A Little of the Old In and Out



(image via cnn)

In: Whither, Ohio? In 2000 the mantra went, as Florida goes, so goes the Presidency; in 2004, the mantra went, as Ohio goes, so goes the Presidency -- so, what now? Maintaining Ohio is key to Republican control of the White House, as Matt Bai so presciently predicted in his first cover story for The New York Times Magazine, "The Multilevel Marketing of the President."

But Ohio is a fickle All-American brew, pro-Union during the Civil War, but, we cannot fail to note, keeping Kurt Andersen's intriguing red-state/blue-state thesis in mind, that Ohio has had it's fair share of unjust wars against Native Americans.

But I digress. Let's ground this meandering, abstract conversation withing the terrestrial framework of an actual Congressional District, namely Ohio's second. According to TheHill:

"Republican Jean Schmidt narrowly defeated Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett (D) in today's special election to fill the seat recently vacated by former Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

"The close election in the staunchly conservative district suggests the war may be a growing problem for Republicans heading toward the midterm elections, Democrats said.

"Hackett's campaign manager, David Woodruff, predicted shortly before 10 p.m. that the Democrat would lose by about 2,000 votes. Chris McNulty, the state Republican Party's executive director, estimated Schmidt, a former state legislator, would get 52 percent of the vote versus Hackett's 48 percent.

"Hackett is the first veteran of the war to run for Congress. He sought to make his military record, and his opposition to President Bush's policies, the centerpiece of his campaign.

"That record gave Hackett's campaign traction, Republicans said. But in the end, the district, which backed Bush over Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) last year 2 to 1, proved too conservative for him."

Still, it would appear that the unpopularity of this war is wearing on Republican strength in Ohio. Then again, perhaps that's just a big glass of Rahm Emmanuel's spin kool aid. We report, you decide ...



(image via diesel)

Out: Yvonne Scio. We all know that Naomi Campbell is a tad ... punchy. She likes to cold clock people, right. She has a fast left hook, smooth footwork, and a crisp and devastating left that reeks of "bad intentions."

It's best for all involved to just give Naomi a wide berth if you spot her at a party, or she just might knock you the fuck out. According to those intrepid Page Sixxies:

"SYBARITIC supermodel Naomi Campbell just can't stop smacking people around. Yesterday, Italian newspapers reported Campbell attacked Yvonne Scio, the sexy Italian actress who was once involved with Rocco DiSpirito, last Saturday night at the Hotel Eden in Rome, sending her to the hospital. A source told The Post's Braden Keil that Scio and Campbell were getting ready to go out for the evening when they got into a vicious catfight. Scio says she was kicked and punched, suffering a badly cut lip. She filed a complaint with police and hired a lawyer. Campbell's European rep denied the allegations."



(image via ocregister)

In: Comedy Writers. (Confidentially) The Corsair has this killer idea for a sit-com pilot involving a clever Ugandan-born single magazine writer and blogger who drinks copious amounts of booze, flirts shamelessly with the ladies and gets into hijinx around New York City. We'll call it: "Ron." He's the blogger with a heart of gold. Pass? (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment) Anyhoo: According to Hollywood Reporter (link via Drudgie Poo):

"Attention comedy writers: NBC wants your passion projects. Quickly. That's the message the struggling network is putting out around town, according to sources, to get a glance of good material in advance of its competitors. With its lineup undisturbed by any new hit comedies, NBC is seeking to fast-track at least one spec script to a pilot order for midseason consideration. Submissions deadline is Sept. 15. The initiative is an extension of the aggressive strategy entertainment president Kevin Reilly has implemented at NBC since the network unveiled its fall schedule to advertisers in May and promised to bring in new material by any means necessary."

After the sucky overnights for "Meeting Mr. Mom," who can blame the Peacock network (Still, at least they "get" digital convergence). Maybe this hurried announcement also has something to do with this, from Ken Auletta's New Yorker Couric article, which everyone is still talking about:

"For the primetime season ending in May, NBC became the first network ever to fall from first to fourth place; it lost eleven percent of viewers between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine."



(image via jsonline)

Out: Current TV. Poor Al Gore, he can't do anything right, can he? Remember when Gore's team -- the same team that actually hired Naomi Wolfe to teach Gore how to be an "alpha-male" -- basically told Bill Clinton, the most popular Democrat of his generation, to sit out the campaign? Poor Bill, rendered irrelevant, had to content himself with campaigning for his wife, who was already far ahead of the overly aggressive Rick Lazio. All that wasted momentum (The Corsair shakes his head and lights a Bolivar cigar).

Who would be so inept as to undertake such a campaign without the backing of a popular sitting President? Presently, the former Vice President's godawful new venture is taking hits in media precincts where, in fact, he should be finding staunch allies. According to James Wolcott:

"If old is the new young, as Tom Watson insightfully argues after being subjected to those awful Ameriquest Rolling Stones commercials, is young the new tired?

"That's how Current TV strikes me, so determinedly, shinily, creamily, fake-casually, hang-loosily, self-cooingly Young that it already seems patronizing and homogenized, despite the ethnic mix of the hosts. They're simply varieties of the same brand of soy yogurt. It's as if all the marketing 'cool hunters' got together in a conference room, sent out for Red Bull and Listerine mint strips, and brainstormed into the night to create a channel appealing to MTV viewers looking for a little extra somethin'-somethin'. Current TV doesn't have shows per se; it runs first-personal nonfiction featurettes called 'pods' in heavy rotation.

"And I do mean heavy. The channel only launched yesterday and I've already seen snippets of the pod about the young hip pretty female minister four times while channel-surfing. Who's going to sit and watch a channel where the same segments are repeated like hotel in-house informercials?"

So, can we now officially call him Al Snore, or would Al Bore be better? The full post here.



(image via scu.edu)

In: Summer Reading. There never isn't a time that The Corsair isn't involved in some book, however slowly --in winter -- the pace. So far this summer, The Corsair has barreled through Harry Potter and the Half Prince (In one sitting), Somerset Maugham's Theater, Simone Simmons' dishy Diana: The Last Word (A must read for those who want to know what really went down between Di and JFK, Jr), Katherine Harrison's super-intense Envy (Couldn't put it down), and am currently sloughing through John Irving's Until I Find You, and Maria Fairweather's Madame de Stael biography, which David Patrick Columbia hipped me to a few weeks ago. The Corsair recommends all of these books. In today's Observer, Tom Wolfe weighs in on his summer reading, saying:

"The Abs Diet by David Zinczenko. Here's the thing: I never really had sharply defined abs, even when I was an athlete. I always wanted them to look like a cobblestone street. That was before six-packs; they didn't have six-packs, but they did have cobblestone streets. My wife said, 'You have cobblestone streets, but they've been paved over.'"

Charmed, we're sure.