In a move oddly prescient of the HuffPo's model—soliciting mundane content from famous names to make ya look—Esquire is posting celeb and political Thanksgiving recipes from its 1984 issue—Walter Mondale, Nancy Reagan, William Styron, et al. Mmm, tastes like morning in America and trickle-down economics! It raises so many questions: Was Bill Blass being serious with his homoerotic recipe for "Hot Giant Pecans"? Wait, Ted Turner's Applesauce Cake? Was hardline conservative William F. Buckley's recipe for "Thanksgiving Pheasant with Chestnut Cornbread Stuffing" flavored with the blood of the innocent? As it turns out, it's currant jelly:

President Bush basically checked out six months ago, leaving the country rudderless and lost. We were distracted from this by a diverting election for a while, but now that's over. As President-elect Obama painfully explained in his first post-election press conference, we only get one president at a time. Except right now we get none! So maybe Obama should use today's White House transition meeting to figure out how to seize power, maybe? A coup, anyone? What else are they gonna do with the afternoon? Usually White House transition meetings are taken up with impressing upon the successor the awesome task ahead of him, but Obama probably understands that better than Bush does. So today Bush will probably just share some awesome White House secrets. The gold standard of terrible presidential transitions? The 1933 handover from Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt. Back then, the new president didn't take office until March, so there were four months of lame duck Hoover trying to fix the economy, and the banking crisis, while FDR just passive-aggressively let him fuck things up and promised to undo everything Hoover did, once in office.

Times columnist Maureen Dowd spent a decent chunk of this campaign trying to paint Barack Obama as another effete faggy Democratic wuss, as she did to John Kerry and Al Gore, just because, hey, why not. OBambi was all her, remember? Also she called him a "butterfly." Now, today, she's thrilled Obama won, and certain he'll restore dignity and grandeur to Washington and the White House. Obama "has the chance to make the White House pristine again." Yes, because Washington DC and the White House were certainly pristine before all this, right? Dowd explains how rough the last 16 years have been:

"Maybe you remember little Bobby Gibbs," a story in the Villager of Auburn, Alabama begins. "He and his brother John were born here, he went all the way through Auburn city schools, and he graduated from Auburn High in 1989." Now little Bobby Gibbs is President-elect Barack Obama's new press secretary! And to think, just a couple years ago he was persona non grata at the DNC and the netroots wing of the Democratic Party.Gibbs began his flack career on Capitol Hill, working in the press offices of 10 Congressmen and eventually graduating to the nice gig of press secretary to John Kerry as he began his presidential campaign. That didn't last long, and soon Gibbs found a role at with Americans for Job, Health Care, and Progressive Values, a 527 group. That happy, friendly, shiny-sounding group was, of course, nothing but a shop for vicious smears against upstate Democratic candidate Howard Dean, who, in 2004, was annoying the Democratic Establishment by babbling about The War and other liberal nonsense.

Gibbs, the group's spokesman defended even the grossest of their anti-Dean attacks, including an ad that just featured a photo of Osama bin Laden and a narrator saying Dean was unqualified. Ha! Democrats!

Gibbs continued his odd habit of borrowing vile right-wing attack lines when it suited him years later as Barack Obama's media guru. Responding to the Clinton campaign's meltdown over David Geffen's donation to Obama (coupled with an attack on Bill Clinton's womanizing), Gibbs dusted off the old "sold the Lincoln Bedroom" line, becoming the only person besides Rush Limbaugh in a decade to remember or care about that story.
Now, of course, everyone has fallen in line, because Gibbs was really, really good on TV. But we get the feeling he's even better suited for the miserable position of White House Press Secretary than liberals might hope. It truly will be a fun four years, guys!

Oh no, Keith Olbermann, The Left's Old Favorite Cable Person, is attacking Campbell Brown, The Lady Who Yelled At Tucker Bounds! They share a timeslot on competing networks so it was certain to happen. Clip below. Campbell is a fine interviewer who does admirably call bullshit when she hears it, but her show's self-congratulatory "keeping them honest" segments still invariably boil down to "both sides stretching the truth, as usual, what are you gonna go?" meaninglessness. And hey, she got some history wrong! In attempting to explain why a single party controlling the legislature and the White House is bad, a terribly annoying bugaboo repeated only by media people and minority parties and not so feared by voters who vote for single party rule, Campbell explained that the last time this happened was in the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter. Hah. That's not true! Nor was it in the 90s, with Bill Clinton. It was, as Keith explains, in the 2000s, with the current President, Mr. Bush. Keith doesn't explain that Campbell's point about all of those situations being disasters is actually borne out by the evidence, but whatever. Unified Democratic government also brought us Vietnam and Civil Rights, for those keeping score at home. Mixed bag, right? Click to view

How did fameballs get famous in 18th-century Britain? They died! Now that we have the Internet, you don't have to wait for your own death to get written up in the papers—you can publish all your career-killing overshares yourself. But back then, "research by the University of Warwick shows [that] death gave birth to the modern cult of celebrity, as the sudden rise in the popularity of obituaries of unusual people in the 1700s provided people with the... equivalent of a celebrity gossip magazine," says Eureka Alert. It was often the eccentrics "from all walks of life" that people loved to read about, such as a man who would "hire himself out to impersonate a doctor and tell fortunes in a fur cap, a large white beard and a worn damask night gown." Hm, what sort of eccentrics would we write about today in those obits? Perhaps a girl from the Midwest who came to the big city, and whose quest for any sort of fame involved buying 180 candy bars, removing the wrappers, and stitching them together to make an eye-catching outfit:

The Illinois Congresssman still hasn't accepted Barack Obama's offer to be his Chief of Staff, but it seems like he probably will. Would you like to learn more about Rahm Emanuel? You could start with this classic story:

In 1964, a group of black and white civil rights protesters attempted to integrate the pool of the Monson Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. The hotel's owner, James Brock, responded by dumping acid into the pool. That was considered reasonable. This year, the Obama campaign opened a field office in St. Augustine, the most organized effort ever by a Democratic presidential campaign to win the Republican county surrounding my hometown. Obama ended up winning Florida and the entire country, a far stronger rebuke to the James Brocks of America than Martin Luther King Jr. was ever able to deliver. Jesse Jackson, who was there when King got shot, cried hardest of all last night. The old civil rights warriors feel this election more deeply than anyone else. The irony is that the civil rights movement never could have gotten to this day itself. Before this Obama election gets too grounded in our national psyche, let's go ahead and banish the hopeful assertion that this marks the beginning of a "Post-racial" society. As has been pointed out by everyone from Tavis Smiley to TAN, we're not post-anything. Race is just as strong of a psychological factor as it ever was. Our socialization has changed, and our expectations have been moderated, but America is far, far away from being a place where people "don't see" race.

We all know that print is dead and so forth but, darn it, nobody can deny that today is a great day to be a newspaper. Everybody wants a souvenir of Obama's victory, and you know what makes a great souvenir? That's right, a newspaper. This is a photo of a line outside the NYT building on 40th Street of people waiting—for a newspaper! Incredible. Reports of news stands from Brooklyn to Manhattan actually selling out are flooding into Gawker HQ!:

Everyone wanted to get out last night! Whether you were in a city where you could roam the streets, or in a small-town bar, or simply at a friend's house, it was a bad time to be alone in your apartment. It was one of those rare moments where people took to the streets in celebration. It's a primal, biological urge: spontaneous gatherings are inspired when we lose the desire to be an individual and are inexplicably driven to be part of the herd.Past examples? Well, September 12th in New York City. While people weren't sure what they wanted to do or what to think, the one thing they knew for sure was that they wanted to be around others. (Remember those trend pieces about post-9/11 sex and couples reuniting?) The Blackout of 2003 was an awesome confluence as well. It took power out all the way west to Detroit, where I remember it as one of the few moments where the highly segregated black and white populations dropped their guard for two days and actually talked to each other without suspicion, offering clean water and the like. Of course, there was also 1945's V-J Day and its iconic Times Square celebration:

Yes, Barack Obama promised his children a new puppy. The president elect also thanked his supporters and praised opponent John McCain as someone who has "endured sacrifices for America most of us could not begin to imagine." But he also seized upon his historic moment to highlight the changes that have swept America over more than two centuries, and to call, in a moment that recalled both the pageantry and message of John F. Kennedy before him, for a spirit of unified sacrifice in the populace.

Before the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, when newspapers were read by everybody, the morning-after headers had much more urgency. (Hopefully we won't have another "Dewey Defeats Truman" debacle, though.) Newseum has a slideshow of post-election newspaper front pages. (Tomorrow's heads should read, "As you already read on the Internet/saw on TV, so-and-so won.) But hey, remember that great Chester County Times headline after Abraham Lincoln was elected? It was a "clean sweep!"

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?

Tonight, Barack Obama will appear on your television screen for 30 minutes in order to convince you to vote for him next week. He'll be on CBS, NBC, Univision, Fox, MSNBC, and BET. (But not ABC! Tune in for Pushing Daisies!) Obama's half-hour TV buy tonight has some historical precedent, of course; Ross Perot did it, and look where it got him! But for a good look at how far the Democrats have come, let's all go back to 1983, when the Democratic National Committee hosted, yes, a telethon. It, uh, it didn't go so well. In fact it went unbelievably, comically awry. As the 1980s began, the Republicans introduced and perfected their massive, modern fundraising apparatus, utilizing direct mail and donor targeting to build a database of party supporters willing to shell out cash whenever and wherever it was needed. In 1980, the GOP raised millions more from hundreds of thousands more than the Dems could manage. And they kicked the Democrats' asses. So, heading into the 1984 elections, the Democrats knew they needed a lot of cash to compete. The GOP had more than a million active donors, the Dems had almost 300,000. So the Democratic National Committee somehow decided that a star-studded telethon on NBC would solve the problem. They spent $5 million on the program, hoping to raise an initial $10 million over 18 hours on Memorial Day weekend. And it was a star-studded affair! As the AP reported:

Did you wonder who your favorite Slate contributor is voting for? Good news: now you know! Michael Kinsley instituted the quadrennial endorsement list in 2000—go back and read how wrong all the Bush people were!—and it's been a beloved feature ever since, the two more times they've done it, because everyone cares how a Slate copy-editor is voting (spoiler alert: for Obama). There is one McCain vote, a half-hearted endorsement from the conservative editor and Slate lady-blog contributor Rachael Larimore. But there are fewer third-party votes and abstentions than in either of the two previous iterations of the feature, even in divided anyone-but-Bush 2004. Because, duh, people like Obama more than Kerry. But one man, press critic Jack Shafer, remains relentlessly devoted to his utterly wrong-headed principles. Shafer, once again, is voting for the Libertarians! Shafer in 2000:

Months ago, Michelle Obama was considered a scary liability. She was an aggrieved angry Black Woman, and America, oddly, is terrified of black women. The original code was "sarcastic." It meant castrating. Threatening! (Well, actually it just meant "sarcastic," but the people who parse these sorts of things read into it all their own weird baggage.) And here she is, a couple months later, our probable next First Lady, on Jay Leno, talking about her all-J. Crew outfit in a subtle (but not sarcastic!) dig at Ms. Genuine Real American herself, Sarah Palin. How did she manage the image reversal? Just kinda by being a slightly nicer version of herself! We all remember in February, when Michelle Obama accidentally revealed that she wasn't very proud of America. This led Mickey Kaus to lead the Charge of the Idiotic Racially Charged Language Brigade, declaring that Michelle's "default position is set to 'Aggrieved'" and further claiming, once again, that she belittled and castrated her weak husband by occasionally joking about him snoring. (Seriously, these people are insane.) But the "proud" remark cemented an early reputation for being a liability to the campaign, and led to Michelle facing some of the weirdest and most damning whisper campaigns of the election. She is on tape ranting about "whitey." She called up an imaginary African news agency to deliver an utterly insane rant about her many racist enemies. And, you know, she eats Iranian caviar. But gradually, the media discovered that voters liked Michelle Obama. Well-meant concerns about how threatening and scary she was were unfounded—she was comfortable on The View, on Ellen, even on The Daily Show. And while she's being careful with her words on these shows, barely talking politics at all, and acting, for lack of a better word, safe, there's not really any evidence that she's ever been a dangerous aggressive fire-breathing radical. (Angela Davis and Sistah Souljah are apparently the only Black Women most pundits know.) And so, like the "Obama is a Socialist Radical 1960s Terrorist" smear fails because it just doesn't square with the reality of his demeanor, words, and actions, the "Michelle Obama is an Angry Black Woman" story doesn't really line up with her good-natured demeanor, obvious loving relationship with her husband, and devotion to her amazingly adorable kids. Now, Michelle Obama is safe enough to pal around with Leno, the blandest man on TV, and safe enough to address swing states. Progress! New to Campaigning, but No Longer a Novice [NYT] Related Reading: Who Are Black People, And Why Are They So Angry? Terror At Michelle Obama Doing "God Knows What" In the White House

[Update: Now with a minor correction, and also an awesome Ted Stevens statement!] Ted Stevens is guilty of violating ethics laws, and not understanding how the internet works. Hah, just kidding, it's just the fraud stuff. His insane jury, made up of Alaskans DC residents [deny them congressional representation and see what happens, Senators] who kept having violent outbursts, found Stevens guilty of seven charges of corruption. He doesn't have to step down from the Senate, of course, and he's still running for reelection next week. He has said he will not step down. Which is awesome. What with the presidential election going on, we've barely had time for prominent congressional Republicans to face embarrassingly public trials and indictments, like in 2006! In 2006, America watched in glee as Republican congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Tom DeLay all faced indictments on the eve of the midterm elections. Resignations and bitter GOP infighting soon followed! Ney refused to resign until days before the election! Oh, then Florida congressman Mark Foley, uh, had some sort of scandal involving sexy, sexy underaged male pages. Also there was this Jack Abramoff guy! It was an exciting time, sort of. Now we are so busy with Barack Obama being a socialist and John McCain being old that Ted Stevens getting kicked out of the Senate, finally, after 200 years, seems like some happy afterthought. So. Corrupt Alaska Republican fucks his own party and loses an election. Who knew Alaska would matter, this year?

There is a spectre haunting the Conservative commentariat—the spectre of socialism! Barack Obama just might be the President, and should that happen, he will immediately redistribute all the wealth and hand over control of the means of production to the workers. Also the government will round up whitey and send him to reeducation camps run by the creepy YouTube singing children! We know all of this is true because Obama told a pretend plumber that he would "spread" the man's pretend "wealth around." Also he proposes some sort of "progressive income tax" policy and he said the words "redistribution of wealth" once on public radio. "Public" is code for Communist! This is seriously the dumbest attack yet in a season of incredibly dumb attacks. Over the summer, the McCain campaign presented Barack Obama as "a celebrity," a neat, slightly po-mo attack on Obama's popularity. It was, at least, an argument with some resonance in our tabloid-y popular culture. It didn't destroy Obama's brand, but it hurt it. But the desperate and confused McCain campaign never again came up with a coherent attack line on Obama that pleased anyone but the truest of believers. And that is how we got to "palling around with terrorists," a neat line that manages to incorporate 9/11 dread of four years ago and, more importantly, the culture wars of the 1960s, which make guest appearances in every American election. But this year, of course, no one gives a shit about the 1960s, at all. For the first time since the '60s ended, in 1972! So the McCain camp has switched to an attack last used effectively in the 1920s. As Hendrik Hertzberg explains:

So the story of Sarah Palin spending $150,000 on clothes? Brother, it gets better. See, the RNC is required by law to list who exactly bought all the fancy clothes. And all the Sarah Palin fancy purchases—at Barney's, Bloomingdale's, and Saks Fifth Avenue—were made by one guy: Jeff Larson. Jeff Larson is one of the men behind FLS Connect, a Republican robocalling firm! They're famous this cycle for terrible robocalls about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. And back in 2000, they made their name with robocalls smearing John McCain. It's funny because John McCain sold his soul and all it got him was a fancy new wardrobe for Sarah Palin. [Atlantic]

Boy another stunt from the Obama campaign, it makes us sick. The radical Democratic candidate is leaving the campaign trail for "more than 36 hours" to head over to exotic, foreign "Hawaii" to look after his 85-year-old grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who is "gravely ill." Mrs. Dunham raised young Obama for many of his childhood years, and she's among the last of his immediate family left. As we all also know, Obama hates his terrible racist grandmother with a fiery angry black radical passion, because she is a racist. We know this because in a frank and honest interview following his smart and important speech on race, he called her a "typical white person" because she is at heart a kind and good person who sometimes feels irrational prejudices. This enraged Geraldine Ferraro, and others. It was a punchline at The Corner for a good six months. As we all know it is very important for a young man of mixed racial background raised by white people to never acknowledge that those white people are anything but idealized perfection incarnate. To admit that you are pained when they reveal deep-set prejudices is nothing but PLAYING THE RACE CARD. It is disgusting that Barack Obama will now have us believe that he "loves" his grandmother. We expect the conservative commentariat to back us up on this point shortly.