The President's New Direction

Now you see why candidates are hiring bloggers.

Captain Ed puts the onus squarely on Ms. Fox:

"Having this question posed at a political event is bad enough. Having it posed by a member of the media is an embarrassment. Fox's response that she just wanted some 'honesty' is a bad dodge for a monumental insult to our traditions of religious tolerance. What possible difference would it make if Allen's mother had Jewish ancestry or not? What difference would it make whether Webb had Irish ancestry? We don't elect leaders on the basis of their mother's faith, let alone their own."

Terry McAuliffe to chair Hillary's presidential campaign? Does this mean she's running?

How angry is the right at Senator McCain? Dick Polman has the goods:

"John McCain has spent a lot of time this year recalibrating his image in order to curry favor with the conservative Republican activists who have virtual veto power over the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But apparently the guy is incapable of pandering to the Republican right 24/7 -- as evidenced by the fact that he refuses to support President Bush's current attempts to loosen the anti-torture language in the Geneva Conventions. And now his stance threatens to land him in hot water with conservatives, most of whom are diehard Bush loyalists who might look askance at any '08 candidate who has publicly defied the Decider.

"During the 2000 primary season, Bush loyalists spread word that McCain was mentally unstable, courtesy of his stint as a POW in Hanoi. But once McCain surrendered and endorsed his rival, talk about his alleged nuttiness ceased. Now, suddenly, it is back again. On Fox News Tuesday night, former New York senator Al D'Amato told Bill O'Reilly that McCain is still nutty from his POW experience: 'Bill, I give John McCain a pass on this (torture issue) only because I think he was so traumatized by the events that took place (in Hanoi), that he doesn't even really want to, or is in a position to, consider the impact' of how his Geneva defense would harm the war on terror . . .

"Rush Limbaugh, who is warning on the air that McCain's behavior 'is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again, and if we do, and if McCain, et al., prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed.'"

As we all watch the spectacle at the U.N., the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff provides a sobering reality check:

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, has become an international celebrity, brandishing his nuclear program--and his yearning to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He is visited by such personages as U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. In their conversations with him, neither has asked the swashbuckling leader about 'honor killings' by the government of women charged with having committed 'adultery.'

"As human rights lawyer Lily Mazahery, president of the Legal Rights Institute reports, 'in 99 percent of these cases, the accused women have received no legal representation because, under the Shariah legal system, their testimony is at best worth only half the value of the testimony of men.'

"And there is no single executioner. These are mass murders by stone-throwing members of the community, having the kind of festive time common among American mass lynchers of blacks, when the murderers brought their children to join in the fun. In Iran too, kids are present to witness the sinners' redemption.

"The capital crime of adultery, Mazahery has explained to World Net Daily, 'includes [under Shariah law] any type of intimate relationship between a girl/woman and a man to whom she is not permanently or temporarily married. Such a relationship does not necessarily mean a sexual relationship.'"

That is shocking and appalling.

On a lighter note, I knew Facebook was incredibly popular, but check out this Wall Street Journal scoop: "People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions -- again -- to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion."

The general consensus is that Meredith Vieira is off to a great start at "Today." But Salon's Rebecca Traister ruminates about whether Campbell Brown fell victim to demographics:

"A source involved in NBC's search for the 'Today' co-anchor told Radar that, in reporter Jeff Bercovici's words, Brown 'never really had a shot, on account of her youth, looks, and, especially, her lack of kids.' Apparently, the 'Today' show's female viewers, including a core of stay-at-home moms, 'would have trouble relating to a female host without rugrats of her own.' It didn't help that Brown is something of a looker, and that the network felt her less-foxy viewers might have been intimidated by her beauty. Adding to the intimidation factor is the fact that she's 37 years old. That's young enough to be nailed for her 'youth' -- even though it's just two years younger than Jane Pauley was when she was traded in for a newer Deborah Norville model in 1989 -- but really too old to be single, which Brown was until April, when she married GOP strategist Dan Senor.

"Ever heard the phrase 'a working girl can't win'? It seems to be amplified on morning television, where Couric -- widowed mother of two, closing in on 50, not threateningly hot -- was harangued for lacking the 'gravitas' to anchor the evening news. For what it's worth, Couric was not a mother when she became anchor of the 'Today' show, and in her years there wound up so hamstrung -- maintaining a balance between perky and profound, grave and cheerful, smart and silly, mommy and professional, pretty and unthreatening, widow and sexual being, grown-up and teenager, rich woman and every woman -- that it often felt as if she were trying to embody some kind of idealized American female who simply does not exist in nature.

"This isn't to say that Brown should have gotten the job. The woman who did, Meredith Vieira, is terrific. But she's also an example of exactly how twisted this nexus of news and maternity has become. Vieira, whose career as a young correspondent for über-serious (read: old and male) '60 Minutes' came off the tracks after she had kids and could not negotiate a suitable schedule with CBS brass, took a long detour through the far-flung fringes of journalism on 'The View' before she got rewarded (surely in part for her relatable, palatable commitment to motherhood) with the co-anchor's chair on 'Today.' If Vieira's path serves as an example, it's of the fact that motherhood is still deemed incompatible with the demands of a career in hard news, but that those women willing to forsake the power jobs to be good moms get the big-money, fluffy morning jobs in the end.

"And those like Brown, who have not had kids, let alone sacrificed anything meaningful for them, apparently have nothing to say to American women. This is perhaps an even more startling, and covertly dangerous, assumption: that a female audience can only take their news and decorating tips from a woman who is a mom."

This is drawing a lot of lessons from one personnel move. But something tells me Campbell will have another shot, kids or no kids.