This Week in Magazines: Obama-Mania
Or so says the Global Electoral College, an online poll by the London-based Economist, the newsweekly whose U.S. edition's growth seems to run counter to American media's tactical penchant for shorter and more "utilitarian." Alas, it exhibits no signs of turning to "charticles," celebrity coverage, or holograms showcasing its reporters. How quaint; seeking profits without pandering.
Given the negative American image in many parts, it's no great surprise that Barack Obama won most of the 53,000 votes cast, with landslides in 56 of the 136 countries casting votes. But McCain did win the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Algeria, as well as Iraq and Cuba. He also had decent support in Andorra and Namibia. Minnesotans awaiting the Al Franken-Norm Coleman final tally, be informed that the Economist recorded absolute ties in Macedonia and Myanmar. As you await your outcome, realize that things could be worse.
Meanwhile, Obama partisans might find a cautionary note in the Economist's lengthy special report on Spain. The fiesta inspired by the Socialist Party's general election win in March is clearly over amid an economic mess. Things began to hit the fan in August. "Spaniards went on holiday in party mood and came back to find there was no champagne left, nor even any decent wine," says one former International Monetary Fund official who runs a university near Madrid.
---There appear to have been 2,346,862 words written last week about Obama and the role of race in his life and his victory, including a fair bit of fact-free, self-indulgent opining on "post-racial" politics. Nov. 17 New Yorker includes one of the more-nuanced, and actually reported, efforts, by multitasker par excellence David Remnick, the magazine's editor. He looks closely at how Obama both celebrated it and pushed race aside at the same time; and how certain black politicians were embraced and others kept at a distance. Interestingly, there is a comparison to how Chicago political consultant Don Rose played candidate Jane Byrne's gender (or didn't play it) during her historic 1979 campaign for mayor of Chicago (a campaign covered, though not noted here, by young Chicago Tribune reporter David Axelrod, now Obama's chief strategist). There are some usual-suspect voices here, but one of the most intriguing is that of historian David Levering Lewis, who finds in Obama's books "a young man almost alone in the world, trying to find a place." It's hard not to consider that comment and recall Obama's at-times decidedly serious air during the Grant Park celebration last week. Amid the celebration, there was a man who sensed the moment and the huge challenges ahead as he tries to find his place.
---So Karl Rove, President Bush's David Axelrod, can find some solace in November Harper's, despite editor Roger Hodge's somewhat screechy essay on the Republicans possibly stealing the election (obviously written before), with McCain "not only a liar but a menace to our children's future." Rove exacts an apology for a sloppy error in an August essay by Thomas Frank in which Rove was quoted as saying, "We can now go to students at Harvard and say, 'There is now a secure retirement plan for Republican operatives.' " It's actually a Grover Norquist comment and was misidentified in the Washington Monthly, then apparently regurgitated by Frank. "For the record, I have never worried about the retirement needs of Harvard graduates," Rove writes. As senior reporters and copy editors get bounced everywhere, it's a reminder that checking original sources is a dying practice.
But Harper's is worth a bunch of short analyses in "How to Save Capitalism," including ones from Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, New American Foundation's Roger Lynn, and economist James K. Galbraith. Stiglitz is very good on the duplicities of rating agencies that are obviously paid by the firms whose products they evaluate. Lynn suggests that altering the practice of stock options could tighten focus on next-generation products, not generating short-term cash. And perhaps the most intriguing concept floated is for a financial equivalent of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, perhaps a Financial Product Safety Commission, with a civil-service-protected staff, and, among other goals, forcing companies to reveal the true cost of credit. The idea comes from Harvard Law School's Elizabeth Warren, and Amelia Tyagi, co-founder of the Business Talent Group.
---Democratic media consultant Bill Carrick and Republican communications strategist Todd Harris can jack up their hourly rates after winning the National Journal's pre-election "insiders poll." Both hit the electoral tally on the head, while Carrick went against his party's consensus and did figure Obama would win Indiana. Harris bucked his fellow GOP insiders by going for Democratic Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue in the North Carolina gubernatorial race. And they were both right, and thus in a minority of the smarty pants participants, that the California gay marriage ban initiative would pass.
---If Carrick and Harris are looking to celebrate, November Coastal Living includes staff writers' fave five locals. They are McWay Falls in Big Sur, Calif.; the fishing pier in Naples, Fla.; the 90-minute catamaran cruise from Beaufort, N.C., to Cape Lookout National Seashore; a four-seat seaplane over Tongass National Forest and down into Misty Fjords National Monument in Alaska; and perhaps "the Caribbean's most eccentric dining experience" at Bogles Round House in Carriacou, West Indies. It's said to resemble a displaced igloo, stocked with recycled and found materials, including a whale jawbone.
--- Nov. 30 Sports Illustrated writes a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, bemoaning how the Phillies-Rays matchup was the least-watched ever and suggesting that he move up the start times so kids can watch; insist that news stadiums are built with retractable roofs to avoid October cold (next year's series could actually end on Nov. 4); and cut out most of the off-days during the playoffs. As for neutral venues, a la the sun-filled Super Bowl, it's unequivocal: "screw neutral sites. Could you imagine if the Cubs get to the World Series and it's not in Chicago?"
Hey, it may be distinctly moot since, after their post-season collapse last month, it's now even harder to imagine the Cubs in the series. And, to further frustrate their fans, an unequivocally diehard White Sox fan will take the presidential oath on Jan. 20.
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"But McCain did win the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Algeria"
They can have him.
The Economist might not have been fair to McCain. I believe he handily won Georgia as well. :)
I really believe Georgia is in question, how can you have 1.3 million people early voting, then come short of that on voting day???!!!!! Something is definitely fishy with Georgia AND Alaska.
Which Georgia? The CNN place or the place from which Abkhazia and South Ossetia want independence?
oh and did yall buy your souvenir issues of 25 newspapers and magazine? funny how the press has to make the most of this event eh. Ap[parently newspapers sold out as people bought dozens of papers as a souvenir. And then the papers went on to print even more. the day after that. low. still tho there's nothing short of exceptional about having intelligent thought back in the white house!
http://www
The Economist informal "poll" was very small. In Congo for example, only 92 people answered. It is a French, Lingala and Swahili-speaking country so few people read the magazine. A few expa=triates, such as guys at the US Embassy would be enough to skew the poll.
As someone who is born in Algeria and who has a lot of Algerian family, I do not understand this poll at all.
All my family, the ones that live in the Netherlands, but also the ones still living in Algeria (I talked just a few weeks ago with a nephew still living there, are totally crazy about Obama. The entire Arab world (including Algeria) is basically crazy about Obama (the Hussein thing really helps him in North Afrika and the middle east).
Furthermore, Algerians really, really hate Bush (and thus the republicans) with fiery passion. Don't believe me? Go put on a Bush T-shirt and walk around in Alger or any Algerian city. Trust me, you'll start feeling uncomfertable soon.
So I personally don't believe this poll, someone either made a mistake or the Republicans have some how "stolen" the vote in Algeria and rigged the uhm "polls". It just does not make sense to me.
well it's absolute BS so that might explain things.
well it's absolute nonsense & sloppy small polling so that might explain things.
well it's absolute non sense & sloppy small polling so that might explain things.
It truly is not only mania but pure lunacy...
Rather than put Obama on a pedestal where no man can reside, one needs to treat him with the same level of skepticism any politician should be held account to...
No one has said, "This is the FIRST President from Chicago!"
MidWest pragmatism finally reaches us all. (No, nothing east of Lake Michigan is Midwest.)
I couldn't stop laughing one time when I heard in Indiana two guys saying they had been out East and hated it because there were mountains and trees blocking the view...
Give me mountains.
None of that flat, boring land you got there in "pragmatist" land...
That's because he's not.
Why is it that no one in comments I have heard on the air and in print about Obama's serious mood on election night has remembered that his grandmother had died the day before? Sadness over that as well as the final physical release and emotional relief from months of round-the-clock campaigning and strategizing probably combined to make his mood. I think he seemed glad it was all over so he could have some time for himself and could finally concentrate on tackling all these problems and issues of the nation that he has been thinking about for two years.
i concur..
So do I!
Great post, midwesthousewife!
Bob Schieffer of CBS had a excellent commentary on BOs election night mood .
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