For tomorrow's Hussein Goldbergs and Barack Wongs

As a guy with a funny semitic name, I fully approve of this. It may not do much to allay wingnut fears that Obama secretly wants to kidnap their children and put them in evil terrorist MUSLIM training camps, but then again, nothing will.

Sincerely,

S. Yehusseinua M.

If it bleeds for a week and doesn't die...

Kill: Yeah, I know Chris killed her off last post. I don't care. The chalk has not been drawn yet. As my man Barack knows, Hillary's one chick that's hard to bump off (Hezbollah-style fist jab, dawg!) Seriously, Hils, the country's had its fun with you, but it's just not that into you. She's like a cross between Jason and the Glenn Close character from Fatal Attraction. To paraphrase the Governor of California in True Lies "female presidential candidates: can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em". How can anyone expect to be elected president if they make Tucker Carlson "involuntarily" cross his legs when he hears her speak? If she reminds Mike Barnicle of "everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court," how can she win? Amirite? Fellas?

I think one lesson we can draw from this Bataan Death March of a primary campaign is that while both racism and sexism are still forces in American politics, pundits and pols can make truly repellent sexist comments and continue to have successful careers. (Another is that we need a better media, but that's not happening anytime soon). The same, as George "macaca" Allen, Don "nappy-headed hos" Imus, and Trent "Strom Thurmond forever!" Lott can attest to, is just not true for racist comments. Don't believe me? Here's 62 examples. Particularly galling were the howls of skepticism after she allowed her eyes to become teary in New Hampshire, as if Bill Clinton, John Edwards, or Bush pere and fils would never speak with a catch in their voice or with sad empathetic eyes (in Bush Sr.'s defense, I'd be crying if those were my kids too). The commentariat's remarks about Hillary being like "everyone's" (lovely demonstration of male privilege there) first wife say more about their own twisted biases and sexual histories than about Hillary Clinton's fitness for the job of President. It's not just male pundits, either - there's a special ring of hell reserved for Maureen Dowd's coverage of this campaign. As for Tucker, I really wish he took Jon Stewart's advice and Stopped Hurting America. Like every other person who has sought out higher office, she's an extremely ambitious and competitive person. That doesn't exactly make her a stalker.

All that said, I would not be happy if she was Obama's VP pick. As Chris points out, speculating on assassinations is an immediate disqualifier, no matter what the context was. And I don't look forward to hearing Bill explain exactly why he pardoned each and every crooked financier who fundraised for him on his way out the door. But most of all, I just don't think she'd be a great president, mostly based on the way she's ran her campaign. She'd be miles better than Mccain, Ralph Nader, or any other Republican, and I think she's just as electable as Obama, but I still don't want her a bullet away from the presidency. This campaign was her biggest project since the 1994 Healthcare proposal, which wasn't exactly a triumph of executive leadership either. She's refused to admit voting for the war was a mistake, which would have robbed Obama's candidacy of its rationale from the get-go.
She gave millions of dollars to this guy (Mark Penn, left) who reportedly did not understand the basic rules of the primary.

Her campaign was leaky, fractious, and unfocused. As a candidate, she's been inflexible, gaffe - prone, and unconvincing. Seriously, Barack, you don't want to go there. You're better than that.

Regulators, Veep Vetters, mount up!

“But you can't be any geek off the street, gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn your keep!”

- Warren G (Not Harding), Regulate

It’s been a bad month for veep vetters.

Earlier in June, the man in charge of vetting Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential choices, Washington insider’s insider Jim Johnson, got the ol’ heave-ho. Roundly criticized for receiving two million dollars in questionable loans from Countrywide Financial, a mortgage company that’s been accused (by Obama, among others) of being at the center of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Stating that he would never, ever, ever dream of “distracting attention from [the] historic effort," Jimmy boy stepped aside leaving a chasm as large as Unity, New Hampshire in his wake.

That’s where your clean-pocketed Today’s Snow Job team steps to the fore. We’ve come forward to offer our sterling picks for Obama’s Numero Dos for your appraisal. In return, we expect nothing more than medium to large-sized low interest loans. So, if you have me in mind, Countrywide, Ameritrust, keep in mind that prices for Strathcona townhouses are only going up…

I suppose it’s worth pointing out that, in the long run, Johnson’s firing may ultimately be a plus for the Obama campaign. After all, he was the point man when Mondale foolishly picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, prompting Wu-Tang rapper Gza to furnish us with the line: “Geraldine Ferraro, who’s full of sorrow, cuz the ho didn’t win, but the sun will still come out tomorrow.”

So, with sunny days in mind, let’s get down to it.

First off, the art and science of the thing. There’s no unified theory of veep vetting. Other than the resounding lack of scandals like the one ended Jim Johnson, there are a number of proposed qualities a fine vice presidential nominee may, or may not, have. In no particular order:

1. They should bring you swing states (The potential biggies this time out: Ohio, Michigan, Florida. Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado and, of course, Puerto Rico.)
2. They should be a ranking member of your father’s secret, world domination-minded cabal who will help to craft your every statement and action (ie. Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney).
3. They should be your ideological soulmate–the Yin to your Yang, the Tubbs to your Crockett, the Stringer to your Avon, the Ashley to your Mary-Kate. (Semi-surprisingly, Al Gore)
4. Failing the above, they should fill in the gaps in your own resume/ideology/persona. You’re a man, they’re a woman. You’re from a northern state, they’re from the south. You’re inexperienced, they’ve been in the senate for a billion years. You like dudes, they like chicks. (Ie: Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s #2)
5. If lacking in these other, more appealing traits, they should at least be endowed with such a paucity of mental competence that they make you look like a MENSA member by comparison (ie. James Danforth “Dan” Quayle.)

The problem with the last quality is that it necessarily entails a failure to reassure the people that in the event of your untimely demise a suitable second will be able to step in. In Quayle’s case, it led to an opposition ad campaign entitled: “Quayle, only a heartbeat away.” And yet, this is the catch-22 of the VP position: You have to be worthy enough to bring votes and reassurance, and yet also be enough of a lame-duck long shot that you don’t outshine the head of the ticket. Journalist Lance Morrow put in succinctly when he said, “The presidential nominee always says the person he has selected to be his running mate is the American ‘best qualified to take over in the White House in the event of my death.’ That is a ceremonial lie.”

The truth of the matter is that the selection of a vice-presidential nominee is a political, rather than quantitative, question; an attempt to guess which significant other will augment your own turn in the spotlight to the extent that you can walk home with November’s beauty prize in hand.

With that in mind and no further ado:

Fuck: Joe Biden

At first blush, Joe “Biddy Bone” Biden is all that you’d want in a veep and more. He ‘s got the wealth of legislative and foreign policy experience that Obama lacks. He’s both clean and articulate. He’s fair and from Delaware. And, most importantly, he is indisputably thugged out.

Unfortunately, Joe is a little too thugged out. His penchant for shooting verbal nine millies from the hip has led him down dark alleyways far too often for comfort. Most notably, when he said of Obama:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy… I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

As one blogger so aptly put it:

Our point, if we have one, is this: Joe Biden's comments are crazy ill in the worst way possible. Joe Biden says dumb shit on the regular, but this is above and beyond in several regards. But Joe Biden is a major American political figure with crazy foreign-policy intellect who likes to say insane things on the regular.

So this press remains open.

Kill: Isn’t it obvious?

It shouldn’t take Obama more than a cocaine heartbeat to decide that Hillary shouldn’t be a bullet away from the presidency.

Marry: Straight Talk-Era John McCain

He’s got a post-partisan record and oodles of experience. He served in the military. He’s adored by the national media, yet still falls short of the Guitar Hero level props that Obama gets. He’s conservative, but not too conservative… What more can you ask for?

For high hilarity, this is a move would be on par with Hillary offering Barack the nomination while he was trouncing her in the primaries. They’ll never expect it…

I’m being facetious, of course. I absolutely respect the man. He’s earned it. I think he’s a generally stand-up human being. Unfortunately, he also came out of the Vietnamese prison camps with his own particular and, I think, incorrect vision of how American foreign power should be used.

And he’s old. Boo.

As for who Obama should actually choose as his vice president…

(shrug)

Kathleen Sebelius?

I don’t have the foggiest.

In the end, elections can be lost, but not won on these decisions. That’s probably why America has such an uninspiring roster of VPs to begin with. I have to side with "Cactus Jack" Garner of Texas, F.D.R.'s Vice President, who infamously said that the vice presidency was,

"Not worth a pitcher of warm piss."

You can't marry all of them

Five fun facts about Spiro Agnew

• During his term as Richard Nixon's hatchet man, Spiro was fond of using alliterative labels, such "pusillanimous pussyfooters." His style inspired stylistic mimicry in speeches written by a young(er) Pat Buchanan, among others.


• Dave Barry, former humorist to the Miami Herald, has pointed out that the letters in Spiro's full name can be rearranged to spell "grow a penis"


• Agnew was an honoree of the Order of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association and its junior subsidiaries, The Sons of Pericles and The Daughters of Penelope


• Asked why he kept Agnew on as veep after the renewal of his presidency in 1972, Nixon replied that “no assassin in his right mind would kill me."


• As, allegedly, a way of "sidetracking" his vice president during the beginning of his second term, Nixon considered putting Agnew in charge of the American Revolution Bicentennial. Agnew declined the post, arguing that the Bicentennial was "a loser."

Audience?



Well, that was a no-brainer. Though I must admit to a personal weakness for Greco-Americans from Baltimore.

Enough nattering nabobs of negativism. Snowjobbers, this week's question is: who would you fuck/marry/kill in the 2008 democratic veepstakes?

Happy long weekend.

Um, is there a third option?

Up until this point, I thought it was impossible to love Obama too much. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I believed that extremism in the defense of Obama was no vice. But Sean "Diddy" Combs "Obama or Die" call is just a little bit too far. Jesse Taylor of Pandagon (best blogger alive, btw) has some useful advice on what to do if confronted by one of Obama's unofficial death squads:

• You can identify such squads by their captains, who will usually be found wearing thick fur coats and Timberland boots in the middle of summer.
• If you find yourself confronted by Puffy, just ask him about how he influenced Biggie Smalls’ seminal album Ready to Die. The intervening 45 minutes of boasting should allow you time to sneak your family and valuables out of your home, prepare a meal for the drive and Google map directions to wherever you’d like to go.
• Given the successes of O-Town, Danity Kane, Da Band and Day26, any death squad Puffy sends out should fall apart due to infighting and general lack of talent within a few days.

You'll be thanking me for this post by November.

Justify my thousand-year war

Internet savants attempt to make John McCain more exciting. Do they succeed? I'm not really sure...

It's getting blank in herre

I have no idea what the song of the summer is. Summer hasn't even started yet around here - today is the first sunny Pacific Northwest Friday of the year. I've been too old and creaky to do the necessary assiduous clubbing. Because, as Christopher pointed out, the song of the summer is ephemeral by definition. It's the song that the DJ plays five times in one night and the crowd complains because they need to hear it a sixth time. It's big and it's dumb and it has lyrics about staying fly til you die or getting ur freak on or talking about the young folks or standing under umberellas. If you hear it after September, it will make you homicidal. Most of all, like the fairly reprehensible song alluded to in the post title, it should make listeners want to take off all their clothes (typos in song titles aren't a strict necessity for songs of the summer, but they certainly don't hurt).

If that specific song is out there, I just haven't heard it yet. We can answer this question again in the fall, right Chris? The easy thing to do here is just pick the nearest rap song that has the drum machine set to "triumphant" ("Mr. Carter", come on down!) But instead I'm gonna pick a song about the necessity of the ephemeral moment. It probably won't be the song of the summer, but it really should be:



NB: the official video is here. Big ups to Jedd for introducing me to this song.

The singer earnestly intones a few of the best rock star cliches (models, Paris, heroin, etc.) then goes for the mission statement:

This is our decision to live fast and die young
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun
Yeah, it's overwhelming but what else can we do
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?

Indeed, what sort of asshole would do a thing like that? Especially during the summer? "Time to Pretend" may never be played six times in one night, and there's no sweaty rapper hypnotically imploring you to get naked echoed by a robotic chorus of females enthusiastically assenting. But I'm praying that by the end of this summer, right before the lights come during some big dumb wasted summer night, I'll put my arms around you (yes you, Gentle Reader) and we can drunkenly holler along to MGMT together. My ambitions may not be on the scale of say, Gregor Robertson's or Barack Obama's, but ambitions they are nonetheless. It's getting hot in here, Vancouver. It's time to take your clothes off.

Song of the Summer 2008: Osh Kosh rock

My vote is a deadlock tie.



"Out There on the Ice"
Cut Copy
Allow me to break it down: perhaps you're in da proverbial club, lights jabbing in your eyes from indiscernible sources, you're searching the thronging crowd for that special someone. Drugs and/or alcohol may be inhibiting or enhancing your search, and they're certainly fueling your paranoia: has she left without me? Am I too late? Does she know I actually care? Save me, blog-house banger!


"Kim and Jessie"
M83

Or, perhaps, you're in a sunny field with your friends and your new crush. You're all around the vicinity of sixteen, or something nearly as absolving. It's the middle of summer; school is as far gone as it is approaching. Your friends are giggling and whispering about the two of you, but you don't care. The light is so hazy through the trees that you can't see past her face. Time is standing still and junk. Or at least, it was, in retrospect. Remind me, shoegaze throwback!

Never mind, maybe you're just in American Apparel, desperately searching for the outfit that will bring back all the hotness of a past decade; the fuzzy celluloid Hughes-ian memories that you think you ought to have, despite being approximately four years old at the time. Right now, in the fleeting-yet-responsible part of our youth, we can elect to bliss out to the music of the adolescence we yearned for, crib-side in our Osh Koshes.

Kitsch notwithstanding, both tracks have definite bliss-moments, which I submit as a necessary condition for flagship summer songs. "Out There on the Ice" is at 3:29--acid synth gives way to staccato key pecks and a vocal line so earnestly overwrought that all misgivings over artifice and ambiance must be forgiven. 'Cause it's genre pop, and it's a tasty treat, if ephemeral. But so is the pacific northwestern summer. With similar consequences, "Kim and Jessie" peaks out at 4:03--bridge built, shimmering chorus revisited, Mr. Gonzales breaks out and dusts off a guitar line so steeped in the Reagan era that the listener must summarily remove their headphones and proceed to detention at Shermer High School. Every time this song is played out loud, Molly Ringwald loses a wrinkle.

Here's to making it through today by making up yesterday, one summer song at a time.

Song of the Summer 2008: The Seed 3.0

With a stripped-down, infectious guitar lick and a hilariously overblown hook sung by Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump, the Roots’ Birthday Girl” is so hot that it immediately begs the question Ben Mathis Lilley asked in his recent Slate piece, “Did The Roots just trick me into liking a lame emo band?” The answer, thank Anansi, is no. But ?uestlove’s self-admitted “easy pop song” does have all the qualities of a classic song of summer: It’s ridiculously catchy. It’s an attempt at crossover appeal. You can shake your two-step to it. And, perhaps most importantly, it comes on strong and fades away without a trace (in this case with an echoing Yo La Tengo-ish hum-along).

The funny thing is that, because of the Roots particular place in alt-hip pop culture, in creating this consummate piece of bubblegum summer fare they’ve managed to please just about no one. On his Status Ain’t Hood blog, Tom Breihan called “Birthday Girl” “quite possibly the worst thing the Roots have ever done,” comparing it unfavourably to Lil’ Wayne’s “Lollipop” On their own website, Okayplayer.com, first-year college lit pretentious fans so bemoaned the inclusion of the track that the Roots ultimately left it off the album.

So in defence of the fun-loving Roots of What They Do and the Seed 2.0, I nominate “Birthday Girl” as my song of the summer.



As an aside, the song has two videos. I prefer the handheld hipster party one above, but, with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, the other (apparently official) video hilariously features youthful pornstar Sasha Grey, whose Wikipedia page states that she originally considered using Anna Karina (the name of Godard’s ex-wife) as her porn name. Charming.

words to live by

hey kobe, how you like the way my ass taste? or in other words: testing, testing...

It takes three to make it outta sight!

First with a high wail: "It takes two to make a thing go right..."

Then the bass lick with a soprano shout: "... It takes two to make it outta sight."

Number 1 with a bullet. The song is this summer's hands-down winner for Sound of the Ghetto, with that deep-bottom bass line and those high-pitched screams on the quarter beat. Thick drum tack, def rhythm and some sweet-voiced yoette wailing out the same two-line lyric. East side, west side, and all around town, the corner boys of Baltimore are fighting and dying to the same soundtrack.

- Homicide, by David Simon

Corner boys mount up!!!

Nearly half the summer has gone by and it's as yet unclear what this year's "It Takes Two" is. In the absence of a Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock summer banger, in a barefaced attempt to deem themselves the arbiters of populist taste, a handful of internet organizations (Yahoo Answers, Popwatch, Redeye, etc.) have taken it upon themselves to name the song of the summer. What they (and everyone else) fail to realize is that they are not the arbiters of taste... We are.

Lest a Leona Lewis vs. Carrie Underwood poll take things out of our hands, I believe it's the Today's Snow Job team's responsibility, nay duty, to weigh in with their personal selections.

To this end, the music question of the week is: What's your personal song of the summer for 2008?

Only 2008 releases need apply.

Comments are welcome.