As if life isn't depressing enough for Hillary Clinton right now, when everyone from the president elect on down seems to be giving her the cold shoulder, now the former Democratic presidential candidate has to contend with the warm, unfortunate embrace of Sarah Palin. Palin said in part two of Greta Van Susteren's interminable interview that Clinton broke the glass ceiling for her Republican vice presidential run. Then she remembered that Hillary lost, so she amended her statement to say Clinton just bloodied her head against the glass ceiling, apparently so a social conservative whose looks earned her outsized press attention could complain about the media's "double standard."
Glamour magazine's annual "Women of the Year" awards took place last night at Carnegie Hall. Honorees like Hillary Clinton, Nicole Kidman, and Tyra Banks were joined by the likes of Debra Messing, Fergie, Natalie Portman, Tinsley Mortimer, America Ferrera, Jane Krakowski, Salman Rushdie, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Taylor Swift. Click through for a few photos of the event.
Today, Newsweek posted the final chapter of their Special Election Project, the annual How He Did It book they've published for each presidential campaign since 1984 (when the answer was much easier: he just ran against Walter Mondale). The reporters assigned to the special project are embargoed from those publishing in the regular magazine, so they get jucier anecdotes, more hilarious quotes, and revealing stories, all of which are then packaged and in such a way as to make the winning campaign look like a well-oiled machine and the losing campaign look like a parade of idiots. Did you read the whole thing? We did! We'll share with you the funniest bits, the important takeaway, and the already solidifying conventional wisdom. In short, this is the story of the 2008 campaign: the Hillary Clinton campaign was a stressful psychodrama, the Obama campaign was an intellectual exercise, and the McCain campaign was a ragtag bunch of misfits who stumbled into an insane family nightmare from Twin Peaks, Alaska. Let's begin with Hillary and co. Hillary The Clinton campaign was beset by the vicious infighting among assholes, basically. The biggest and dumbest asshole was chief pollster/strategist Mark Penn!
Though Hillary Clinton was once seen as the inevitable pick in this year's presidential election, the first stain on her pantsuit may have come as early as February 2007, when gay mafia don/beach hog David Geffen broke ranks with the Clintons to endorse Barack Obama. "I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together," Geffen told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd then, as his second assistant provided a helpful yes-man chorus of "Oh snap!" and "No she did not just say that!" Now, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein has caught up with Geffen to get his thoughts on Obama's once-unlikely victory, and Geffen dropped this tidbit about his own kingmaking ability:
A while back, Hillary Clinton supporter Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild announced her support of John McCain. De Rothschild—whose title and name, keep in mind, is Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild—said Barack Obama was too elitist. Then, the lifelong Democrat wrote a column about how Obama's plan to raise the top marginal tax rate 4% was American Dream-destroying Communazism. So, as an idiot with no understanding of policy or ideology beyond identity politics, it's understandable that de Rothschild is on the TV defending fellow idiot Sarah Palin. John McCain's hail mary attempt to woo women voters by selecting a disastrously unqualified and wrongheaded running mate with an all-important vagina worked on precisely one woman, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild.
Obama beat them, and didn't need them to win. The punditariat clamored for Obama to beg Bill for his support, they trashed Bill for failing to deliver it lustily enough, and they fretted over whether Obama would underperform in the areas in which Hillary became an extremely unlikely working class hero. Then Obama won, handily, with barely any help from Bill and Hil, which was Bill's greatest fear, because Obama doesn't look to his presidency as a model for success, he looks to Reagan. The Clinton era: over. It'll barely register in the history books.We feel bad saying it, actually, because Bill is an incredibly gifted and skilled politician (we've seen him work a room, he's superhuman) and he meant well but his presidency, while on the whole a slight success, was kind of a mess. The economy was stewarded well and foreign policy was mostly responsible. But it also set up the Republican Revolution and devolved into a surreal farce that took up the entirety of 1998 and drove everyone mad and exacerbated the culture wars and led right to eight years of Bush, sort of. And for a while, it looked like Clinton's greatest legacy would be his political acumen and his new and improved centrist DLC, the organization that would provide the keys to the next Democratic victory. Well. In 2000 they got out-lawyered in Florida, in 2004 they couldn't eke out a slim victory from a divided elctorate, in the in 2008 primaries Hillary got beat, handily, by a charismatic nobody with a slim record. Come the general election, Obama went with a modified version of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, expanding the map instead of focusing on two or three battlegrounds at any cost. He didn't reach out to Bill in any real way and didn't bitch when Bill didn't reach out to him. There's probably not room for Bill or Hillary in his cabinet, as much as a Bill Clinton Supreme Court nomination would be hilarious. And this means, basically, that the Clinton era has ended. He shoved the party to the right, yes, but it remains to be seen how long that rightward shift will last in a nation that might be trending left, economically at least. It's kinda sad, really, but Bill does still have his private jets full of models. All Hillary gets is her stupid Senate seat she didn't even want.
The list of election '08 losers is a long one: There's John McCain, of course, who will die angry and bitter, notwithstanding his rather gracious concession speech last night. Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, will probably have trouble finding a Little League team to advise, unless he manages to redeem himself somehow. From Republicans on the Hill to GOP strategists to snowmobile and hunting enthusiasts, plenty of people will feel the cold wind of electoral defeat for a long time to come. After the jump, a roundup of New York City's nine biggest losers.
It's over! It's all over! Tomorrow the campaign will be done! No more caring about what crazy things John McCain and his bitchy friend said on the news, no more feeling bad for him despite yourself, no more checking 538 (sorry Nate Silver, you're obsolete now!), no more forwarded YouTube clips from your mom, or your coworker, or some lunatic internet person. Boy, if we were assholes, we'd write something about how this was "the YouTube election." But instead we will just post the YouTubes themselves, from 2004 through the never-ending primaries, through the finally ending general election. All your favorites are here! Come pal around with crying Hillary the Senator, stare deep into Mike Gravel's eyes, and don't look your opponent in the eyes, after the jump. Back in 2004, this guy named Barack Obama gave a really really good speech at the Democratic National Convention. Watch it again, if you haven't lately, because it's really good. Can you believe we're gonna elect this guy?
When Diddy promoted "Vote or Die" in 2004, there were rumors that he didn't even bother to go to the polls himself. Guess there won't be a question this time around: He posed for photographers outside his local polling station in Midtown this morning. Click through for photos of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton performing their civic duty.
Fashion star Zac Posen celebrates his 28th birthday today. Actor Kevin Kline is 61. Law & Order's B.D. Wong is 48. R&B singer Monica is turning 28. Shenae Grimes of 90210 is 19. Your favorite bisexual MTV personality, Tila Tequila, is 27. And Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich celebrates his 42nd birthday today. Weekend birthdays after the jump.
There's a big dinner in New York tomorrow in honor of Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, CBS News' Katie Couric and various other smug media elitists will be there, along with Sen. Hillary Clinton. The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees have been asked to give 15-minute speeches, but only one has requested an a teleprompter to keep him from just repeating "Who is the REAL Barack Obama, my friends" over and over for the entire speech. Organizers are confused, the Post reports, because they've never met a politician who couldn't give a 15-minute address without elaborate technological aids, and in fact no one has asked for a teleprompter for this event, ever, but really McCain just knows he'll be tired out from personally insulting and snubbing Barack Obama in a variety of innovative new ways at tonight's debate.
♦ Britney Spears went to a Bronx school yesterday to visit some children. Unfortunately, the school was closed for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, so her handlers had to rustle up a bunch of other kids for the photo op. [OK!]
♦ Adnan Ghalib is backtracking on his Britney sex tape story. He now says there never was one to begin with. [MSNBC]
♦ Larry Flynt says his company has already shot a new porn movie starring a Sarah Palin look-alike, although he's not revealing the title yet. [R&M]
♦ Are Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady getting married? [Chicago Sun-Times]
♦ The woman who spotted Heather Locklear's car swerving and dialed 911 was former Us Weekly staffer Jill Ishkanian, who now runs a paparazzi photo agency of her own. [MSNBC]
Page Six thinks it has figured out why Bill Clinton gave such a tepid endorsement of Barack Obama on The View and David Letterman last week. Not that anyone was really scratching their heads, befuddled, as to why the ex-president couldn't get past his wife's bitter loss of the Democratic primary to Obama. But Page Six gets specific: Obama supposedly refused to promise Hillary Clinton a Supreme Court nomination as she demanded, so Bill exacted revenge. Clinton on the high court is not exactly a new idea. And her people deny the new version of the rumor. The timing of the gossip is interesting, though. As the Obama ticket battles it out with Sarah Palin, star of Thursday primetime TV, for former Clinton supporters, painting Hillary as shrill and demanding makes Obama look a bit more sympathetic. And celebrity gossip sheets may be nearly as good a way to reach Hillary Democrats as The View.
After giving short shrift to Barack Obama on two major broadcast TV shows Tuesday, Bill Clinton could hardly mention the Democratic presidential candidate's name enough on the basic cable Daily Show Wednesday. Perhaps comedian Chris Rock's well-aimed barbs in Clinton's wake on Late Show With David Letterman got through to the ex-president. But when host Jon Stewart brought up the Letterman incident, Clinton said Rock and other critics miss the point.
As in his appearance on the View, Bill Clinton offered the most tepid support possible for Barack Obama's presidential ticket on David Letterman's Late Show last night. After repeatedly invoking his vanquished wife Hillary, Clinton said the typical American voter will recall John McCain's heroic torture in a Vietnamese prison camp before deciding to "go the other way" and vote for... whoever that other candidate for president might be. In an inspired feat of booking, Letterman had comedian Chris Rock lined up to follow Clinton and, uh, remind him who won the primary. Video after the jump.
Saturday Night Live has a long, storied history of political satire, a reputation that was only burnished after this past Saturday's well-received Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit. The venerable comedy institution has been known to move the cultural dial with some of its depictions, whether it was the spring sketch that famously declared the media to be "in the tank" for Barack Obama or its 2000 impersonation of Al Gore as a "lockbox"-brandishing scold. Still, we're a bit puzzled by some of the quotes from an event held Monday at the Museum of the Moving Image, where Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, and Lorne Michaels met to discuss their satirical process:
While the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin cold opening attracted some of Saturday Night Live's best notices in years (and best ratings, too — it was the highest-rated season premiere since the 2001 opener following the 9/11 attacks), nothing else that followed had quite the same water cooler buzz. However, if the show had been able to stick to its original plan, there would have been at least one other moment that would have had people talking: a Barack Obama cameo. Though the presidential candidate was forced to cancel due to Hurricane Ike, Michaels reveals to the Washington Post exactly how he would have been used (and what other surprise celebrities got involved as a result):
Rejoice, interwebs! After weeks of intense lobbying, Tina Fey finally gave America what it so loudly demanded: a full-fledged, mercilessly accurate Sarah Palin impression on last night's season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Lipstick jokes? Check. Appalling lack of knowledge about the Bush Doctrine? Check. Akaskan accent by way of Fargo's Marge Gunderson? Check, mate, you betcha. And while there was no sign of Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama (and Barack Obama had to withdraw from his cameo in the wake of devastation from Hurricane Ike), Amy Poehler proved an invaluable scene partner as a seething, sarcastic Hillary Clinton. Enjoy this sketch while you can, for if Sarah Palin ascends to the White House, both performers will be executed for treason. The video, after the jump:Click to view
