Cheat Sheet
The Best In Brief
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Let the last minute media blitz begin. Obama opens with a bunker buster of a broadcast, splashing out for his own half-hour TV special on CBS—in prime time, no less. The Live Feed reports that Obama has bought the 8 p.m. block on October 29 and is in talks with NBC and Fox, as well. Once such large buys were commonplace—Reagan delivered a famous half-hour rallying call for Goldwater—though more recent campaigns have saved cash by focusing on local TV stations in battleground states. This cycle's presidential candidates, in particular McCain, have taken advantage of the power of the web by creating headline-grabbing ads that end up running exclusively on the web or on just a few TV stations. They also splurged millions of dollars on NBC during the Olympics. Now is the time to empty the war chest, which means all eyes will be on the September fund-raising tally, which is expected to be a record-setter for Obama.
After months of expectations-lowering, Democrats are beginning to smile in public. They aren’t just eyeing a Barack Obama victory on Nov. 4 but a landslide, The Politico reports. Obama stands poised to win red states like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio, which could push him over 350 votes in the Electoral College. The real news here: Clinton pollsters/Obama skeptics like Mark Penn are beginning to come out of the woodwork and predict the huge win. Naturally, Penn is quick to add that external “events” have conspired to hand the election to Obama, rather than chalking it up to the Obama’s campaign wizardry.
So conservative strategy does exist! David Frum cuts through the froth his colleagues at the National Review have whipped themselves into over Bill Ayers: "We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign … that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters." The Atlantic's Ross Douthat jumps onboard, suggesting that McCain move forward with what he calls "aggressive pandering to the middle class." A McCain victory is unlikely either way, Douthat says, but such a strategy at least "has the virtue of actually addressing itself to the massive, massive anxieties that Americans are experiencing at the moment, as opposed to addressing itself to issues that voters, I suspect, perceive as tangential at best."
Stressed much? The Daily Mail provides the ideal distraction today, in the form of Angelina Jolie’s breast. The actress’ life partner, Brad Pitt, shot a “tasteful” and “demure” photograph of Jolie breastfeeding one of the twins for the cover of the November issue of W magazine (Vivienne or Knox, it’s not clear). True, the portrait shows less than half a breast and a tiny hand peeking above it, but on the eve of the financial apocalypse, what more could you wish for? The November issue of W hits newsstands on October 21. Happy peeking!
Rumors have been circulating that Banksy, the stealth graffiti artist from London, is in New York for weeks, and now comes the proof: Behold the self-dipping chicken nugget. That creature is one of many in The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, Banksy’s new installation in Greenwich Village. Others include swimming fish sticks, robotic monkeys, and squirming hot dogs. “I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming,” Banksy said in a statement, “but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing.” Consider it another nail in understatement’s coffin.
After a 40-year hiatus, Beatles-bashing returns in all its glory today. In a new study, Cambridge historian David Fowler argues that the Fab Four didn’t do much for the shaggy youth but exploit it through "fan worship, mindless screaming" and the creation of a "passive teenage consumer." Like the Rolling Stones, Fowler says the Beatles weren't interested in being a mouthpiece for their generation—they were interested in selling records. Fowler’s shocking conclusion: the Beatles "did about as much to represent the interests of the nation's young people as the Spice Girls did in the 1990s."
French pretension update: Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's art director, is facing what The London Times calls charges of "cultural prostitution, populism [!], and debasing the ideals of this most august of institutions." Loryette’s offense? “Picasso and the Masters,” a new exhibition that will display Picasso's work alongside that of Goya, Velazquez, and Delacroix in three different museums, including the Louvre. The chairman of the Society of Friends of the Louvre called the masses who will visit the museum "a cancer" who will "visit the Louvre like they'd visit Chernobyl." If Goya succeeds in putting butts in the seats, who knows what travesty could be next?
It seems like only yesterday that we found out Barack Obama and Lynne Cheney were distant relatives. Now comes word that Sarah Palin, the pride of Wasilla, is related to both Princess Di and FDR, according to an article in The Daily Telegraph. Ancestry.com says Palin is the ninth cousin once removed of Roosevelt, whose domestic agenda, shall we say, was slightly different than hers. Palin and Princess Diana are both related to John Strong, born in 1605 in England, who later moved to the United States. If they start calling Palin America’s princess, genealogy will have gone too far.
The latest chapter in the never-ending bailout: The Treasury Department is now considering taking an ownership stake in banks in order to unfreeze credit markets, reports The New York Times. The move, which is allowed by the $700 billion bailout, would inject capital directly into the banks, although it's unclear, at this point, how exactly it would work. Economists hope that such a move would directly relieve banks' worries about lending to consumers and each other. "We need to eliminate that uncertainty as fast as we can," said one free-market Republican, "and one way to do that is by injecting capital directly into banks."
Marie Claire had landed exclusives with both potential first ladies. Cindy McCain’s guilty pleasure? Movies. And her iPod. “I’ll tell you a little secret,” she says. “We were on the way to the emergency room for my arm the other day, and we passed by a BlackBerry store. And I swear I almost made them pull over.” Michelle Obama’s vices are “French fries and barbecue!” We guess they’d get their husbands in trouble if they admitted to, say, leather. In any case, Cindy’s discussion of her daughter Bridget Googling herself and finding out that she had become an issue in the 2000 campaign makes the interviews worth a read.
Witness the spectacle of British theater going up itself: A London theater company is using the Holocaust as the backdrop for a play about the redemptive power of—you guessed it—theater. The Telegraph reports that Imagine This is the story of "a family of actors who has to convince the ghetto community that a simple play is worth performing when they are fighting for survival." The show’s director, hoping to capture the magic of Les Mis, "promised that audiences would not emerge from the musical depressed, but enthused." Just in case they are moved to have the opposite reaction, we suggest coming armed with tomatoes.
Twenty-eight million Americans woke up to find a DVD about radical Islam in their newspapers recently. Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was included in 70 papers (including some editions of The New York Times) as an advertisement, but critics contend it was outright propaganda. The DVD showed clips of extremists in Middle Eastern countries chanting choruses of "Death to America." Since then, people who endorsed the film have been edging away—like Howard Gordon, executive producer of 24. The movie is the pet project of the Clarion Fund, a non-profit that has not divulged information about its funding or its board. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has asked the FEC and the IRS to investigate.
Towering over host Jon Stewart, Michelle Obama hit The Daily Show after a few months of relative obscurity. On Bill Ayers, she told Stewart, “There are plenty of people who are involved in education, Republicans and Democrats, who know Bill Ayers.” And that was that. On her skepticism of Barack: “I tell him, ‘If I don’t believe you, I’m not voting for you, buddy.’” Best exchange: Michelle: “I’ve stopped reading and watching a lot of stuff.” Stewart: “So you’re a lot like Sarah Palin.” Obama: “Perhaps…”
Need proof that the economic crisis has gone global? Bloomberg reports that the financial meltdown has now penetrated Siberia, where Russian farmers may need to repay up to $10 billion in loans by year's end. The crunch threatens an agricultural revival whose contributions, the United Nations says, are needed to avert a world food shortage. No word yet if Sarah Palin can see signs of the shortage from her home in Alaska.
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