wouldn’t say it was accurate. (The writer) asked me about the guys in here and I said it’s a good group. We work hard and get along well,” Helton said.

The story stated that men’s magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and Maxim could not be found in the Rockies’ clubhouse, but that Bibles were present. Several players read Maxim in the visiting clubhouse during the Padres’ series this week. Two separate issues sat on the center coffee table Wednesday.

I should point out that the visitors took 2 of 3 games. Never underestimate the power of hot chicks in lingerie.

“I have never seen a Bible (out in the open) in our clubhouse,” said pitcher Aaron Cook, who has led the team’s chapel service during spring training. “Most of the guys on this team are Christians, but not all of them. And the fact is you don’t build a winner around just Christians. If that was the case, everybody would be doing it.”

Indeed, notorious hedonists like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle have led teams to plenty of championships.

Michelle Malkin thinks, “The world is upside-down” when players are so loathe to be labeled as “Christians.” My guess, though, is that they just don’t want to be portrayed inaccurately. They don’t shy away from the “good character” label, just the idea that they’re religious zealots who don’t have a good time.

Asked what role religion plays in the team’s roster construction, Hurdle said, “We look for men of character, men of skills. Their (religious beliefs) are not a question that is even brought up. That those have a common fabric with Christianity is not a coincidence. But values are the issue.”

Quite right. Atlanta Braves skipper Bobby Cox has long banned loud music of any variety, forbids the wearing of earrings and other jewelry while in uniform, and similar measures. He does it because he wants to create an atmosphere of professionalism and to avoid tensions in the locker room.

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey reveals his life of seedy debauchery before press revelations of an affair with a male aide forced him into coming out of the closet.

Jim McGreevey shockingly admits that before he became governor of New Jersey, he’d have anonymous gay sex at Garden State highway rest stops. “All I knew was that my behavior was getting crazier and crazier,” McGreevey says of his torrid truck-stop trysts in an upcoming book that details his tortured life of lies and sexual repression. “With each new encounter, I was getting nearer and nearer to being caught – which surely would have generated headlines, especially after I became executive director of the state parole board” in the mid-1980s. “The closet starves a man, and when he gets a chance he gorges till it sickens him,” he writes in his book, titled “The Confession.”

McGreevey revealed to The Post that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital at an Episcopalian monastery in the Hudson Valley after his stunning resignation as governor in 2004. And he describes in the book his fruitless attempts to conquer or hide his homosexuality by ogling Playboy centerfolds, frequenting strip clubs and becoming “as avid a womanizer as anybody else on the New Jersey political scene.” “The more the rumors circulated, the more public and brazen I became about my heterosexual conquests,” the twice-married father-of-two writes.

[...]

McGreevey felt such shame, he writes, that he “split in two” – living on the one hand a life “that stands for tradition and values and America,” and another life that he pretended to ignore as “something spoiled, something disgusting.” But that duality only made his problem worse, and also made his forays into the world of illicit sex more risky and degrading. “In my case it went from the simple passions of a young adult – for physical and romantic love and happiness – to a particularly rank, unfulfilling variety of lust. I felt it get ranker and less fulfilling with each passing year,” he writes.

One would think. Yikes.

Anna Nicole Smith got the support of the Supreme Court, who ruled 9-0 in her favor.

Anna Nicole Smith, a one-time stripper and Playboy Playmate of the Year, prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court today in her celebrated legal struggle over the estate of her late billionaire husband, J.. Howard Marshall II, who wed her in his 89th year and then died. Her victory at the high court, which was unanimous, does not mean she will get the millions she claims, at least not yet. She must now return to a lower court for further proceedings in her 11 year old dispute with the deceased man’s son, who has accused her of gold digging.

The grounds of the opinion, though, are quite narrow:

Over the objection of the son, the [U.S. Bankruptcy Court] sided with the widow. It claimed authority over the case because it deemed it a “core proceeding” under bankruptcy law. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed, saying that the state’s exclusive jurisdiction over probate matters stripped federal courts of the power to consider any “probate related matter.”

Ginsburg said the appeals court went too far. “We hold that the Ninth Circuit had no warrant from Congress, or from decisions of this Court, for its sweeping extension of the probate exception,” Ginsburg said. While the Supreme Court has recognized a “probate exception” to federal jurisdiction in bankruptcy cases, she wrote, that exception does not bar federal courts from all state matters of probate. Ginsburg ordered the controversy returned to U.S. District Court for further consideration in light of today’s ruling.

So, despite Smith’s infamany, surgically enhanced mammaries, and the speculation as to she married a rich old geezer, we get a dull, technical decision from the Supremes that doesn’t actually settle the case.