The Charm School

If you think the "Russian Spies in America" story that's playing out on all the front pages today is stranger than fiction, think again. To me it sounds like the inevitable "end of the story" to one of my absolute favorite novels, "The Charm School," by Nelson DeMille.

Published in 1988, the story takes place entirely in the USSR, where a group of American spies discover that the Soviets are training young Russian men in the art of being American. The trainees spend a year at the so-called "Charm School" learning to walk, talk, eat, think and do everything else like an American so that after graduation they can take up residence in the states, pass as natives and infiltrate our society with nefarious intent. The book was written over 20 years ago and it's now seriously out of date - the Soviet Union no longer exists, for one thing, not to mention the fact that in those days even the CIA agents didn't have cell phones, computers or internet data searches. Still, based on what we're hearing today, DeMille's premise wasn't as far out as it may have seemed at the time and all these years later I'll bet the author's feeling pretty good about his story right now. Maybe he'd like to write a sequel...

Presidential Succession Update

Politico is now reporting that Senator Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, will be sworn in as the new President Pro Tem of the Senate. So Presidential Succession now looks like this:

1. Vice President Joe Biden
2. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
3. President Pro Tem of the Senate Daniel Inouye
4. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
5. Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner

Women Really Should Rule The World

Before his death this morning at the age of 92, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia held the title of President Pro Tem of the U.S. Senate, which meant that he was third in the line of succession to the Presidency. If you're not up on the minutiae of presidential succession, here's how it goes. The Vice President is first in line, of course, followed by the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tem of the Senate, the Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury and so on down the line of Cabinet Secretaries, in the order in which their department was created. With the Senate Pro Tem position currently vacant, the number two and number three spots in line for the throne (so to speak) are currently held by women: Speaker of the House Pelosi and Secretary of State Clinton. Even after a new Senate Pro Tem is chosen, two out the top five spots in line will be held by women. Regardless of whether or not you agree with them politically, as a woman I think that's cool.

Today also marks the start of the Senate confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan. If she is confirmed, and she probably will be, three out of the nine spots on the U.S. Supreme Court, or 30%, will be held by women. That's cool too. (Or at least, it's a good start... )

By the way, do you know who the first woman in the cabinet was? Here's a hint: Nobody puts Baby in a corner. That's right - when Baby told Johnny that her real name was Frances, after the first woman in the cabinet, she was speaking the historic truth. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins to be the Secretary of Labor in 1933. Very cool.

"Ghana Crushes the American Dream"

I lifted the title of this post from time.com's article about the U.S. team's loss to Ghana in the World Cup and I find myself wondering - why isn't soccer a bigger deal here? It's a big deal right now, sort of, because of World Cup coverage, but I'm talking about the rest of the time. How come soccer isn't as popular in this country, year in and year out, as it is in the rest of the world? This will be a short post because not only do I not know the answer, I don't have any well thought-out musings on the subject. I don't even have any snarky "isn't this lame?" comments on the subject, because like most of my fellow Americans, I just don't care that much about soccer.

If I learn anything interesting about it, between now and, you know, whenever, I'll let you know.

Monday morning update: Time attempts to explain it.

Being Famous: Dead Or Alive

Yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death and in the midst of all the "Remembering Michael" and "Where Are They Now" retrospectives I'm once again contemplating the concept of fame in America. I'll start out by acknowledging that I was never a Michael Jackson fan. Maybe because I didn't have MTV and wasn't going to dance clubs back in the early 80s, or maybe I'm just a total dweeb when it comes to pop music, but somehow I missed out on the whole King of Pop thing. So when the weirdness happened - the plastic surgeries, the little monkey, the little boys, the lawsuits, etc., I didn't have a residual pool of affection in my heart to soften my perceptions that this guy was a total creep and very likely a criminal who could use his money to buy his way out of trouble.

By March of 2009 I also would have said that he was way past his prime as an artist and as a performer. That's when his comeback series of concerts was announced and I found myself wondering if anyone still cared about Michael Jackson. To me he seemed so "over" as a pop star sensation. Would people really shell out big money to see this guy in concert? I didn't think so and boy, was I wrong about that.

When Michael Jackson died a few months later, we were plunged into the ritual media feeding frenzy that I now think of as "Dead Celebrity 101". There's no question that Jackson's death was big news, but if you think you can gauge a celebrity's true importance by how much press coverage they get when they die, I have three words for you: Anna Nicole Smith. Even way back in the last century, when JFK, Jr. died in 1999, a few clear-eyed commentators observed that the media coverage of that event far exceeded John-John's actual importance, and that was back in the days before "#MichaelJacksonDies" could crash Twitter.

So what is it, really, about Michael Jackson? Unlike some of today's here-today, gone-tomorrow teeny-bopper pop star sensations, in his prime he was a spectacularly gifted artist who had an authentically lasting impact on our culture. On the other hand, his glory days were 25 years ago and there was a lot of authentically troubling behavior between then and now, whether or not he actually broke the law. I believe he'll fare better, in terms of historic reputation, now that he has been lifted up into the rose-colored gauziness through which we perceive Famous People Who Tragically Die Young than if he had lived to actually do his concerts. The rehearsal footage that was released after he died struck me as being banal in the extreme, and based on what we've now learned about his health and his lifestyle it sure doesn't sound like he had the strength or the stamina to give his fans their money's worth for 50 shows. Was he really up to it? Could he really deliver the magic again? Obviously, we'll never know but one thing's for sure. He'll always be famous.

Another Royal Wedding

But still not the "Big One", meaning Prince William and Kate Middleton. No, now we're talking about Prince Albert of Monaco, who is finally getting married at the age of 52. After a long reign as one of the world's most eligible bachelors, and a relatively shorter reign as the ruler of Monaco, Albert has now finally plighted his troth to a woman from South Africa named Charlene Wittstock. She's blonde, she's pretty and she's 20 years younger than the prince, which presumably means there's time for her to produce a legitimate heir to the Monaco throne.

If my use of the word "legitimate" strikes you as quaint, you should know that although the dashing Prince Albert made it to age 52 without tying the knot, he hasn't exactly been sitting around knitting all this time. He's actually the father of two children already, a girl and a boy, neither of whom are eligible to inherit because he wasn't married to either of their mothers. This is no big deal in Monaco, where Albert's sister Princess Caroline gave birth to her first child 5 1/2 months after the wedding, and his younger sister Stephanie had two children before marrying (and divorcing) her first husband, followed by a third child with a man she never bothered to marry at all.

It's sure a lot different from the uptight British royal family, who forced poor Prince Charles to propose to an untouched 19-year-old girl, for reasons that seemed important at the time and couldn't possibly matter less now. We all know how the disaster that was "Charles and Di" turned out, but that was then, this is now and even in England the royals are loosening up. Wills and Kate have been together for years and no one is pretending that she's still a virgin. On the other hand, Wills hasn't gotten around to proposing yet, and I'll bet Kate Middleton is looking towards Monaco with an envious eye. I say "Chin up, waitey Katie." If Prince Albert can be persuaded to walk down the aisle, there's hope for long-suffering royal girlfriends everywhere.

The Princes, The Princess and the Ex-Girlfriend

It's been a busy few days for royalty watchers. On Saturday, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden married her long-time boyfriend, a very normal-looking guy who's now known as Prince Daniel, Duke of something-or-other. The interesting thing about him is that he is a commoner, which apparently was initially unacceptable to Victoria's father, the current King of Sweden. In this case, commoner doesn't mean "un-royal but titled individual from one of the country's most aristocratic families," as it did in the case of Lady Diana Spencer. No, this is a regular working guy who met the Princess when she hired him as her personal trainer. I read that he's been given a so-called royal makeover, with lessons on Swedish history, how to look cool in public, who curtsies to who, and who knows what else, all to turn him into someone who is acceptable as a royal consort.

Although Victoria has a younger brother, in Sweden the King's eldest child inherits the throne, male or female, so Prince Daniel is now the equivalent of England's Prince Philip, and eventually he'll be married to the Queen of Sweden. I saw a short video clip of his toast at the wedding reception, in which he referred to himself as the frog who married a princess, which I thought was very charming. And even though we don't hear much about the Swedish royals in this country, they were big news this week-end, which is how I now know that Victoria is the first of the King's three children to marry. Her younger brother recently dumped his fiancée and took up with a reality TV star, and her younger sister broke up with her fiancé because he was cheating on her with a college student, so don't think for a moment that the Swedes aren't getting just as much scandal from their royals as the British get from the House of Windsor.

And speaking of royals who've recently changed their relationship status, apparently Prince Harry and Chelsey Davy have broken up again.

Finally, today is Prince William's 28th birthday, so Happy Birthday, Wills. Are you ever going to make an honest woman out of "waitey Katie"?

Will Sarah Palin Run For President?

I don't think so, in fact I can't imagine it on any level, but two writers that I admire, Andrew Sullivan and Geoffrey Dunn, both think she will, which is why I'm thinking about it today. Does she even want to be president? I assume that every politician in America occasionally fantasizes about flying around on Air Force One and hearing Hail To The Chief every time they walk into a room, but the reality of running for president is so daunting that most of us would break out in hives just considering the possibility. Running for president is really, really hard work, and there is nothing in Sarah Palin's background that would indicate she has any interest in working that hard, much less that she could succeed at it.

For starters, consider the process by which she became the Republican nominee for Vice President in 2008. On Sunday, August 24, 2008, Palin was at the Alaska State Fair when John McCain called her on her cell phone and asked if she was interested. When she said yes, the campaign sent her a long questionnaire that they were asking all of their potential running mates to complete. On Wednesday they secretly flew her from Alaska to Arizona. That afternoon and evening she met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, two officials from the McCain campaign, and talked by phone with a Washington D.C. lawyer named Art Culvahouse, who was in charge of vetting VP candidates. On Thursday morning she met with Senator McCain for an hour or two as well as a short meeting with Cindy McCain. By lunchtime Thursday, Sen. McCain had offered her the job.

Five days, from the initial phone call to the job offer. During that time she didn't have to raise any money. She didn't have to recruit, hire, train and manage a national campaign staff. She didn't have to talk to any newspaper editorial boards, trying to convince them to endorse her. There were no negative stories about her in the newspapers, much less nasty stuff written in blogs. Nobody was running negative campaign ads against her. She didn't have to answer questions from reporters and she didn't have to debate her opponents.

Contrast that with the process of running for President. She would have to raise over $500 million dollars, then decide how best to spend it. She would have to lead a campaign organization of hundreds of paid staff and thousands of volunteers, at both the national and state levels. She would have to be able to articulate a coherent message and not just in ghost-written messages on Facebook. She would have to take questions from reporters and she would have to participate in debates - and her one meet-up with Joe Biden would feel like a cakewalk compared to trying to hold her own with her fellow Republican candidates during the primaries.

Take a good hard look at Sarah Palin's professional and political history up to this point. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that she has the brains, the experience, the temperament or the work ethic to successfully run for president. So Andrew and Geoffrey can relax. It's not going to happen.

Word Of The Day

Our new word for today is "vuvuzela", which is a horn-like noisemaker used by South African soccer fans to express support for their team. Based on press reports coming out the World Cup coverage, the sound it makes is, to put it mildly, annoying.

Up until about five days ago I had never heard of a vuvuzela, and I'm pretty sure most of my fellow Americans hadn't either. Now, it seems, they're everywhere, or at least stories about them are everywhere. When Politico describes off-message Republicans as "vuvuzelas of the fringe," you know a word has gone mainstream.

How Things Change

Readers of my blog know that I think, and write, a lot about change. In particular, I like to contemplate how things in our everyday lives have changed and evolved over the course of my lifetime. An easy way to do this is to read, or re-read, a book that was written 20 or 30 years ago.

I recently re-read "Presumed Innocent," in anticipation of the sequel that was published a few weeks ago and I was struck by the fact that Turow's devilishly clever plot couldn't even have been written today. (Warning: spoiler ahead.) My extensive crime-fighting knowledge, gleaned from watching shows like CSI and Without A Trace, tells me that the book's hero would have been wrongly convicted of the murder based on DNA evidence gathered at the crime scene. There was no DNA analysis back in 1987.

This week-end I re-read "Scruples," the gossipy fashion and retail book that was published in 1978. There were several "Wow, isn't that quaint" moments in the book, including a lawyer sending messages from London to his Beverly Hills office via Telex, another character receiving (and "tearing open") a Cablegram, and a pub where patrons could amuse themselves by playing with "all kinds of those new pinball machines, the electronic ones." One female character who traveled a lot was described as someone who "flew only Pan Am."

For me, however, the true Wow moment came when the author was describing the Christmas shopping season: "Most retailers find that December 10, not a day earlier, is the magic moment for the Christmas rush to begin." Obviously this was back in the days when Christmas decorations didn't appear in stores until after Thanksgiving, and to me it sounds like it was three lifetimes ago.

There's lots of snarky blogging to be done about the overly commercialized, politically correct "holiday" season we all have to endure today so I'll probably have lots more to say about this. For now I'm getting ready to start reading "Scruples Two," which was written in 1992. If there's anything really interesting in it, I'll let you know.

Missing The Party

Even though I'm not a big hockey fan, it's still exciting to see the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup. One of my friends mentioned on Facebook that she was going to the big parade this morning, which sounded pretty cool, although since I'm writing this post from Portland attending the parade isn't an option for me. That caused me to realize that this is the third time in the last five years that I've been out-of-town during a big-deal event in Chicago.

In October, 2005, I was on my way to visit friends in London when the White Sox won the World Series. And I literally mean "on my way." I was on the flight from Chicago to London when the pilot made the announcement that the Sox had won, which caused lots of cheering and clapping from the passengers. Unfortunately, I didn't get the full "group of strangers sharing a common happiness" experience when the announcement was made, because I was in the little airplane lavatory at the time, but never mind that. It was a great moment in Chicago's history.

By November, 2008, those same friends had moved to Dubai and I was visiting them there on election night, so I experienced the historic election and Grant Park celebration by watching it virtually on my friend's laptop.

Now I'm once again sharing an exciting Chicago moment from afar. Don't misunderstand - I'm having a great time here in Portland and there's nowhere I'd rather be. And for the record, I was also here for Portland's last (well, er, only,) World Championship In Sports moment, which was when the TrailBlazers won the NBA finals back in 1977. No watching stuff online in those days - you had to be there.

So no parade for me today, but I'm a proud Chicagoan just the same. One more time, with feeling: Go Hawks!

Election Day

Lord have mercy, they're taking polygraphs...

Still Wondering What's Going On In South Carolina

Really - no one knows what's going on down there, or what the outcome will be. Amid all the media coverage, here are a couple of fresh takes on the situation:

Palmetto Political Passions

Why I'm Rooting For Nikki Haley

Is South Carolina The Friskiest State?

It's sure beginning to look that way. Another political consultant has come forward to say that he had sex with Nikki Haley, and again she's denying it. So what's really going on down there? Who knows? She's been consistent in her denials of any kind of infidelity in her marriage and frankly, I want to believe her. But that begs the question: Why would two men, both of whom are married, by the way, both come forward and announce that they had been fooling around with a woman they're not married to? The easy answer is that it's political dirty tricks, intended to derail Haley's candidacy for governor, and that could be the case, but they're also potentially derailing their own marriages, not to mention their professional credibility.

The S.C. primary is this Tuesday and you bet I'll be watching to see what happens.