Monthly Archives: July 2009

She’s a big jerk

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 “It violated all common decency, all protocol,” says Ramras. “It just showed such disrespect.”

That’s Jay Ramras, a member of Alaska’s House of Representatives, talking about Palin’s tongue-lashing of an aide to the House speaker. The aide had told Palin it wasn’t the done thing for governors to leave the state when the legislative session still had a few days to go. Apparently Palin overreacted.
Mr. Ramras also has this thought, on Palin’s misfired nomination of a loudmouthed attorney general:

“He was voted down, and she blamed all of us,” says Ramras. “She’s perfected victim psychology.”

The quotes are from a piece in the New Republic by Suzy Khimm about Palin’s activities as governor since ’08. These activities appear to have been few but frenzied:

… upon returning to Juneau last fall, “she managed to alienate most of the 60 members of [the Alaska] House and Senate,” says Larry Persily, an aide to state Republican Representative Mike Hawker. “It wasn’t a matter of burning bridges–she blew them up.” 

Mr. Persily “spent two years working in the Alaska governor’s Washington office,” the article says. I guess that mean he was working for Sarah Palin, though the wording’s bit unclear; if he was, he must have come back to Alaska at the start of ’09. At any rate, he’s Republican and so is every politician and aide mentioned in this post. Judging by Ms. Khimm’s article, I’d say Republicans who take part in the Alaskan legislative process really enjoy talking about Sarah Palin. 
More from Mr. Persily: 

“We couldn’t get any decisions out of the governor,” says Persily … “It had nothing to do with critics harping at her–it was a lack of attention to governing.”

Rather than hash things out with lawmakers, Palin repeatedly rebuffed their engagement efforts, most notably canceling a key April meeting with legislators. When she changed her mind at the last minute, the frustrated legislators declined to meet with her. Palin issued a press release blaming them for the meeting’s failure, prompting both the Senate president and the Republican House speaker to denounce her claims as completely false. “You don’t see that often–the Senate president calling the governor a liar,” says Persily. 

You don’t! Palin coped with the situation, as mentioned above, by chewing out the speaker’s aide. She showed up at the aide’s office to do so, which may have been the only time the speaker and his team ever got sight of her. All right, that’s hyperbole. But:   

When it came to legislative matters of any substance, “we got very little information from the state,” says Republican House Speaker Mike Chenault. “All I wanted was to know what her response was…. There were many times we couldn’t get a clear answer.” 

One complaint about the article. Like the lousy Purdum article in Vanity Fair, it goes light on Palin’s attorney general fiasco. We’re told she nominated the guy to please the NRA and national Republicans nationwide, and that she left him out to dry when the going got tough — I believe that’s more than Purdum offered. But we’re given only a gesture of an explanation as to why Alaska found it so tough to swallow an attorney general who says mean things about gays. Maybe I just need someone to underline for me that the situation regarding gay respect/tolerance in Alaska is not what I imagine it to be.
 

Understanding modern America

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Being racist against blacks is such a bad thing that actually it can never exist. Nobody could really be that bad. My hatred for white racism is shown by my resolute understanding that it never occurs.

[ Notes for the dumb: Yes, the above is irony. ]

White evangelicals, you disappoint me

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The Washington Post reports on its new poll. You know who “she” is:


While she is still widely popular among those in her party, she has lost ground among Republicans generally and among the white evangelicals who are so critical in the early presidential primaries.

…

Among white evangelicals, Huckabee outpaces Palin and the others by better than 2 to 1.

Actually I like Huck, so I shouldn’t say I’m disappointed. He’s a weathervane, and on various key issues of modern life I think he’s a nutter. But he’s smart and he ran a full-size state for quite a while in a way that is generally accounted competent. Also, he’s got charm and he really can come out with a good speech, whereas Palin gets graded on an outrageous curve. God, I hate her voice!

On the other hand, as a product of secular America I’m used to thinking of evangelicals as people who will believe anything. It turns out some of them have their limits. Maybe I knew that intellectually, but factoring in actual evidence still makes my ideas twitch. 

57 percent of Americans say she does not understand complex issues, while 37 percent think she does, a nine-percentage-point drop from a poll conducted in September just before her debate with now-Vice President Biden.


I wonder what the figure was for right after the debate? Biden certainly did well in the “who won” results, but people were talking about how much better Palin did than anyone had expected (since expectations had been set by her Gibson/Couric interviews).


Like most people, I think, I believe that her relatively good reviews for the debate were all about her demeanor — viewers were relieved and surprised when she got thru complete sentences and didn’t try to hide under the podium. But a post-debate “understands complex issues” number would be helpful for verifying that impression. 

GOP women are more apt than GOP men to see Palin as a strong leader 


Yeah, those GOP men. How do you make it possible for them to see thru an ignorant, posturing jackass? Give the jackass breasts instead of a penis.

Tiny Titans

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Tiny Titans #17
Baltazar/Franco

Tiny Titans is analogous in a lot of ways to Mini-marvels. Big-headed child versions of your favorite heroes involved in comedic adventures, with continuity references sprinkled about in just the right amount to entertain hard-core geeks without alienating everyone else. It’s such a winning formula you wonder why Marvel and DC haven’t remade their entire line over in its image. (I’d sure like to see it applied to 100 Bullets, for example.)

Given the similarities in concept and execution, though, it’s impressive how different the books actually are in practice. In the art, for example, Chris Giarrusso on Mini-Marvels is relatively sick — it looks like it’s influenced by newspaper strips, maybe. The drawings are imaginative (the tiny hands on venom are a favorite bit, for example) but not especially stylish or distinctive.

Art Baltazar’s drawings for Tiny Titans, on the other hand, are really kindergardeny (ahem); theyr’e messier with thicker lines and less background detail — more expressive. I think I prefer them more to look at; in this sequence, for instance, I like the way Mxyzptlk resolves from out of the squiggles; it’s sort of like you’re watching him being drawn.

tiny titans

For the story, though, I definitely prefer Mini-Marvels. It’s probably partially because it seems pitched at slightly older kids…but it’s also because the writers seem to feel able to do more. There’s lots of nutty verbal humor and weird gross out gags (Wolverine cuts up a piece of French bread with his claws and everyone’s horrified because he just used the claws to hack up zombies); and the continuity jokes are bizarre and hilarious (Galactus being the giant at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, for example.) The things just chock full of side gags and glancing nonsense and silly unexpected patter. The gag below, for example, is a damn fine Peanuts riff:

mini-marvel

(uck; apologies for the colors on both of these. My scanning technology is limited.)

Tiny Titans on the other hand is much more sedate…and dare I say, boring. No gross out humor, no verbal sparring; just one mildly silly situation per story. Battle for the Cow, in which the cow has Batman’s cowl, is entertaining, and the cow is cute…and it’s fun reading the “Mooo! Crash! Mooo!” as the cow beats up Beast Boy. But that all takes four pages…and the denoument is totally squandered (starfire just wanders in and rescues the cowl…I guess because she’s a girl? It’s definitely got that sitcom trope where the girls are more competent.)

Again, it’s probably aimed at a younger demographic…but Mo Willems does great verbal rhythms and well-timed slapstick and even some absurdist nonsense, and he’s aimed at even younger kids. I think the writing is just mediocre, is the conclusion. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it get be loads worse, and I’d rather read this than the Berenstein Bears, or Thomas the Tank Engine books…or than loads of stuff. But I wouldn’t seek it out on my own…whereas, if another Mini-Marvels collection is published, I want it.