Robert Byrd, our US Senator from the great state of West Virginia, has been a Senator since January 3, 1959, making him the longest-serving member in congressional history. He is 91 years old (his 92nd birthday is on Friday!) and third in line for the presidency should something happen to Obama, Biden, and Pelosi.

He filibustered against the Civil Rights Act and opposed the Voting Rights Act but in the years since then, instead of jumping to the Republicans like most racist Democrats did, he's made a concerted effort to fit into the mainstream of the Democratic party.

So: probably still an old racist, but the sort of old racist who knows it is not acceptable to be racist anymore.

Oh, he is also a champion of the worst tendencies of the Senate: arcane parliamentary procedure in the service of obstructionism, and intense regionalism. When he dies his colleagues will present him one last earmark, officially renaming the state "West Byrdginia."

Here he is accidentally becoming a '70s Randy Newman song:

And here he is reading a poem:

According to TPM, Carville's Democracy Corps polling group conducted a focus group study of "conservative Republicans" and "conservative-leaning independents." And basically conservative-leaning independents are worried about the deficit and quibble with the particulars of congress' health care reform plans, while base Republicans live in a scary alternate reality where Obama has this little goatee thing, see, and health care reform is literally a secret plot to bankrupt the nation so that he can enslave us.

First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda' to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

They also view themselves as a minority under attack from liberal elites, and, obviously, Glenn Beck's martyr schtick plays really well. Especially with the ladies!

"Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."

Carville is also trying to get everyone to shut up about race, and he insists that race has nothing to do with their fears of a black planet.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters' beliefs - but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson's incendiary comments at the president's joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion - but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

Right. Carville gave them "full opportunity" to make White House watermelon patch jokes, but, weirdly, in front of focus group researchers, they declined to shout racial slurs, and in fact announced that their hatred of the president had nothing to do with his Blackness!

We cannot ever know how much of a role race plays in making a bunch of white dudes scared of a black man. But race informs it. That's patently obvious, and to declare that it's a non-factor because calling attention to it doesn't "play" well politically (because America is incapable of talking about race without people screaming "DON'T CALL ME A RACIST YOU'RE THE REAL RACIST YOU RACIST") is dumb. Yes, obviously any Democratic president was going to have to deal with crackers hating him or her, but that is because any Democratic president would've represented an America of black folk, gays, and uppity ladies that these people don't recognize as legitimately American. So, there is your race card.

In conclusion: there's no "reasoning" with these people and honestly the best we could possibly hope for is that the people lying to them constantly come up with slightly less deranged and dangerous lies.

First of all, you just know that most old white people are birthers. Right? There is probably a poll somewhere, but let's just go with our gut here.

For years now, Old People, who are already naturally conservative, have been listening to Talk Radio and then Fox News, and that has made them go from "cranky mildly racist conservatives" to "radical right-wing conspiracy theorists who are terrified of literally everything."

Also: old people are the only people who vote consistently. They are bored and lonely, so if someone offers them a chance to get out of the house for a bit, they will go. You get a sticker and some brief human contact, it's great!

As we all remember, it was old Jews in Florida who kept accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan, who was most recently heard from defending Hitler, again. And that is why 9/11 happened (BUSH KNEW).

And because they are the only people who vote in midterms, old people live in a government-sponsored socialist utopia. Free health care and guaranteed lifetime pensions and "public television"! It is glorious.

The effect of a bunch of lazy welfare-queen old people being radically conservative in thought is the curious specter of Republicans suddenly fighting against any reduction in Medicare, at all. But they have found one variety of Medicare that they can actually support without compromising their precious ideals (hah): Medicare Advantage, which is a program in which the government just gives money to private insurance companies.

The Democrats have decided that it would be more "fiscally responsible" to just pay the same amount for people with Medicare Advantage as they pay in "Medicare Classic."

Well, most of the Democrats have decided this. Florida Senator Bill Nelson, though, has decided that that might scare the old people who make up almost his entire constituency. So he is fighting to protect Medicare Advantage but pretty much only for Old People in Florida.

Here is Bill Nelson explaining his tough stand:

Throughout it all, Mr. Nelson said he would remember advice he once received from Claude Pepper, a Florida congressman and champion for the elderly: "Bill, I want you to look out for our seniors. Someone has to look out for them."

Someone has to! And that "someone" turns out to be literally everyone elected to a national office because America is a hellish geriarchy.

What is funny, to us, is that New York's tabloids have been following Weiner around all week waiting for someone—anyone!—to bring some of that "screaming crazy town hall crasher" mojo here to the Socialist Republic of New York City.

But Weiner, to their obvious disappointment, has just been hanging out with senior citizens, showing up without much advance notice, and the old people have been cranky and skeptical (because they are old people, and old people are usually miserable reactionary old cranks who hate change of any kind), but not fiery enough to make Fox (despite the Post's best efforts at exaggeration).

And this one just sounds like cranky old people being cranky, again, and no one even called anyone a Nazi. And, frankly, cranky old people shouting nonsense complaints at an elected official is how every political event goes in New York, regardless of what the "issues" are.

To commemorate the historic bloodshed, the fucking cops got together to congratulate themselves on smiting the lawless hippie menace:

"From the pictures the media showed, it always looked like poor little Jimmy was getting attacked by the police, but what they didn't see was what Jimmy did just a minute before," said Tom Rowan, 65, a retired officer. "Everybody who got hit during the convention may not have deserved it, but 95 percent of them did."

Meanwhile, the anarchist protesters who came to Chicago as college kids to throw bricks and some poor terrified young cop who was just out there doing his job to feed his family are still acting just as outraged about the mere existence of police:

Some among the thousands who had demonstrated in 1968, meanwhile, said they were appalled by the notion of a reunion party, and others who have objected to Chicago police officers' behaviors in more recent years and even months considered the meeting an affront worthy of a protest march, which materialized with signs and musical instruments and old convention photographs just down the block from where the former officers had gathered.

In this way we see that—no matter how passionate our political differences—the healing passage of time can calcify those differences into resolute hatred for one another.

[NYT. Pic via]

Bush got to appoint the Chief Justice, and he picked a 12-year-old. John Roberts will run that court for another thirty years. You need someone who'll outlive him, hopefully by a lot, because by the time Roberts and Alito retire, there will be a lot of important work to be done fixing everything they ruined.

Here is Obama's list:

Diane Wood, 58
Elena Kagan, 49
Sonia Sotomayor, 54
Jennifer Granholm, 50
Janet Napolitano, 51
Merrick Garland, 56

All of these people would probably make a fine Justice. But none of them would be a fine Justice for forty years! Barack Obama, we demand you nominate Dora the Explorer to the court. She's young, Hispanic, and she could presumably figure out the original intentions of the framers of the constitution if provided with a map and a talking monkey.

Oh ho, TV Guide president Scott Crystal says that the ASME guidelines banning things like ads on the cover of magazines should be "blown up." Actual, factual ASME response quote: "Oh, criminy." If we can't depend on TV Guide to uphold the highest ethical editorial standards, who can we depend on? What's next, magazines that suck? [Pic: Adrants]


Journalism students are worried they may not be able to find jobs when they graduate. ZOUNDS. Perhaps part of the problem is journalism professors, who continuously say things like this: "If it gives you goose bumps when you're sitting across from somebody, because you're getting them to tell you what's really on their mind so you can share that with other people, I'd say go for it." Sir, that is the job description of a fast food cashier.

Borderline insane CNN personality and Twitterer Rick Sanchez will be hosting an awards show next week, in Brooklyn, for the best Twitterers. The sheer volume of useless Twitterclusterfuckery to come out this ceremony will be unmeasurable by man or god.


Even though Congress delayed the mandatory national switch to digital cable until the summer, "dozens" of TV stations are still planning to turn off their analog signals on Feb. 17. This will be a good opportunity for old people to read a book, for four months.

Lauren vs. Audrina! In this corner we have a hollow blonde cipher with nothing to do. In the other corner we have an escaped Gummi Bear who rides moonbeams to work every morning. And does anyone really care? Does anyone care if Justin Bobby slithered his greasy way into Lauren's unmentionables? Does anyone care if he didn't? Does anyone care if Audrina cares? Does anyone care if Audrina says she doesn't care anymore and Lauren says "whatever, I don't care" and then they make out for forty five minutes? No! No one has ever cared about this or ever will. So it's a good thing we got a heaping half an episode about it, in which Lauren said the word "trust" 486 times and Audrina gave birth to a shadow baby and hid it in her closet and then drank some Gummi Bear juice and bounced around for a while.

In the end they met at a hotel bar for some reason and made their guttural moans and hootings at each other and then threw some chicken bones on the floor and bled a goat and smeared it around and Audrina did a Botono dance and they decided that they should be sorta friends again. You know, for the kids. The kids who watch them on TV. Who give them money, indirectly. Music swelled, Audrina looked confused, Lauren disappeared into the inky night, and high above them the Man in the Moon danced his chuckling dance and, again, no one cared.

Now to the real story. Spencer. Heidi. Spencerina. They drove over a river and tramped through some woods because to grandmother's house they were going. She was an 84-year-old lady who Spencer and Spencerina tossed around as a pawn in their silly, despicable "who's better???" game of idiocy. It's stupid because neither of them are better. They're both piles of shit. Anyway, apparently there was something where like Spencerina wasn't a good granddaughter and Spencer was nicer to grams and it was awkward so Spencerina decided to arrange a solo date with the old bag in the hopes that she'd come out on top at the rose ceremony.

So they walked, against the backdrop of the glistening, endless Pacific Ocean, and they chatted and said stuff. Watch the clip above. And I got to thinking, while watching it:

This woman is 84-years-old. So she was probably born in 1924. She was 5 when the markets crashed hugely. She watched as Europe was overtaken by an army of darkness, as millions of people were killed, she watched that war end and the boys come home and booms begin. She saw the suburban 50's crystallize the American Dream into something far too fragile to ever hope to touch. She saw the Cold War terror, the first beating bits of revolution fomenting in the eyes of kids. She watched sit-ins and hosings and great, thundering speeches and witnessed Change, real change, the kind of change rarely seen since. She saw two terrifying jungle wars, a generation in full rise up and demand something different. The entire idea of Who We Are and Why We Are began to blur and change and certain old institutions disappeared forever. And people were scared and people were happy but most of all people felt different. And around her this new spirit bled and muddled into something about drugs and aimless rebellion. Around her that malaise hardened into the darkening, cynical, cocaine-bliss 70's. Which bumped up against the blockish 80's, the suits the money the drugs AIDS Reagan the fall of the economy the fall of the wall Desert Storm. Meanwhile her grandkids had come tumbling along at some point and Clinton came (and came) and a new fattiness spread across the country until that became too much for some people and buildings fell in Oklahoma and then buildings fell in New York and there we went, hurtling headlong back into the desert, our eyes fixed on black, oily windmills. And all of this, all of these years and all of this living and noise and light and hope and fear and change and stubborness and sadness and grit and boredom and brief transcendent moments of life when one fully knows, for a few fleeting seconds, that one is capital A Alive... Well, all of it jumbled together, quiet and loud at the same time, and... And it all amounted to this.

Some dumpy old woman forced to talk to her piece of shit granddaughter on a bench for the fucking Hills.

I give up.

He's a lover:

...and then to Paris, where the most famous woman in the world, Coco Chanel, developed a sort of crush on me—or perhaps on my beautiful, young American wife.

A persistent success:

I will now officially be "older than dirt," one of the oldest journalists still working a beat, interviewing movie stars for Parade magazine and its weekly audience of 70 million, and writing this media column each Thursday for Forbes.com, largest business news Web site anywhere.

An editing phenom:

Late in '64 I came home to succeed John Fairchild as publisher of WWD, a post I held for the next seven years, turning the little trade paper a Time magazine cover story had called, "plain as gingham and just as reliable," into a publishing phenomenon, a must-read for the rich and fashionable.

An author extraordinaire:

And I wrote a dozen more books, some serious work about Marines at war, including a memoir, The Coldest War, and a novel, The Marines of Autumn, which I can't read today without sobbing.

An active literary titan:

I'm finishing a serious non-fiction book for Steve Power of Wiley and will then embark on an amusing yarn for Tom Dunne at St. Martin's Press, When the Name-Dropping Was Fun.

And kind of a pompous bastard. [Forbes]

However, we are still obliged to ask ourselves whether the senior senator from Arizona is a brick short of a load or, as heartless people in England sometimes say, a sandwich or two short of a picnic. Because "anger," make no mistake about it, is the innuendo for instability or inadequacy. What if McCain doesn't really have both oars in the water or is either too tightly wrapped or not tightly wrapped enough?
[...]
Again, one hopes that the nominee has been doing this for emphasis rather than as a sign that he is out of his pram, has lost his rag, has gone ballistic, has reported into the post office that he's feeling terminally disgruntled today. (Or, as P.G. Wodehouse immortally put it, if not quite disgruntled, not exactly gruntled, either.)

One Angry Man [Slate]