Shots in the Dark

The Times reports that there’s a growing backlash against Caroline Kennedy among New York Democrats.

Resistance is emerging among Democratic officials againstCaroline Kennedy as she pursues Hillary Rodham Clinton’s seat in theUnited States Senate, with Gov. David A. Paterson bristling over suggestions that her selection is inevitable, according to his advisers, and other leading Democrats concerned that she is too beholden to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Kennedy herself seems to have gone silent. She still hasn’t given an interview to the press, and yesterday the Times reported that she refused to answer questions about her finances that any typical senatorial candidate would have to answer.

Ms. Kennedy, who has asked Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Mr. Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Ms. Kennedy declined on Monday to reply to those and other questions posed by The New York Times about any potential ethical, legal and financial entanglements….

The longer this goes on, I think, the more damaging it becomes to Kennedy, whose best chance was a quick appointment, rather than a drawn-out process in which her electoral weaknesses start to manifest themselves. One particular problem: She is closely associated with Mike Bloomberg at a time when basically the entire state thinks that Bloomberg is acting like an undemocratic jerk.

It’s about time: The last American factories making SUVs are closing.

I feel bad for the workers, but truth to tell, they’ve been living on borrowed time for years. These cars are a safety and environmental disaster, and they represent the spirit of self-indulgent and thoughtless excess that has characterized too much of America in recent years.

As Tom Friedman writes today,

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

Could you imagine how screwed we would be if John McCain, a man who truly didn’t seem to understand the watershed moment at which this country stands, won the election?

As the years go by, and SUVs fade from the roads, won’t it be nice not to feel menaced when crossing the street, or to be able actually to see in front of you while driving on the highway?

Red Sox fans are distraught, embarrassed, self-loathing over the Yankees’ signing of first baseman Mark Texeira, wonder if they should even play next season.

As Bob Ryan imagines the Yanks putting it, “Enough is enough.” The natural order needs to be restored.

Particularly satisfying is that the Sox seem to have been blindsided about this move.

The real surprise might not be where Mark Teixeira - the 28-year-old slugging first baseman who became the jewel of baseball’s offseason - will play for the next eight seasons. It might be that no one really saw it coming.

Here’s my serious take on this: While I’m staggered by the amount of money the Yankees have spent on just three players—something like $500 million—Texeira sounds like the real deal. And much as I thought Jason Giambi got a raw deal (from the press), it will be nice to have a first baseman who can field again.

The Yankees still have question marks. Can Jorge Posada still catch? How much have Derek Jeter’s skills declined? Will A-Rod ever get a hit in the playoffs? Who’s the centerfielder? Who’s the rightfielder? Will Robby Cano ever get his head in the game?

But still, on paper, the Yanks look pretty good……

The Yankees appear to have signed Mark Texeira.

No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the music business, an adage confirmed again by Warner Music’s decision to pull its videos from YouTube because talks over licensing fees have broken down.

This is a pet peeve of mine, as I frequently try to post videos on this blog only to see the maddening caption, “Embedding disabled by request.”

The request is made, of course, by the record company involved.

What possible good could that do? The videos I post don’t earn me any revenue (but so what if they did) and they might well make the record company some money. After all, if you see a video on this blog by a band you didn’t know but turn out to like, you might go out and buy music from that band.

And if you don’t, you won’t.

You certainly wouldn’t go searching YouTube for a band you’ve never heard or heard of.

So allowing bloggers like me to post videos is basically allowing people to publish advertisements for free.

But that argument, of course, makes too much sense. And so the music biz wants to charge YouTube—and bloggers, presumably—for posting videos.

If anything, this compensation arrangement should work the other way: YouTube should charge Warner Music for the right to post its videos online.

But….

In a statement, Warner Music said it “simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”

Warner thus becomes the Plaxico Burress of the music industry, shooting itself in the foot leg.

If I ran YouTube, I would start negotiating directly with artists and their managers, offering them separate deals, and I would crush Warner Music like a bug.

Or, better yet, I would set up a free section of the site, and a section where users had to pay the record company licensing fee, and watch as the free section blossomed and the paid section withered and died. Just as Warner Music itself would—and will, if it keeps up this boneheaded scheme.

Central Park in the snow, Friday, 12/19.

Always fun when one Harvard grad slams another, right? Elizabeth Wurtzel keeps hammering away at Caroline Kennedy—and Elizabeth, whose talent is sometimes underappreciated because her persona is not always respected, puts the issue well.

The tension in the Kennedy clan between royal insouciance and hardy human-ness is playing out right now in the person of Caroline Kennedy, and only because she insists on pursuing a paying job that would require her to represent the interests of an entire state. The question people keep asking is if she’s qualified —what I can’t figure out is why she wants the job in the first place. And there’s only one way I or anyone else is ever going to find out: Caroline Kennedy needs to explain herself. Loud and clear.

I think that’s right. Those who don’t think Caroline Kennedy shouldn’t be senator aren’t going to win on the issue of qualifications. She’s not really qualified, but there are probably lots of people who actually get elected to the Senate who aren’t qualified either.

The question that cuts more deeply is, Why do you want to be senator?

And the answer is probably something like, Because I can be. Or, because I’m ready now. Or, because my kids are grown up. Or, because that’s what Kennedys do.

It’s probably not something like, I have a burning desire to work tirelessly to improve the lives of ordinary citizens in places like Syracuse and Utica and Albany.

Another Christmas classic.

On the Huffington Post, Edward Jay Epstein says that Harvard may actually have lost far more than the $8 billion figure it has released.

Harvard University’s admission that it lost $8 billion from its $36 billion endowment fund, as staggering as it sounds, may grossly underestimate the true magnitude of the loss between from July 1 through Oct. 31 2008. According to a source close [to] the Harvard Management Corporation (HMC), which runs the fund for Harvard, the loss is closer to $18 billion if the losses on the fund’s illiquid investment are realistically appraised.

If Epstein is right, Harvard is going to take an enormous hit to its confidence, reputation, self-image—and operating budget.

If you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire, it’s a wonderful, joyous, heartbreaking, inspiring romantic tragicomic love story. Absolutely not to be missed.