Punditchick

Lost

The Left's post-election kookery was dealt a hefty blow today.

Every sane American knew that there weren't 100,000 uncounted Kerry votes laying around in Cuyahoga County, Ohio-- now the "Reality-Based Community" will have to accept it. Wonkette gets it.  Perhaps, Keith Olbermann will get it soon.

These folks are likely to not ever get it.

Wolcott Unhinged

Wolcott's schtick is curiously captivating-- no one is more charismatically cranky and dead-wrong than he.

Beating off to Kerik's implosion and loving the possibility that Bush and Giuliani are collateral damage is full time work. But Wolcott is more than up to the task.

Wolcott and friends are revisiting the "many sins and sordid trespasses" of the Giuliani junta. The greatest victim of Rudy's hubristic, tough guy act that Wolcott can recall is Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal. Huh?

Wolcott disappoints me with this. I wouldn't have thought his violins played for the Prince. On the other hand, Mr. Diallo's story seems like such a lay up for him, I wonder why he didn't go there.

But he has absolutely gone there with Zev Chafets. Zev's great sin is that he is a former IDF soldier who fought in the Yom Kippur War. The YKW is a tough war for non-fans of the Jewish State to deal with-- its like Super Bowl XXV (when the G-Men beat Buffalo 20-19) for Bills fans. The fact that Zev fought in the YKW, an almost-win for the Arabs, doesn't sit well with a non-fan like Wolcott. 

Zev's IDF past and his current support for Kerik, Rummy and Bush's war make Wolcott a big time non-fan of Zev Chafets.

Wolcott is an odd dude. He has only blanket hostility to offer to Bush voters, but Marwan Barghouti's base doesn't trouble him a bit.

Lefties have long believed, and were keen to point it out again and again after the election, that Red States are unlivable, bigot-infested deserts. Why doesn't the Left's "Retro vs Metro" battle extend to the Mideast?

Isn't Wolcott's comfy Upper West Side life more likely to be duplicated in Tel Aviv than Ramallah?

Wolcott is put off by the "he-man displays of muscle flexing and tough talking from the 9/11 all stars (He means Kerik, Giuliani, Bush, Cheney, Rummy and the gang...of course!!! Ed)" but the public Kalashnikov worshiping and pandering to the Islamists by the Arab pols is no big thing.

The Unreal Deal

I just caught the documentary "Be Good, Smile Pretty" and highly  recommend it. The film was made by Tracy Droz-Tragos --whose father Don Droz , a Swiftee, was killed in Vietnam-- and its about her search for who her father was.

The only part of the movie that didn't work was when Tracy's travels took her to the Washington Senate office of John Forbes Kerry, who knew Don in Nam.

Kerry's performance in "Be Good, Smile Pretty" is so awful. Kerry's method sucks. Every word, every gesture seems contrived. Kerry turns what should have been just an unscripted human moment into a nauseatingly political act.

Andy Rooney once said of Dan Rather that "he just looks dishonest."  In the same vein, Kerry's problem is he just looks insincere.

How can someone so calculating always get his math wrong?

In the film, Don's mother and many others who lost loved ones in Nam say that they would have gone insane if they believed that their loved one died for nothing. That still holds. What Kerry said in '71 and what he said in 2004 was something no one wanted to hear.

In this campaign, Kerry's implicit pitch was, "Your son is at Walter Reed for Halliburton. Your son died in the Sunni Triangle for George Bush's Oil buddies."

That dark pitch is untrue, and even if it were true, nobody living outside of the fever swamps of the Far Left wants to believe it.

After watching BGSP, I went to the Swift Vets site. Those ads were fatal for Kerry. The "Kerry Lied" rally organized by Vietnam Veterans for Truth is another goodie on the Swift Vets site.

I can't fathom why Kerry thought a Nam-centric campaign could take him to 270.

Don Hewitt, another smart old CBS guy, summed it up well when he said, "You can't be a hero in a war you protested." Why that concept was, and remains, so elusive to Shrummy, Cahill and Kerry is beyond me.

I suspect Tracy Droz- Tragos's funding for her film was greatly helped by her Dad's Kerry connection. Kerry's cameo reeks of  "this is good for my campaign." Droz-Tragos is a former Dreamworks employee. It's hard not to connect her film to the one another friend of Speilberg made for the Democratic convention. You know the one I'm talking about? The film that sexed up Kerry's Super 8 footage from Nam into a mini "Saving Private Ryan."

Unspinable

The latest Kerik bomshell( via Drudge) is political Ricin.

This is much, much worse than that Opie and Anthony stunt.

Hollywood is Over

The new Stetson ad with Matthew McConaughey is hot. McConaughey is a former Hollywood It-boy who fizzled out, but he has a great face. The fact that no one in Hollywood could give him anything interesting to do is an indictment of the whole town.

Hollywood used to be able to take a plain Jane from Nowheresville and make her a fabulous superstar. Not anymore. The writing is dead and the casting agents are all looking for the next Ryan Seacrest and Ashton Kutcher.

Hollywood used to make people more interesting than they were- not anymore. By the time most A-listers get to James Lipton's couch to engage in that hideous method-speak (Hearing J.Lo break down her method is just awful), they have less sizzle than the average Amway rep.

Even Bogdanovich thinks Hollywood has lost its way.

They're Lovin It

The Left is loving Kerik's fall. Unsurprisingly, Jim Wolcott thinks Bush was buffaloed by Bernie because he is a Bear-chasing wuss who has to stuff to fill out his flight suit. That analysis is Malkin Award worthy to say the least.  Paging Sullivan....

In recent days, the Left has been all over the backlash phenomena on the right. The Left's backlash theory is that white, anxious males are culture warriors for the corporate rightwing because they were alienated by the progressive gains of the 1960s.

But isn't there a backlash movement on the Left? Lefty backlashers, like Jim the Cat Poseur, vote Democrat so they can "beat the white boys." The failed males of the LB movement only feel adequate in the company of cream puffs like Graydon Carter. 

One suspects that they would now be conservative Republicans had they managed to preempt atomic wedgie strikes in junior high school.

And isn't Wolcott's love of  Michael Mann films a bit of Bear-chasing of  his own? Michael Mann has made a career of remaking  the Bear. Mann's New Tough Man is the un-Kerik-- he wears pastels, moisturizes his skin, looks like a Men's Fitness cover boy and can still kick down doors.

Mann's ass-kicking fashionistas don't threaten Wolcott, but guys like Kerik do. If it takes Bernie's scalp for the Left to get its groove back, so be it. Bush still won.

Bad Start

The second Bush administration hasn't started off well.  The SecDef's Questions in Kuwait went terribly and the Kerik implosion is getting more awful by the day. Now news that Bernie cheated on his wife with Judith Regan (!!!) has hit the dailies.

Why, I wonder, has the MSM been so ruthless with Kerik? I have a feeling it has much to do with '06 and '08. The GOP heavyweight they want to slime with this isn't Bush, it's Giuiliani. This hit on Kerik is for Hillary.

What's the Matter With Kristof?

Check out Nicholas D. Kristof's video dispatch from Kiev.

I know Papy Kristof emigrated from southwest Ukraine, but is it really kosher for Dee to declare the people of Ukraine his "people"?

It's worth remebering that the people of Ukraine weren't his people during Chernobyl-- back then they were dreary screwups.  Now that they are in the streets shouting truth to power they are worthy of Kristof.

By the way, wasn't Nick Kristof  soft on the Soviets back in the 80s? Didn't he prefer guys like Kuchma and Yanukovich to Reagan? I'm sure the guys over at MRC know. 

Revolutionary moments are sexy and the brilliant orange color scheme of this moment in Kiev is fabulous. I just wish Kristof had gotten the same advice Kevin Sites got before he went to Iraq: Remember, you're not one of them.