The "Palin Promoting Palin" Tour

Substance? Or just style? Politics and policy, or just self-promotion and profit? At cnn.com, James C. Moore has a nice rundown on what Sarah Palin's up to these days. Hint:  Her profound and important book about protecting Christmas, or some such thing, comes out in a couple of weeks.

Check it out here.

This Is Why She's Famous

If you've ever found yourself wondering what, exactly, Kim Kardashian is famous for, I'd say this picture pretty much sums it up. Especially when paired with this pic of her in a white one-piece swimsuit. Based on the look on Kayne's face, as well as what he's looking at, I'd also say it's not her intellect that's got him enthralled.

Anyway, with this I'm going "radio silent" on the K's for a while, unless something so radical happens that I just can't help myself.

Kelly Clarkson's Wedding...

... is the main cover story, which I completely missed. I did get one of the sidebar stories right - Kim K, darn it! I was really hoping People would ignore the whole Kimye thing but that was probably not realistic. Separate from the new issue of the magazine, pictures of Prince George's christening are everywhere - will this still be "news" next week, or will we all have moved on? Meet me back here next week for another edition of "The Guessing Game."

The Guessing Game

I'm back! And it's Tuesday afternoon so let's play the guessing game - who will be on the cover of the new issue of People magazine? My guesses:

• Kim and Kanye got engaged last night and the People website has had several items about it throughout the day. Is this the story that finally gets the Kardashians a full cover? Possibly, although I really hope not. Please, please, please let this *not* be the most important thing happening in pop culture right now. For the record, I'm still giving Kimye two years, max.  
• Prince George's christening is tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure People will wait until next week for a big story, when pictures and the names of godparents have been released.
• The Nevada school shooting, which killed a teacher/former marine.
• Maria, the mystery blonde child found in Greece 
• Melissa McCarthy's controversial Elle magazine cover picture 
• With November 22 just a month away, I'm still expecting some assassination anniversary coverage, possibly tied to Caroline's move to Japan, or Rob Lowe's turn as JFK in "Killing Kennedy", the upcoming National Geographic Channel movie.  

I'll post the new cover as soon as it's up on People's website.

Wild About Harry!

So is Harry getting married? Could be. I said a few weeks ago that I was expecting a "fun Uncle Harry" cover story, but a royal romance is much more fun. And who is Cressida Bonas? (Don't you just love that name?) Based on what I've read so far, she's more aristocratic than Kate and the Middletons, but not quite as well-born as Princess Diana, or Lady Diana Spencer, as she was when she got engaged to her prince. She's BFFs with Princess Eugenie, studied to be a dancer and may not be ready to give up her dreams of a career in show business. Lord knows there's enough history to make any smart girl think twice before joining the royal family, no matter how hunky and charming Harry is. On the other hand, Kate's making it look easy, at least so far.

And in a sidebar, at almost 4 months old, finally, is a picture of North West. Very cute, and so far much less overexposed/exploited than I had been expecting. Of course the Kimye baby isn't the biggest Kardashian story this week, because a big separation was announced and it wasn't Khloé and Lamar. Momager Kris and step-dad Bruce Jenner confirmed what apparently was obvious to K-watchers and announced that they're the ones who've separated. The story broke late Tuesday afternoon, which was too late for this week's tabloids but I can only imagine the headlines next week. Stay tuned...

Update: I found a fun article at E Online, with "10 Things You Didn't Know About Cressida." Fave tidbits:

Her favorite expression is "Cringe de la cringe." I don't even know what that means.
Her half-sister had a crush on Prince William. Sis's name? Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Really.
Her fave TV show is The West Wing. I'm sold. Go for it, Cressy!

Creepy Weepie Will Make You Sleepy

Fun with rhyming words? No, I'm quoting the verdict in The Daily Mail's review of the new Diana movie. It's the first review I've seen and it's a wowzer. Did they like it? Not so much:  "A meeting of the minds between Abraham Lincoln and Mother Theresa." I can't decide if that makes me want to see the film or not. Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday, Prince Harry!

I'm back to the blog after being more-or-less off-the-grid for a couple of weeks, just in time to say Happy 29th Birthday to Prince Harry! Still waiting for that engagement announcement though. Is Cressida Bonas the one? Could be, although Harry appears to be having an awfully good time as the "spare" to dutiful Prince William. Time will tell; in the meantime, have a great day, Harry!

Royal Romances

There's lots of wedding news coming from London. Actually I should probably say "potential" wedding news because no-one's actually engaged yet, but love and romance is definitely in the air.

The most interesting possibility is that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, also known as His Royal Highness The Duke of York and Her Not Royal Anything The Duchess of York, or Randy Andy and Fergie, are thinking about getting re-married. There was a time when this would have seemed as unlikely as Charles and Camilla making it legal, but as I've said before a lot has changed in 20 years. I would love to see it happen, actually, because I think Fergie deserves some happily-ever-after. Yes, she's made some dumb mistakes but she's also been raked over the coals/thrown under the bus in all kinds of ways, sometimes by tabloid editors wanting to sell papers, sometimes by disloyal friends wanting to make money and sometimes by royal courtiers wanting to make the actual royals look good by comparison. Plus, it can't have been easy to be "the chubby one" standing next to Princess Diana for all those years. Fifteen years ago it was whispered that Charles and Camilla couldn't marry until his granny the Queen Mum died, but she did and they did. There's a similar dynamic now - supposedly Andy and Fergie can't remarry until Andy's father Prince Philip dies, because Dad really, really disapproves of Fergie, so we'll have to wait a while to see if this one comes true. I say Go for it Fergie!

There's also talk that Prince Harry, Princess Beatrice and/or Pippa Middleton are all possibly close to tying the knot. More to say about that soon!

The Washington D.C. Olympics, in 2024?

Do you like the logo? A group of business, political and sporting community representatives in the Washington D.C. area have formed an exploratory committee to possibly bid to host the Olympic Summer Games in 2024. It's a long, expensive and potentially humiliating process, as Chicago learned in 2009, but by 2024 it will have been 28 years since the last summer games in the U.S., in Atlanta in 1996, and 22 years since the winter games in Salt Lake City and by then it would seem to be our turn again. The IOC's website, olympic.org, has lots of interesting info on the bid process and how cities get selected. The announcement of which city will host the 2024 games will be made in 2017.

Lots of Olympic happenings in the meantime, of course, The Sochi Winter Games are only 162 days away and the announcement of the 2020 host city will be made a week from tomorrow, on Sept. 7. According to gamesbids.com, a cool site that tracks Olympic bidding, Tokyo is currently the front-runner; Madrid and Istanbul are the other contenders. Based on the selection of Rio for the 2016 games, however, I'd guess that Istanbul is the favorite, simply because Turkey has never hosted the games. We'll know in eight days.

The New Issue

I didn't officially play the guessing game this week, but Khloé, Miley and Linda were all on my mental list of cover possibilities and they all got sidebar stories. I hadn't heard anything about Michael Douglas's problems so the main cover story took me by surprise.

I'm still pondering the state of the Kardashian brand, and I'm guessing mother-from-hell Kris Jenner is having a very bad week. After Kanye's sit-down with Kris last week and the big "first baby pic" reveal, Kris (and Kim) probably figured the baby would be the big K story in the news this week. Not quite. Little sis Khloé's marital woes knocked North off the tabloid covers and not in a good way. Lamar is a drug addict? Really? It's possible that in Reality-TV land, where any publicity is good publicity, at least most of the time, a drug addict husband/SIL/BIL will just add to the drama and draw more viewers to the mothership KUWTK show, but I think it's an overall negative for the brand. And on top of all that, word on the street is that Kris's talk show has been cancelled. As I said, Kris isn't having a good week.

Word Of The Day

Do you twerk? Do you know what twerking is? When I first heard the word I thought it might mean "tweeting at work," but no. According to urbandictionary.com twerking is:

The rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual arousal or laughter in ones intended audience.

Or, what Miley Cyrus did at the VMAs. Try to use it in a sentence.

As Famous As I Wanna Be

When I started this blog one of my recurring topics was fame in America - the good, the bad and the ugly of being famous. I called fame a "fickle lover." It's still true and Allison Samuels has a great article at The Daily Beast about Lamar Odom's sad decline. Being famous as a Kardashian apparently isn't easy, and I'm especially intrigued about the changing family dynamics when Kanye West, who is an actual superstar, famous for more than just being famous, shows up. Kris Jenner is there too, still pulling the strings. I admit I'm curious to see how the whole missing/on drugs/getting a divorce thing plays out, and in particular what it does to the Kardashian brand. Khloé Kardashian married to a crack cocaine addict may be just a little too much reality.

What Time Is It?

I have a slight pet peeve about time zones. Please, people, know the difference between standard time and daylight time. Whenever I see "CST" (for Central Standard Time) in the summer, when it should be CDT, for Central Daylight Time, I just want to scream, and it happens more than you might think. Why am I ranting about this today? Here's why:

One of my cousins is participating in the Mrs. America pageant, which is being held in Tucson, Arizona. The preliminary competition is tonight and Tara, aka Mrs. Oregon, put a note on Facebook saying that it will be livestreamed online at 5.00. Tucson is in the Mountain time zone, which is one hour behind Central time, so 5.00 in Tucson is 6.00 in Chicago. Except, when I googled it to make sure, I learned that Tucson doesn't observe Daylight Savings time, which means that here in Chicago, on Central Daylight time, we'd be 2 hours ahead, not one. In other words, Tucson stays on *Mountain Standard Time.*

Then I checked the Mrs. America website, and it says the competition starts at 5.00 p.m. PST.  Huh? Pacific time? Pacific *Standard* time? I assume whoever programmed the website just got confused, or was being too clever by half. Pacific Daylight time would be the same as Mountain Standard time, right? PST is the same as nothing. Get it together, everyone. Please!

Contrived, Sensationalist, Repetitive, Witless

There was a time when this blog was Kardashian-free. A moment of respectful silence, please, for the good old days, because those days are so over. After blogging about the baby and the Kim/Katie imbroglio I found myself reluctantly intrigued and wanting to know more about the whole Kardashian phenomenon. I did some googling, learned some interesting things, then on Sunday I actually did that which I thought I'd never do - I watched their show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, or as it's known on Twitter, KUWTK.

So check out this great article from September, 2012 that I found on the website of The Guardian, a British newspaper. It's an interview with Kim K and there's lots of good stuff, including the history of the TV show (Mom Kris Jenner made a pilot episode shortly after Kim's sex tape came out, in order to "take advantage of the moment," ick;) why Kim posed for Playboy (Kris again, talking her into it, double ick;) and the fact that teenage fans pay $10 for K-branded bottles of water (really stupid ick.) When the article was written Kim and Kanye had been dating for a few months but she wasn't pregnant yet, and the writer asks if Kim would get married on television again:

She thinks about it for a moment. "Well, I guess you never say never. Because who knows? So many other people I know have gotten married on TV and it has worked out amazing for them." There is a pause. "William and Kate got married on TV," Kardashian says thoughtfully. 

See, Kim and Kanye are just like the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Kim also has an answer for the question Katie Couric and everyone else keeps asking:

"When I hear people say [what are you famous for?], I want to say, what are you talking about?" she says slowly, her eyes wide as a bushbaby's. "I have a hit TV show. We've shot more episodes than I Love Lucy! We've been on the air longer than The Andy Griffith Show! I mean, these are iconic shows, so it blows my mind when people say that."
But you're not performing; you're just being followed around by cameras…
"But to be able to open up your life like that and to be so… if everyone could do it, everyone would. It doesn't make sense to me."

My first response to this was incredulous eye-rolling, but she does have a point. The Palins certainly haven't been able to do it. In fact, I'd bet that Sarah Palin lies awake nights trying to figure out how to make her family as rich and famous as the Kardashians.

I may have more to say about "KUWTK", or not. This morning there's actual news in Kardashian-land as TMZ and other sites are reporting that sister Khloé's husband Lamar Odom has a serious drug problem and is currently "missing." Reality may be getting a little too real for the reality TV stars.

"A Really Unfair Thing To Blame On God"

Well, today's the day. Kanye West went on Kris Jenner's talk show and showed a picture of the Kimye baby. I couldn't have watched even if I'd wanted to because the show isn't on in the Chicago market, but Kevin Fallon at The Daily Beast provides a recap and it's a doozy:

Kris Jenner is notorious for the admirable doggedness with which she orchestrates her family’s publicity. Convincing one of rap music’s most respected artists to engage in an hour of scripted PR about his unconditional love of a sex-tape-turned-reality-TV star, all building up to the grand unveiling of a photo of his first child may be her most despicable and, ultimately, most impressive accomplishment yet. 

Read the entire story here. As annoying as this all is, fear not, because I stand by my prediction. Two years max and Kimye will be history.

Things I Don't Care About

Ben Affleck as Batman.

Can't Stay Away From The Royal Baby

There he is again. People couldn't resist one of the cute pictures taken by Kate's dad Michael Middleton, but keep in mind that this is less about newsworthiness, especially here in the colonies, and more about selling magazines. The previous royal baby cover issues must have sold really well and as long as that's the case, the Kate/Will/George covers will keep on coming, whether or not there's any actual news for a story. I'm also thinking that "fun Uncle Harry" and/or "hot Aunt Pippa" cover stories are probably coming soon. Also no surprise that there's a "Dead Celebrity" sidebar, as well as a wedding story, two of People's fave topics. They probably would have had LiLo or Simon as the third sidebar, except they didn't want to block Prince George's face.

Final thought for now: all this coverage of the real royal baby has to be driving Kim Kardashian (and her mother) crazy. Love it.

Strongly Branded Women

I'm linking to a fascinating article at Forbes.com, comparing the branding and pop culture placement of those two recent new moms, Kate and Kim. The author, "trendspotter" Marian Salzman, describes one woman as "tasteful, aspirational and lovely," and the other as "a shrill and diva-ish queen of self-promotion."  Any guesses for which is which?

The New Issue

It's Tuesday afternoon and time to play the guessing game: what will be the cover story on the new issue of People? Lots to choose from this week:

• Lindsay Lohan, out of rehab and trying to rebuild her career
• Prince George and the new pictures of the Cambridge family  
• Gia Allemand and/or Lee Thompson Young, both of whom committed suicide this week
• Hannah Anderson is a sidebar story on the current issue, but I could still see her as a main story, especially if she gives an interview or if there's a really good picture of her
• An Oscar for Oprah? She's getting good reviews for her performance in The Butler. She's also a sidebar story this week, but she could move up to the main story 
• Oscar Pistorius, indicted for the murder of his girlfriend
• Beau Biden's health issues
• The Obama family's new dog
• The Kim K/Katie Couric dust-up. I'm sure there will be a Kim story eventually but it will probably not happen until the first baby pictures come out. 

Finally, Caroline Kennedy was in the news this week, after she released her financial information and was revealed to be really, really rich. With the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination now just three months away, there's almost certain to be some kind of story about Caroline between now and then. Like stories about the royal baby and the Kardashians, it could pop up any time.

Tuesday night update: Simon Cowell gave an interview to the BBC about his upcoming fatherhood. People.com's recap is currently their top story, so I'd say Simon's a possibility for a cover/sidebar story too.

Dog Days Of Summer

Welcome Sunny! Bo Obama has a new playmate and she's as cute as he is. Check out the video for some fun doggie frolicking!

It Was An Accident

The headlines are everywhere: Was Diana murdered? The answer: No. Three investigations, one French and two British came to the same conclusion, so definitively that even Mohamed Al Fayed's legal team was forced to concede that there is not a shred of credible evidence of murder, pregnancy or conspiracy. Tina Brown lays it all out in an article on The Daily Beast; here's my favorite part:

 As for sinister forces organizing the crash of the Mercedes, a conspiracy would have been beyond the capacities of all the intelligence agencies and royal masterminds in the grassy knoll of tabloid imagination: pre-knowledge that Dodi would make the last-minute decisions he did; that Henri Paul would be the driver; that Paul would be drunk and drugged; that he would not follow the most obvious route to Dodi’s apartment; that the argumentative group of paparazzi and the supposed intervening cars or motorbikes were coordinated to the last split second in their movements; that Dodi and Diana would not wear seat belts—and on and on through an infinity of variables.

So why so many headlines? Clicks, of course. It's a provocative subject and a tantalizing headline that will drive traffic to websites and morning news shows. But read (or listen) carefully and you'll learn there's not much of a story here. It's just one more media feeding frenzy for ratings.

Katie And The Kardashians

I would guess that Katie Couric feels the same way about the K's as I do: Why are they famous? What is it that they do, exactly? Why do they get so much attention? In fact, I don't have to guess, because Katie said the following in an interview with, wait for it, In Touch magazine: "I don't understand - why are they famous? I think it's mostly teenage girls that are interested." So I had a few seconds of being surprised when I learned that Katie had sent Kim a gift when Miss North West was born. Then I remembered that regardless of Katie's personal feelings, having Kim on her talk show would be a huge "get" for Katie, which is why she was sucking up to Kim by sending the gift. It's just business.

The plot thickened when Kim saw the In Touch interview and fired back on Instagram with a snotty message for Katie: #IHateFakeMediaFriends, and #MayIHumblySuggestYouNotSendGiftsThenTalkShit. I had a few seconds of actually feeling some sympathy for poor Kim, being used/sucked up to by Katie just to get Kim on the show and boost Katie's ratings, but then I remembered, whatever else you think about her, Kim Kardashian really isn't stupid, especially when it comes to brand-building via media. She knows that Katie Couric isn't her best friend. She knows why Katie would send her a baby gift, and I'm pretty sure Katie isn't the only media heavyweight who is trying to get Kim on their show by reaching out/sucking up. It's all just business and Kim knows that better than anyone. She wouldn't be rich and famous otherwise.

Saturday afternoon update: Katie Couric has issued a "sort of, but not really" apology: "I've met Kim before and I think she's a really sweet person. I was responding to a reporter's question, and explaining how I'm intrigued by the public's fascination with her family. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. The gift is genuine, and I'm happy for Kim and Kanye."

Looking Ahead

Mark McKinnon is a republican strategist and consultant who worked on presidential campaigns for George W. Bush and John McCain and now writes for The Daily Beast. In 2009, he started posting and updating his top 10 list of potential republican candidates for president in 2012. On June 3, 2009, this is how the field looked to him, ranked in order:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Tim Pawlenty
3. John Thune
4. Mike Huckabee
5. Sarah Palin
6. Mark Sanford
7. Bobby Jindal
8. Newt Gingrich
9. Jon Huntsman
10. John Ensign

Plus Jeb Bush as a "longshot". Four years later, with the wisdom of hindsight, there's a lot of fun to be had looking back. Obviously, no one on the list was elected president, although Romney did indeed get the nomination and three others (T Paw, Newt and Huntsman) ran in the primaries. Thune, Huckabee, Palin and Jindal declined to run, and most interesting to me, not one but two of the distinguished statesmen on this list flamed out in sex scandals, namely Don't Cry For Me Argentina luvguv Mark Sanford, and Sleeping With My Best Friend's Wife Senator John Ensign. Who's not on the list? Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, all of whom were also declared (and unsuccessful) candidates.

Things sure can change in three years. Have you heard anything about John Thune lately? (If you've never heard of him at all, he's a senator from South Dakota.) So with that in mind, here's one of the first lists I've seen of potential republican candidates for 2016 and note, I would again add Jeb Bush, possibly not such a longshot this time around:

Marco Rubio (Senator from Florida)
Bobby Jindal (Governor of Louisiana)
Paul Ryan (Congressman from Wisconsin and 2012 VP nominee)
Chris Christie (Governor of New Jersey)
Rand Paul (Senator from Kentucky)
Ted Cruz (Senator from Texas)
Rick Santorum (former Senator from Pennsylvania and runner-up to Mitt Romney in 2012)

Will any of these guys be standing on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2017? Will one (or more) of them get caught in a scandal? Is there a dark horse/fresh face hiding somewhere who will bubble to the surface and shake up the race, as Barack Obama did for the democrats in 2006? The 2016 campaign is already underway, which is both intriguing and depressing, and I haven't even mentioned Hillary...

Not That Kate

Not even close. Have you been wondering what Kate Gosselin is up to? Me neither, but apparently People thinks we need an update. I haven't read the actual story yet but I have to say the kids look pretty cute. This also takes me back to 2009, when I first started the blog. At that time, the story of Kate, then-husband Jon and the break-up of their marriage was the 800-pound gorilla of reality TV/pop culture. For a while they were everywhere. Between May 25, 2009 and March 22, 2010, People ran eight cover stories about the Gosselins, not counting Kate's picture on the year-end "Intriguing People of 2009" issue and an additional eight "sidebar" stories. Once the divorce was final and their TV show was cancelled, however, they pretty much disappeared from the scene, which I take as a positive sign. Fingers crossed that four years from now, no one will know (or care) what the Kardashians are up to either.

Tomorrow's People Cover

Time to play the Tuesday afternoon game: Who/what will be on the cover of the next People magazine? Here are my guesses:

• Bethany Frankel: Her divorce is nasty and she has a talk show starting in September. 
• Simon Cowell: Simon was one of the secondary cover stories last week, but his married-baby-mama scandal is so juicy I still think it could be a main cover story. 
• Hannah Anderson: Even though she's happily now been found, a "missing white girl" story is manna from heaven for the tabloids. 
• Longshot: The group Powerball winners 

Wednesday morning update: the new cover isn't posted yet and I thought of one more possibility for the cover story: Usher, his son and his ex-wife, with a story about the son's swimming pool accident and the ensuing custody battle. 

North By North West

I confess:  I am just a bit curious about Kim Kardashian's baby. There, I said it. Overall, I'm proud to point out that this blog has been mostly Kardashian-free, because, you know, I'm such a deep intellectual thinker and serious observer of pop culture. The Kardashians? I'm so above all that, my dear.

Anyway, when exactly will we get to see a picture of North West? Kim K and Kanye West's daughter was born June 15 and eight weeks later both mother and baby are still in hiding. With the stipulation that everything I know about this situation comes from reading the tabloids, both dead tree and digital, some or all of the following may or may not be true:

• Kim doesn't want to be seen in public until she has lost her baby weight and gotten her pre-pregnancy figure back. 
• The K's, specifically Kim and her mother, who want to sell the first pictures for as much money as possible, were overruled by Kanye, who is insisting on keeping the baby private. 
• Kimye may do as Tomkat did and present the baby in a "prestige" publication like Vanity Fair. 
• Or, they may do as Beyoncé and Jay-Z did and post pictures on their own website, for no financial remuneration. 

Kris Jenner teased viewers of her new talk show with a picture that turned out not to be North, and Kim followed suit by tweeting a picture of herself with sister Kourtney's baby from a couple of years ago. Why? Just messing with their fans, I guess.

We'll see the baby pictures eventually and I admit I feel some sympathy for the little girl. Growing up as the daughter of Kim Kardashian won't be easy, not to mention the fact that Kimye as a couple doesn't strike me as a model of maturity and stability. When Kim married Kris Humphries a couple of years ago I gave the marriage two years. It famously imploded after 72 days. I'm going out on the same limb again and you heard it here first (or not): by August, 2015 Kimye will be no more. People magazine and the other tabs will keep us informed.

Where Do They Go?

I've been thinking about unsuccessful candidates for President and Vice President, partly as a result of my recent post about Sarah Palin, and partly because of this Paul Ryan story at The Daily Beast. I'm struck by the contrast in the post-campaign activities of, not to mention the amount of media attention paid to, the two most recent losing VP candidates. Unlike Palin four years ago, Ryan went back to his day job in the House of Representatives and has pretty much stayed out of the spotlight. Palin went back to her day job, too, at least initially, but the lure of fame and fortune was too much for her and in July, 2009, she famously quit her job as governor and set out to get rich.

The Ryan story got me thinking: What have other recent losing candidates done? Where do they go, what do they do once the campaign is over? Here's a "blast from the past" list of the losing POTUS/VP candidates going back to 1972. Yes I remembered most of them, but I admit I did a little googling to come up with the complete list.

1972 McGovern/Shriver
1976 Ford/Dole
1980 Carter/Mondale
1984 Mondale/Ferraro
1988 Dukakis/Bentsen
1992 Bush/Quayle
1996 Dole/Kemp
2000 Gore/Lieberman
2004 Kerry/Edwards
2008 McCain/Palin
2012 Romney/Ryan

So what did they all do when the election was over? Some go back to the Senate (McGovern, Bentsen, Lieberman, Kerry and McCain) or the House (Ryan and Ferraro). Defeated incumbents settle into the life of a retired/former POTUS or VP (Ford, Carter, G.H.W. Bush, Quayle, Gore). Some VP nominees regroup to run for the top spot (Mondale and Dole, who were nominated by their respective parties then lost in the general election; and Edwards, who dropped out of the race after a few primaries), and some just go back to whatever they had been doing before (Shriver, Kemp, Romney). Given conventional wisdom that being a governor is a better path to the White House than being a senator, I was surprised to realize that of all the unsuccessful candidates since 1972, only two, Michael Dukakis and Sarah Palin, were sitting governors. When their campaigns were over, they had to go back to their home states and resume trying to govern. In Palin's case that didn't work out so well.

Going back a few years, two candidates actually got their party's presidential nomination twice. Richard Nixon (Nixon's The One...) was the Republican nominee in 1960 and lost to JFK, ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 1962, then reinvented himself effectively enough to be elected president in 1968. And in the fifties, Adlai Stevenson II (madly for Adlai...) was nominated by the Democrats in 1952 and 1956 and lost to Eisenhower both times.

Succession

No, not to the British throne, this time I'm talking about succession to the Presidency. Back in 2010, I was struck by the fact that for a brief moment in history, the #2 spot (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) and the #3 spot (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) were held by women. This was caused by the death of the usual #3, the President Pro Tem of the Senate (Senator Robert Byrd). Even after Senator Daniel Inouye took over as President Pro Tem, Pelosi and Clinton were #2 and #4, which meant that two out of the first five were women, which I thought was cool. Just like the Brits however, we're now back to all men at the front of the line:

1. Vice President Joe Biden
2. Speaker of the House John Boehner
3. President Pro Tem of the Senate Patrick Leahy
4. Secretary of State John Kerry
5. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew

The first woman in line is currently the Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, who is 8th. How did I get interested in the minutiae of Presidential succession? It was a plot point on The West Wing. At the end of season four, President Bartlet temporarily steps down, and because the Vice President had resigned due to a sex scandal, the Speaker of the House, played by John Goodman, is sworn in as president. Nerdy Will Bailey points out that at that point, the President Pro Tem of the Senate is next in line.

By the way, over in England, the first woman in line to be Queen is now #6, Princess Beatrice.    

We'll Always Have Sharknado

Fear not if you missed the cultural phenomenon that is Sharknado, now you don't have to wait for Syfy network to run it again. The "movie" has proven to be so popular that instead of just re-running it on television every week, it's actually going to be shown in theaters. For now it's a one-time-only good deal, with late-night showings tonight in theaters around the country, but who knows. It could become another Rocky Horror Picture Show. Or not, but whatever. Supposedly Sharknado 2 is already in production.

Snarking On Sarah

I'm always happy to have a reason to snark about Sarah Palin. She's been back in the news recently, although happily not at the "all Sarah, all the time" level we had to endure four years ago, because she told Sean Hannity that she's "considering" running for one of Alaska's U.S. Senate seats next year. Democrats and progressives reacted with joy, all but begging her to run, figuring a candidate as manifestly unqualified as the former half-term governor would ensure a Democratic win. On the other hand, several pundits pointed out that Palin has done nothing in the last four years to indicate that she is serious about running for office, much less actually governing, and that she was probably just jumping back into the spotlight in advance of her next book, which comes out in October.

So is it possible that Sarah would actually run for something? I just can't see it, but I sure understand why Democrats want her to. Not to put too fine a point on it, and forgive my language, Sarah Palin is an opposition researcher's wet dream. The ads just write themselves. Imagine the following, in a deep, doom-and-gloom political announcer voice, with an unflattering picture of Sarah in the background: "Sarah Palin had two of the most important jobs in Alaska, Chairman of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and Governor. She quit them both. Now, she wants to be a Senator. Does she know it's a six-year term?"

And that's just off the top of my head. If someone really wanted to go digging for dirt on Sarah, there is six swimming pools worth of dirt to be dug. She's a very strange woman who has said and done a lot of very strange things, and there are bloggers in Alaska who have devoted their professional lives to tracking every move she makes. They could fill a Democratic campaign operative's head with all manner of things, none of which would make a rational person want to vote for her. If you're interested, check out The Mudflats, Just A Girl From Homer, and The Immoral Minority.

I'm convinced that at this point Sarah Palin is unelectable to anything, which is probably just fine with Sarah Palin because I'm also convinced that she's not really interested in running for anything and she's absolutely not interested in governing. Teasing a senate run, or in 2011, a possible presidential run, just keeps her supporters enthused and happily sending her money, not to mention buying her silly books. By the way, that next book is called "Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting The Heart of Christmas," and I won't be reading it.

Lots of Balloons!

What a great picture! Over four hundred hot-air balloons took to the sky from a former NATO base in Chambley, France, part of the Lorraine Mondial hot air balloon festival, of course. Click here for more great pictures from the event.

Boy George

Not such a longshot after all. People goes with a royal baby cover for the second week in a row, with one of my other choices (Aniston) in a secondary headline. No sign of Huma Abedin on the cover, although there may be something about her inside the mag. It's hard to believe People would skip the chance to write about a juicy sexting scandal. In fact, hold that thought. Huma could still show up on the cover next week.

The New Issue

Tuesday night update:  One more guess for tomorrow's cover story: Huma Abedin.

I'm back to playing my old game, trying to guess what will be the cover story on the new issue of People magazine. Sometimes it's obvious, as with last week's royal baby cover, sometimes it's obvious in hindsight, like the "Cleveland Three" cover a few weeks ago, and sometimes I'm completely surprised. My guesses for the next issue, in no particular order:

• Brooks rejects Des, a Bachelorette story 
• Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper in her new movie, "We're the Millers"
• Real Housewives of NJ star Teresa Giudice is free on bond after being charged with federal fraud 
• Longshot:  another royal baby story

I'm assuming that one of these days we'll get a Kim Kardashian baby cover, but that could be this week or three months from now. People.com posts the new cover on Wednesday mornings so I'll know soon if I was right. Stay tuned.

Things I Don't Care About

Prince George's circumcision. Or not.

On the other hand, it's fun to hear grampa Prince Charles say the baby will be known as Georgie.

Love it!

Continuity

Well, here he is, and here's how People is covering it. Other than the baby's name, everything that needed to happen has happened and I'm certainly planning to move on to other things in my head, at least for a while. Even for someone who's as "into" the royals as I am, the fooforah over this baby seems just a bit excessive, and I found myself wondering, as the 10,000 photographers who camped out at the hospital got their "money shot" yesterday, was it really worth it? Sitting there for three weeks? Since every photog on the planet had the exact same picture, no one's going to get rich on it and there were times when the whole thing seemed just plain silly.

On the other hand... Continuity. The British monarchy has been around for over 1,000 years and if this baby lives as long as his great grandmother the Queen, he'll be sitting on the throne in the year 2100, which is a really daunting thought. He may not have any real impact on my life, or on the lives of most of the other people who were breathlessly waiting for the first picture of him, but he's not a Kardashian. He's part of something real.

So, welcome baby Cambridge, but for now it's on to other things. Who knows what else will catch my attention and get my blogger juices flowing. Whatever - talk to you soon!

A Visit From The "Other" Grandparents (Get Thy Royal Rump to London, Charlie)

Kate's parents, Carole and Mike Middleton, have visited their new grandson in the hospital, the only visitors so far in the 24 hours since the baby was born. The Daily Beast's Royal Watch blogger has some interesting comments about the visit. First this:
How fantastic to see Carole and Michael Middleton enter the hospital in London this afternoon to visit their new grandchild.
While Prince Charles blithely continues his tour of York in Northern England, adamant that he will stick to the Royal Family's ludicrous "no-fuss" policy which involves not visiting each other when they are in hospital, Carole and Michael show how things are done in the real world.
No wonder William calls Mike "Dad". The Middletons have faced ridiculous levels of abuse for being too posh, too rich or not posh or not rich enough, but here's the facts - a pair of very successful middle class business people are now the grandparents of the future King.
That truly is a remarkable transformation at the very top of British society.
Carole and Mike looked absolutely delighted as they made their way out of a black cab - could there be any more democratic mode of transport? - and up the steps to be greeted by medical staff.
No wonder Kate is planning to spend her first weeks of motherhood surrounded by these honest, hard-working and utterly refreshing people. 

Followed by this:  
The royals no-hospital-visit strategy because "we don't want to cause a fuss" isn't working anymore. Its absolutely ludicrous that Charles is cutting ribbons in York not visiting his heir's heir. Worse, it risks making him look like he doesn't care, when in fact he does.
Get thy royal rump to London, Charlie. The fuss is already happening. The disruption is already unimaginable. And, whisper it, Carole and Mike with their open, generous style are a bigger draw than you. 

Interesting.

It's A Boy (Good-bye To Princess Charlotte)

And I admit, I'm slightly disappointed. I had really been hoping for, and more or less expecting, a girl, for no specific reason other than I thought it would be cool. Here in the blog I've been referring to the baby as Princess Charlotte since July 4, but you know, never mind. Some random thoughts:

The birth of a boy takes the whole "changing the law to let a girl inherit the throne" issue off the table for another generation. As I understand it the law has been changed in the U.K. but not all of the Commonwealth countries have signed off on it yet. Now presumably they've got 25 years or more to work it out. I loved Tina Brown's tweet: "Now the royals can stop pretending they were fine with a girl first." Tradition dies hard!

It was 8.30 p.m. or so in London when the birth was finally announced, and before the announcement some of the reporters I follow on Twitter had started to fuss about what would happen if the baby didn't show up until tomorrow. Given that William's first act of fatherhood was expected to be a phone call to his granny The Queen and no-one else could be told first, serious reporters were actually tweeting about what time Her Madge might go to bed, how early she might get up in the morning, would the news really keep all night if the baby was born at midnight, etc. Never mind that too. It turns out he was born at 4.24 p.m., and apparently the new parents just felt like having some private bonding time as a family before letting the whole world know. Good for them!

For all the talk that Kate's mum Carole and possibly sis Pippa would be with her for the birth, that doesn't appear to have been the case. Will Kate take the little prince back to Bucklebury for a few weeks? Could be.

What will they name the baby? Everything I read says it will a traditional "royal" name and the young prince will probably have at least four names. Grampa Charles's full name is Charles Phillip Arthur George; Will's is William Arthur Phillip Louis. One CNN talking head noted the presence of "Arthur" in both Dad and Grampa's names and said that is a strong possibility for this child too, noting that "it's cool again but not celebrity weird." We'll see.

The heir and the spare? It's probably safe to assume that at some point in the future there will be another Cambridge baby and I was fascinated by this comment from a BBC reporter: At some point there may well be a younger sibling - but perhaps just the one, as the Royal Family appear to have understood the problems of producing too many young royals, all of whom require a role. The problems of producing too many young royals? Yikes. The things one must worry about when one is royal.

Finally, the math. The Queen is currently 87 years old. If William lives that long, this new baby won't get to be King until 2069, when he'll be 56 years old. Lots of interesting things to happen in the meantime, so for now, I'll simply say welcome to the baby who isn't Princess Charlotte, and of course, long live the Queen!

Something Happened

Finally! I woke up this morning to the big news that Kate has finally gone into labor and been admitted to the hospital. It's exciting but I also couldn't help but laugh. Some of the photographers have been camping outside the hospital door for *three weeks* and Will and Kate gave them the slip by entering via a side door. (Short Sorkin reference:  That was predictable.) The Daily Mail has a picture of what it says is the car they arrived in but really, who knows?

Anyway I went back and re-read the People magazine cover story about William's birth and there are some similarities. Kate is in the same hospital, and like Diana, she arrived early on a Monday morning in the summertime. William was born about 15 hours later and Prince Charles was in the room. How long will Kate's labour take? (Note that in the spirit of the day I'm using the British spelling.) No way to know but Twitter is on it and we'll all know soon.

Back To The Baby

Still no news from London and after a brief diversion to blog about the Olympics I'm back on the #greatKatewait, and I thought it would be fun to look at Kate's pregnancy through the lens of People magazine cover stories. They all look pretty much alike to me and they certainly aren't breaking any real news, but still. I'm always interested in People's view of the world. There have been four cover stories since the pregnancy was announced and of course there will be another as soon as the baby is actually born.

Other Things In My Head

This blog was never intended to be "all royal baby, all the time," and even if it was, there's nothing happening in London, so I decided it's time to post new stuff about one of my other regular blog topics, the Olympics.

The Sochi Winter Games are 201 days, or 6 1/2 months, away, per the countdown clock on the official olympic.org website. If you've never heard of Sochi and don't know where it is, let me enlighten you: it's a city in Russia. And yes, the world has changed since the last Games in Russia, or as it was known in 1980, the U.S.S.R., but not that much. Just this week a United States senator floated the idea that we should boycott the 2014 games to protest Russia's sheltering of leaker Edward Snowden. The idea didn't get much traction, happily, so the Games can proceed with just the usual amount of geopolitical posturing and politics.

I like the countdown clock, by the way, and check it periodically, which is how I know that the 2016 Summer Games, which are not being held in Chicago, are 1111 days away, followed by the Pyeongchang Winter Games in 2018, or 1664 days from now. Before any of that happens, however, the site of the 2020 Summer Games will be announced on September 7, and the cities in contention are Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid. Japan's had the games three times before, 1964 (summer,) 1972 and 1998 (winter); Spain's had them once, in 1992 (summer.) Tokyo and Madrid were also finalists for the 2016 games. Will either country repeat in 2020 or will the IOC selection committee go with Istanbul? We'll know in 7 weeks.

Word Of The Day

Dystopia. I've seen this word several times recently and I realized I didn't really know what it means. From dictionary.com:  "a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease and overcrowding." To see the word in use check out this story at the Daily Beast, titled America's Dystopian New Normal.

Great, Great, Great

A little genealogy on Saturday morning. Have you been wondering what Princess Charlotte's relationship to Queen Victoria will be? Neither have I, really, but for some reason I started thinking about it this morning, with nothing else going on in London, so here goes:

Prince William     Father
Prince Charles     Grandfather
Queen Elizabeth   Great Grandmother
King George VI     Great, Great Grandfather
King George V      Great, Great, Great Grandfather
King Edward VII    Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather
Queen Victoria     Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandmother

So who cares, right? Just passing the time during the great Kate wait.

Last Time Around

Nothing has changed on the #GreatKateWait, and I'm passing the time thinking about, or more specifically, trying to remember, how I heard the news that Prince William had been born, 31 years ago, which is also an exercise in "how things have changed" in terms of how we get information and news. Truth is, I don't remember exactly how I heard. In 1982, I lived in an apartment and went to work in an office every day. The prince was born at about 9.00 the night of Monday, June 21, which is early afternoon in Portland, Oregon where I lived. I don't remember if I had a computer on my desk in those days, but if I did, it would have been just a "dumb terminal" connected to a mainframe. There was no internet, no websites, no live-streaming Lindo Wing baby cam. Smart phones weren't around yet either so I couldn't check my Twitter feed every 15 minutes, which is pretty much what I'm doing now.

So how did we get information back in the olden days? I may have heard the news on the radio as I drove home from work, or on the evening news on television. It's even possible I didn't find out until the next morning, watching the Today show or Good Morning, America as I got ready for work. (How prehistoric does that sound? These days I fully expect to learn about this royal baby, pretty much instantaneously, on Twitter.) There was also a funny little document known as the morning newspaper, although even in those days I didn't subscribe to one. I do remember that a few days later I left work at lunchtime and drove to a grocery store to buy the new issue of People magazine, pictured above. It'll all be different when Princess Charlotte arrives and if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Twitter feed. Stay tuned...

Did Will And Kate Punk The Press?

Princess Charlotte's not here yet on Thursday morning and frankly the whole royal baby watch thing is beginning to feel a little silly. Somehow July 13 got into the atmosphere as the due date, apparently based on a "tip" to a newspaper, but ha, ha, ha, I think that was just a big fake-out. Now reporters are "remembering" an article from the Sunday Telegraph at the end of May, quoting Kate's mother that the baby will be (astrologically) a Leo, which means a birth no earlier than July 23, five days from now. (Note this blog's reference to said report in a post on Sunday.)

Not only that, but with Kate believed to be waiting it out at her parents' home 55 or so miles from London, there's talk that if necessary, she could give birth at the local hospital there, rather than at the posh Lindo Wing of St. Mary's in London, which I think would actually be hilarious. Talk about punking the press - all those reporters have been staring at the door of the Lindo Wing since July 2, and Kate gives birth in Bucklebury. For now, nothing to do but keep on waiting. The baby really does have to be born eventually.

Waity Katie Baby-Cam

Okay, this is cool.  A British website is live-streaming the front door of the Lindo Wing at St. Marys, the hospital in London where Kate will give birth.  She'll probably sneak in via a side door, but the palace has promised that Princess Charlotte and her parents will depart via this door, for the whole world to see.

14 Years Ago

It was 14 years ago tonight that John Kennedy, his wife and her sister died in a plane crash and recently I found myself thinking about him and wondering how his life would have turned out if he had lived. He'd be 52 now, turning 53 in November, older than President Obama. Would he have run for office? Gotten a divorce? Had kids? No way to know for sure, of course. I actually doubt he would have run for President, as some have suggested but you never know. I don't mean to imply that his death was any more tragic than anyone else's, just because he was rich, famous and good-looking, but it's still sad to think about. If nothing else, it's a reminder that life is short and you never know what might happen.

Telling Truth To Stupid

A few weeks ago, Angelina Jolie announced that she had had a preventative double mastectomy, based on test results indicating that she was at high risk for breast cancer. Some of the resulting press coverage expressed concern that her announcement could lead to an increase in unnecessary surgeries, as women might rush out to have the same procedure even though the specific genetic indicator is actually extremely rare. At the time I was thinking, Really? Do people really take medical advice from or make health decisions based on what a celebrity says/does? To be clear, Jolie wasn't actually giving medical advice, at least not about treatment, but still. Would any woman really have her breasts removed because Angelina Jolie did?

I'm thinking about that today as I read some of the reactions to Jenny McCarthy's selection as the new co-host on ABC's The View. McCarthy strongly advocates that parents not vaccinate their children because she claims vaccines cause autism. She's entitled to think whatever she wants, of course, but because she's famous, at least in a C-list kind of way, she has a microphone. She's written some books and appeared on Oprah and I think she has (or had) a blog or website. Serious people, including James Poniewozik at Time magazine, Michael Specter at the New Yorker and Alex Pareene at Salon are criticizing ABC for hiring McCarthy, saying that she could cause the deaths of real children whose parents don't vaccinate because Jenny McCarthy tells them not to. Once again I'm saying, Really?

Sounds to me, as Aaron Sorkin says in The Newsroom, that it's time for someone to tell truth to stupid. I'm not talking about McCarthy. She sounds like an idiot but that's not my point. I'm talking about the parents. Taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy? That's the real stupid.

Erupted Like Mushrooms

Is something, anything, about to happen in London? I'm linking to this fun article from the Sun-Times' Michael Sneed, saying that apparently Prince William has cancelled his engagements for the next three days. Royalty watchers are holding their breath...

Hint: A New Royal Baby Is Imminent

Update:  This New York Times article is actually interesting, with fun details about how information will flow once the baby is born.

The reporters hanging out across the street from the royal hospital are probably bored out of their minds and scrambling for anything even remotely newsworthy to write about. Still, I had to laugh when I saw this story from The Daily Mail. Apparently Camilla has given the "strongest hint yet that a new royal baby is imminent." Really? The strongest hint? Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't already know that the birth is imminent?

C'mon Princess Charlotte. Be born already and put an end to this agony of waiting and silly news stories.

I Was Distracted By A Bumblebee and Your Garbage Can Is On Fire

In this world it seems that you're either an Aaron Sorkin fan, or not. There are no doubt people who have never heard of him and never watched any of his stuff, but those who have generally aren't neutral. Sorkin fans think he's brilliant, creative, entertaining, instructional and funny. Sorkin haters think he's self-important and self-referential, didactic, misogynistic and self-righteously liberal. Me? All of the above. And, yes I'm a fan.

As two Sorkin mash-up videos show, he's also very repetitive. He's also very repetitive. Just for fun:

Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
This isn't happening
To say nothing of the fact
Don't be ridiculous, everybody likes me.
I'm not other people, I'm not that guy.
That was predictable.
It's entirely up to you.
This will get worse before it gets better.
I really am quite something.
Just sign the damn thing!
You bet.

I was going to talk about season 2 of The Newsroom, which starts tonight, but I've already moved on to other things in my head. You know, Belgium.

Granny Di?

I saw an interesting clip on Good Morning, America this morning, about Princess Diana and what she would be like as a grandmother. It's mostly the usual stuff - Diana was so famous, so beautiful, very caring and compassionate, blah, blah, blah, but when they got to the end, the reporter voiced something that I've thought about a lot but never heard spoken aloud before: Diana may have been a great grandmother, but she probably would have been the mother-in-law from hell. Really.  

The reporter doesn't phrase it like that of course, but the implication is there. Diana would probably resent or be jealous of the attention Kate gets from the press and the public and I agree with that. Even more importantly Diana would almost certainly resent (and perhaps try to sabotage) anyone who was closer to William than she was. Remember, once the divorce was final, it was Diana's position as "mother of the future King" that made her important to the royal family. Without that she would have been just another Fergie. It's uncomfortable to say, or even think, but I suspect Kate's life as a royal is a little bit smoother without Diana around. 

The Great Kate Wait

It's Sunday morning and still no sign of the royal baby. William's playing polo, Kate's hanging out with her parents and the bored reporters and photographers camped out at the entrance to the hospital are desperate for something to do. England's also apparently having a bit of what passes for a heat wave over there, with temperatures in the high 80s. With air conditioning much less common than we're used to here in the colonies, Kate's probably pretty uncomfortable and wishing the baby would just be born already. The Daily Beast's Royalist page has started a royal baby live blog, which I'll be checking periodically until something happens. For what it's worth, Kate's mum, Carole, has reportedly said the baby will be a Leo (meaning astrological sign, not given name), so we could have a week or more to wait.    

I find that I'm much more interested in the impending birth than I am in this morning's big news story, which is the verdict in the Zimmerman trial. Does that make me a bad person? CNN is still in "all Zimmerman, all the time" mode, even calling new Mon-Friday morning anchor Chris Cuomo in on Sunday to lead the coverage, which strikes me as overkill. I'm simply going to link to two of the articles that I found most helpful:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, at The Atlantic, and Adam Cohen, at time.com.

Prince George? Princess Charlotte?

It's a week since my last post and the royal baby still hasn't made his or her appearance. (No sign of Kim K's baby either, but we'll talk about that in a separate blog post.) For now I'm thinking about royalty and all the hoopla surrounding Will and Kate's first child.

Just to make sure no-one misses the first picture of the baby, photographers started camping out at the door of the royal hospital as far back as July 2. At first I thought that was just stupid - in my cynical way I was thinking "Is the first picture really that important?" We all  know what Will and Kate look like, and all we'll see of the baby is a blanket wrap and perhaps a tiny bit of a smushed up newborn face. Then I saw a link to video of Charles and Diana leaving the same hospital with William 31 years ago and after watching it I decided that yes, it is charming, and revealing, to actually see the big "leaving the hospital" moment.  

In the video, Diana, who was a couple weeks shy of turning 21, looks young, vulnerable and slightly uncomfortable, not least because it's only 24 hours or so after the delivery. She's wearing one of her Catherine Walker maternity dresses and since she's not pregnant anymore it looks big and baggy, really unflattering. By contrast Charles looks stuffy and buttoned-up. The couple doesn't appear to be all that affectionate with each other, although that perception is surely influenced by knowing how things turned out. Charles gently hands the baby to Diana, they wave a little then get into the backseat of their car and drive off.

Presumably everything will be different this time. Kate is 10 years older than Diana was when William was born and she has a husband who clearly adores her. She also has the support of her sane, and still married, parents, to the extent that it's rumored she may spend her first few weeks postpartum at their home in Bucklebury instead of the palace. For all the "doors to manual" put-downs of the not-aristocratic Middletons, it seems to me that Kate's family is one of the best things she's got going for her. Even though Diana came from one of the most aristocratic close-to-royalty families in the country, which supposedly made her the perfect bride for Charles, looking back it sure doesn't seem as if they did much to help her when things started to fall apart. It's been 21 years since Charles and Diana separated and 16 years since she died, and it's hard to remember how ugly things got when the two of them decided they really hated each other. I feel comfortable saying things will work out much better this time around.

So when will the baby arrive? No way to know, but Twitter lit up with rumors of royal labor today, although so far it appears to be just speculation. No need to worry; all those photographers camped out at the Lindo Wing will start tweeting like mad as soon as the Duchess shows up. We'll know soon.  

Dumbed Down and Sexed Up

Did you know that People magazine has an online archive? They do and it's one of my favorite places, fascinating and mesmerizing. You can click from issue to issue, cover to cover, and get a fun reminder of what was going on in pop culture at any particular time since 1974. For example, in the summer of 1989, People cover stories included Hugh Hefner's wedding (7/17), the death of Lawrence Olivier (7/24), the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer (7/31) and Clint Eastwood's break-up with Sondra Locke (8/7.)  Fall of 2003? Cover stories included the Laci Peterson murder case (9/8), Brooke Shields' first baby (9/15), Best and Worst Dressed celebrities, featuring Jennifer Aniston (9/22) and the death of Johnny Cash (9/29). Why am I blogging about the People archive, other than because it's kind of cool?  My thought process went like this:  (And yes, it really started with Kim Kardashian.)

First thought:  I was wondering how and when the K's would offer up the first pictures of newly arrived North West. I assume they're strategizing how best to monetize the pictures - a People cover package? An E! network special? What would be most lucrative?

Next thought:  They better not tarry too long, because the royal baby is due any day now and presumably Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte, or whatever the baby ends up being called, will knock Miss West off the front pages of the tabloids.

Then came this:  Although in some respects the royal baby is more "important" than the Kardashian child, when you really boil it down neither of them has anything to do with my life at all.

And that led to this:  Given that they're really not that important, when did celebrity babies become such a big deal? All the hoopla over baby "bumps", baby joy, body after baby, etc. sometimes makes it seem as though there's nothing more important in the world than which celebrity is pregnant, when are they due and when will the first pictures be published. Thinking about when all this started is what led me to the People archive.

This next part is going to make me sound like I have too much time on my hands, but it is a long holiday week-end and I do have some time on my hands. I decided to compare two full years worth of People cover stories - one recent (2011) and one 38 years ago (1975). No surprise, things have definitely changed.

2011 first. I made a list of all the cover stories, January through December, then categorized them. In 2011, the three biggest categories are Reality TV (the Bachelor/Bachelorette, the Kardashians, Kate Gosselin), Royalty (Will and Kate) and True Crime (Caylee Anthony, Amanda Knox, Baby Lisa.) There are also 3 "baby" covers, 2 weddings, not including Will and Kate, and 3 celebrity deaths (Elizabeth Taylor, Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs.) There are no cover stories about Sports/Athletes, and only 1 that is political (the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.)

Compare that to the cover stories in 1975. There was no Reality TV, no True Crime and only 1 Royalty story (and not the British royals this time, Lady Diana hasn't shown up yet. The cover story is about Princess Grace of Monaco.) The biggest category is Movie Stars, with stories about everyone from Marlon Brando to Paul Newman to Robert Redford to Gene Hackman. In 2011, the only true "movie star" story is about Sandra Bullock. (There are 2 Brangelina covers, and although Brad and Angie are indeed movie stars, both stories, "Big Happy Family" and "Growing Up Jolie-Pitt," are focused on kids and family life.)

Back in 1975, Television is next, followed by Rock Music (Elvis, Paul McCartney, Roger Daltry, Mick Jagger and Elton John.) There's a cover story about the Reverend Billy Graham and 3 covers devoted to sports stars (Chris Evert/Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, Mohammad Ali.) The biggest surprise is that there are five covers about political subjects: First Lady Betty Ford, Happy Rockefeller (wife of the VP), Nancy Kissinger (wife of Henry), the judge in the Watergate case, and David & Julie Eisenhower.

So what does it all mean? The title of this post, Dumbed Down and Sexed Up, pretty much sums it up. People magazine was never the New Yorker, as I used to say, but they used to at least try for some substance some of the time. To put it another way, the stories were mostly about the celebrities' work, not who they're married to or getting divorced from, not how they look in a bikini, and not when their baby is due. These days it's mostly weddings, babies, divorces, crime stories and people who are famous for being on (Reality) television. There's probably more blogging to come on this topic, so for now I'll simply say Happy 4th of July, and does anyone want to place bets on when Princess Charlotte will arrive?

The Pregnant-Celebrity-Industrial Complex

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's tired of hearing about "baby bumps."

Best Word Ever?

Fun for word geeks.

Bo Gets Four More Years, Too

I've been away from the blog for a while. So what brought me back?  First Dog Bo Obama, of course.