The Metropolist

The Week We Learned That New York Doesn't Need a Governor

George Pataki went into the hospital for an appendectomy ten days ago. His spokespeople practically rushed out of the hospital room to brief the press in the middle of the night, a forthcoming show that seemed aimed at distancing them from the secrecy that shrouded the Vice President's own hospital visit (granted, Cheney was on the other side of the hospital bed).

When NY1 took a poll asking whether the Governor should take a few days to recover, I found myself agreeing with the majority: our man in Albany should take a few days out of Albany. It's surgery...take the weekend to recover.

That was 10 days ago.

New hospitals, additional surgery, and Pataki is still in a bathrobe. His handlers' directness faded first behind the insistence that the "complications" were "routine," and their endless declarations that "the Governor is resting comfortably" have become a little shrill.

NY1 has daily shown a clip of Pataki working from his bedside. The same clip...again and again. The sort of clip a Soviet leader would have used to prove a Minister hadn't fallen out of favor. Or that some goofballs would use to prove their Weekend at Bernie's was going just fine.

I hope Pataki is resting comfortably and on his way out of recovery soon. While we may not gain full disclosure of the medical complications, we did make another discovery this week: New York may not need a Governor after all.

Ten days with our state executive, and nothing has come up that's demanded his attention. Bloomberg has been tackling state education funding on his own. Our Senators took lead on the ports. Nobody seemed bothered that the lame duck Governor was, well, lame.

Maybe New York doesn't require a Governor...or, more likely, it just proves what we've been saying for awhile: New York just doesn't need George Pataki.

Hybrid: Bizarrity or Bigotry

Bush is great at taking on problems that don't exist. Enriched uranium...the crisis in Social Security...his State of the Union Addresses are expert escapades in made-believe. So this year's declaration of war against human-animal hybrid cloning was just one more in that tradition.

Is he truly paranoid about such "manimals"? Or has he gone off the deep-end?

Or...is it just another code sent to the religious ultra-right?

When Santorum speaks out against gay lifestyles he talks of beastiality. When Cornyn vilified homosexuality, he compared it to having sex with a box turtle.

...and now, Bush speaks about the unnaturalness of merging human and animal.

Maybe I'm the paranoid one now...but I also thought W. was just off-message when he talked about the Dred Scott decision in the '04 debates. Turns out he was telling the religious right that he was anti-choice.

They speak a code that I don't understand. Is Bush gay-bashing in a way that sounds like science fiction?

America's "Bizarre Fascination"

Laughing Liberally plays Town Hall on Saturday night, taking our political comedy project of laughter from the left to a whole new scale.

This has been cause for some attention, from a Reuters piece picked up by Drudge to radio bits on WNYC and Joey Reynolds. But my favorite description has to be from flavorpill.com:

"Sort of like a live, standup version of The Daily Show, Laughing Liberally plays to Americans' bizarre fascination with ridiculing, but not actually participating in, politics."

Of course, our view is that smart comedy can be an entertaining and effective vehicle to communicate liberal values...which is participating in politics. At least, that's the end goal.

In the meantime, I just enjoy the phrase "bizarre fascination"...and any comparison to The Daily Show is welcome.