In: Martin Wolfe. The Financial Times columnist Martin Wolfe, who was on Fareed Zakaria's GPS -- the best show on foreign policy on television, btw -- furthered his reputation as one of the most important financial columnists writing on the global economic crisis today. Unfortunately, he was grim ("The private sector is in free fall"). "The shrinkage of world output is terrifying," he told Zakaria, starting things off on a grim note. Of the Obama stimulus plan -- of which he has been sharply critical, calling it "too small" -- he said: "I fear now that this tremendously important opportunity to turn things around has been lost."
Out: The Jonas Brothers. What happened? It was 3-D, which is, supposedly, the future of movies (Cause Spielberg said so). It was new fare in a slow week of new releases. It was Jonas, Joy of Tweens Desiring. From DeadlineHollywoodDaily:
"The bottom dropped out of Disney's Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience to Hollywood's immense surprise. What were weekend predictions of as much as $30 million and even $40 million had to be revised down, down, down as it opened to $4.8M Friday and then $4.7M Saturday for only a $12.7M weekend with Sunday's estimate of $3M. 'Concert pics usually look better on paper than they actually are because the fans drive tracking but it doesn't go beyond fans,' one marketing guru told me. Of course, you have to remember that it's playing in just 1,271 3-D theaters, and even so it was the 2nd highest grossing concert pic of all time with a big per screen average of $9,992. 'Many had unrealistic expectations for this pic. But they forget the coup that Disney pulled off on Hannah Montana 3-D,' a rival studio exec told me. That's because the latter was a "one week lock" engagement."
In: Running Against Limbaugh. Howard Kurtz Tweets: "Robert Gibbs just took another whack at Limbaugh. WH strategy is clearly to run against Rush. Which only builds him up." Clearly the White House has found a method to guard against the possibility of being outflanked by the right on his stimulus package: run against Rush "I Hope Obama Fails" Limbaugh. The American political right is in disarray after the 2008 election and the trouncing they received in the legacy demographic -- 18-34 -- countrywide. Since then, no single person has emerged as the clear leader. Mitt Romney is a thoroughly competent executive, but seems a generation too old after Obama; his time may have come and gone. Governor Jindal probably destroyed his chances after his disasterous response to the stimulus(although the verdict is still out). And Sarah Palin is a godawful embarrassment to all but the most tribal, feral paleocons (besides, what the fuck does Palin know about stimulus packages anyway?).
So what is President Obama to do? Invent an enemy. And in inventing an enemy it is best to make him politically clumsy. Enter: Limbaugh, who could easily have tilted the 2008 GOP primary in the direction of Romney, the conservative, with a clear endorsement (he didn't). Instead, Limbaugh was, quite frankly, too irresponsible to shape the future of his own party. As a result, McCain won the primary and lost the election, leaving his beloved party on the brink of ruin.
If Rush Limbaugh didn't exist, to paraphrase the old saying, president Obama would have to invent him.
No comments:
Post a Comment