Shots in the Dark

On the Huffington Post, Erica Jong writes of her reaction to Hillary’s defeat:

I didn’t know it would feel this bad. I didn’t know it would feel this personal. I’m all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. And the gloating by the press is even worse. It sounds like “I told you so.” It feels like watching Joan of Arc burned at the stake. You can smell the burning flesh.

Then, like Hillary herself, Jong raises the specter of assassination.

I can’t watch [Obama’s] triumph without a fearful foreboding. He is not the first charismatic leader we’ve produced and he won’t be the last. But our country is very good at taking down the best and the brightest. Those of us who lived through the unspeakable violence of the sixties can attest to that.

I want to be wrong about violence….

Does she?

As promised, Drew Faust used the occasion of the ROTC commissioning ceremony yesterday to criticize the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The freedoms we enjoy depend vitally on the service you and your forebears have undertaken in our behalf. Indeed, I wish that there were more of you. I believe that every Harvard student should have the opportunity to serve in the military, as you do, and as those honored in the past have done.

The Globe writes a sort of weird piece about the event.

Faust did not mention the ban explicitly. But with scholarly understatement, she made clear that the policy was inconsistent with the ideals of universities like Harvard, which she called “places not just where minds can flourish but where hearts are nourished as well – by commitment to the pursuit of truth, to the availability of opportunity based on merit, to the full inclusion of all in our hopes and possibilities.‘

Scholarly understatement? Well, that’s one way to put it. Faust made a choice not to mention the words “gay,” “lesbian,” “homosexual,” etc., in her speech, which could be tactful in an un-Summers kind of way but is also perhaps just a little too clever. Even when Drew Faust makes a “statement,” she gives herself a lot of wiggle room.

Earlier, the Globe described the president as “Faust, a military historian…”, a categoriziation that the Crimson used in a more nuanced way earlier in the week, suggesting that Faust’s flacks are pushing that meme in order to suggest that Faust’s take on “don’t ask” has a historical underpinning rather than a political or emotional one.

As I noted at the time, calling Faust a military historian is not really quite accurate. Her latest book certainly deals with soldiers and the military in terms of attitudes and responses to death, but taken as a whole, Faust’s work is really not military history.

I’m not quite sure what it means that Faust chose this issue to voice her first opinion on any public policy issue not specifically related to education, but it means something. As Faust continues to develop her presidential voice and persona, this speech will stand as a significant notch on the timeline.

Hillary Clinton has finally signaled that she will end her presidential campaign and endorse Barack Obama.

For a choice that really could not be a choice, Senator Clinton took an oddly long time.

“We pledged to support her to the end,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said in an interview. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”

Hillary can’t undo all the damage that her weeks-longer-than-it-should-have-been campaign has done—these have been fruitful days for John McCain—but she can redress much of it, particularly by assuring her supporters that she is copacetic with Barack Obama and they should be too.

Which still leaves the question of the vice-presidency. Should she get it?

This won’t surprise you, but I think not, for a couple of reasons. Hilary’s mad lust for power will drive her to try to upstage Obama. Running a White House with Hillary and Bill roaming would be extremely difficult. (Unless, perhaps, you named Bill the ambassador to Brazil.)

And if Obama really wants to run as an advocate of change, linking himself with Hillary, who fought a very retro (i.e., dirty) campaign works against that theme.

Finally, Hillary has been effectively pressuring Obama to name her as his running mate. If he does so now, he risks looking weak, vulnerable to being mau-maued.

On the other hand, there are strong arguments for putting her on the ticket as well.

A lot depends, I think, on her actions in the next few days….

…and the opposite for Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s speech was inspiring and, on the subject of Hillary, remarkably gracious —far more gracious than I can bring myself to be.

“We’ve certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who’s shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning — even in the face of tough odds — is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; … an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be.”

Hillary’s speech astonished for its lack of humility and its refusal to acknowledge the fact that she has lost.

She asked voters to go to her webset and give her their opinion.

If you do, you find a huge prompt that says, “I’m with you Hillary, and I’m proud of everything we are fighting for.”

Apparently not all opinions are created equal.

(And if you vouchsafe an opinion, as I did—”mad lust for power,” etc.—after you hit “submit,” you are instantly hit up for money.)

There is simply no Democrat who can convincingly say that this speech was the best speech that she could give to support the party. Rather, it was the best speech that she could give to further her own lust for power.

I’m not usually a Maureen Dowd fan, but she nails it this morning.

Even as Obama got ready to come out on stage for his victory party, the Clinton campaign announced that it had won a Wyoming superdelegate and Terry McAuliffe introduced her at Baruch as “the next president of the United States.” She gave a brief nod to Obama without conceding that he was the nominee before rushing through a variation on her stump speech. She clung to her fuzzy math about winning the popular vote, and in one last fudge she said: “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word” — even though the Montana polls still had 25 minutes to go.

Dowd repeats a theory that crossed my mind last night when it was reported that she’d signaled a willingness to run as his vice-president (though her speech suggested no such compromise): That Hillary secretly thinks that, if Obama won the presidency, well, she’s just one bullet away from the Oval Office….

she figures that at least if she moves a few blocks from Embassy Row to the Naval Observatory, she’ll be a heartbeat away from the job she’s always wanted.

And if it happened, would she cry crocodile tears?

Imagine yourself running for president. Would you want Hillary as your #2, convinced that she’s really #1, constantly stabbing you in the back? Would you want Bill hanging around the White House, acting like he’s still president, chasing skirt on the private jet apparently known as “Air Fuck One”? Would you want Chelsea, still dispensing that utterly fake grin, still refusing to talk to the press, acting like she will be president one day?

The Clintons have become America’s most toxic family. (Yes, more than the Lohans.)

Now, thanks to Hillary’s machinations, the presidential candidate of her own party is in an extremely delicate position: Put her on the ticket, which would be a nightmare for him, or deny her the veep slot, cut off her power supply, like keeping a vampire from feeding, and ready the country for a clean, progressive, non-toxic White House, but risk losing the support of the Ellen Jamesians who have made Hillary their heroine?

Barack Obama is about to be the first African-American presidential nominee in American history.

No matter who you’re going to vote for, this is a historic moment, one to tell the kids about.

One of the most prolific and provocative posters on this blog has finally unmasked himself: Standing Eagle is James von der Heydt, a former senior tutor at Winthrop House, resident tutor in Lowell House, and lecturer on history and literature.

A summa cum laude Princeton grad with a Harvard Ph.D. in English, Jim is now a teacher of English at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Why does he reveal himself now? Well, he wanted to put some distance between himself and Harvard before so doing.

Pseudonymity is not airtight! and my persona here has often been obnoxious.

True dat! But this blogger and many SITD readers have appreciated Jim’s/Standing Eagle’s comments even when they were, well, a little obnoxious. More often they were intelligent and thought-provoking, and helped to generate or fuel countless conversations on this blog and, I would like to think, elsewhere.

Jim notes that he is also the author of At the Brink of Infinity: Poetic Humility in Boundless American Space, a mere $34.50 on Amazon (not so bad for a scholarly book).

From popular culture to politics to classic novels, quintessentially American texts take their inspiration from the idea of infinity. In the extraordinary literary century inaugurated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the lyric too seemed to encounter possibilities as limitless as the U.S. imagination. This raises the question: What happens when boundlessness is more than just a figure of speech? Exploring new horizons is one thing, but actually looking at the horizon itself is something altogether different. In this carefully crafted analysis, James von der Heydt shines a new light on the lyric craft of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill and considers how their seascape-vision redefines poetry’s purpose.

That is probably over my head, but sounds quite impressive.

Two questions, Jim. Where did Standing Eagle come from? (In both the literal and the existential sense.)

And are you also the James Von Der Heydt who wrote Mother Sawtooth’s Nome: A Novel of Alaskan History?

In any case, I hope that we can expect many more posts from Standing Eagle in the days and weeks ahead….

Bill Clinton’s attack on Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair is remarkable. Listen to it here.

“The guy oughta be ashamed of himself,” Clinton says, “but he has no shame.”

Who exactly is the former president describing here?

I’ve been asked to give the commencement address at my grade school, Fairfield Country Day School.

It’s on Wednesday. As of now, I haven’t written a word. (This is often the case for me; it all happens at the last minute.)

Problem is, I can think of few people less suited to give advice to ninth graders than yours truly. I tend to feel that I learn more from young people than they do from me. And my accomplishments are perhaps less interesting than my mistakes.

And I probably can’t talk to them about why “don’t ask, don’t tell” is bad. (See below.)

Any suggestions?

Meanwhile, Hillary’s most ardent supporters have become increasingly hysterical and destructive. According to this Democratic activist, Hillary is losing the nomination to “an inadequate black male.”

Hillary Clinton is like a drowning swimmer, determined to take down anyone who reaches out to her….

According to the Crimson, the Harvard president plans to take aim at “don’t ask, don’t tell” in a speech tomorrow.

On Tuesday morning, Faust will address the graduating members of Harvard’s Reserve Officer Training Corps in Tercentenary Theatre, and her pledge to use the speech to attack the miltary’s controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which bars openly gay individual from serving in the armed forces, has already drawn fire from conservative and pro-military groups across the country….

“I have deep respect for these students and I want to express my respect for them,” said Faust, who has noted that she is in part a military historian.* “But I also want to make clear that I wish all students had the same opportunity, the same right to serve.”

Well! At last, a sign that the president is developing a public voice.

But why this issue, and why now?

Also, why speak out about anti-gay discrimination by the military when she calculatedly passed up the opportunity to criticize anti-male discrimination at her own university?

Yes indeed, I’m told that Faust made a deliberate decision that she wasn’t going anywhere near that issue.

I happen to think she’s right about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But is there the scent of political correctness about her?

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* One shouldn’t quibble, but this self-description is a bit of a stretch.