Psychology

Talking to Michael about Spitzer and to other people, I am struck by how different the public persona I had met was from the public Spitzer persona that others knew.

I was only in several social situations with Spitzer and spoke to him only a couple of times. Yet during those public "private" appearances (they were at closed events) I was able to observe the man.

What did I take away? Even though the man knew how to commandeer a room and appeared to have a hyper-social personality, Eliot Spitzer struck me as a very private, very shy man.

Yes, it's shocking to hear since so many describe him as powerful, intense and overwhelming. Which I don't disagree with. It's just that if you got physically a bit too close to him (as it happened to me a couple of times) he would get very quiet and, what struck me about him was that he couldn't look at me straight into my eyes.

And as I was telling my husband, I've packed on some serious poundage, so it's not that I am looking babealicious these days. Yet I noticed that Spitzer was actually shyish in a nerdy way. At least to me, he wasn't that overwhelming as other people have described him.

Make of that what you wish.

This comes via Media Matters:

During the February 19 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly took a call from a listener who said of Michelle Obama, "I just wanted to say that I think Michelle Obama is an angry woman -- is speaking, I think, with her real voice for the first time." O'Reilly and his callers were discussing Obama's recent comments, which included her assertion that "[f]or the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." When O'Reilly asked the caller, whom he identified as "Maryanne," "You're basing that on what?" she replied: "Well your representative asked me not to talk about this, but I have a friend who had knowledge of her and said to me months ago, 'This is a very angry,' her word was 'militant woman.' " O'Reilly then responded, "What I want you to do then, Maryanne ... I want you to stay on the line. ... Because it's not fair to Michelle Obama for you ... because we don't know who you are, and we don't know who your friend is, but we want to know. We want to know, OK. But it's not fair at this point for you to say, 'My friend said X and Y,' because we just don't know. But if you would give us your information, we would like to talk to your friend. And then whatever your friend tells us, we'll track it down. We'll do it in a fair and balanced and methodical way." He later added, "If indeed Michelle Obama is angry about something, if she has a history, we would like to know that, and then we can put it into some kind of context so that we can be fair to everybody."

Oh yes, there is more ...

Pam Spaulding alerted me to the demotardic shenanigans of Andrew Cuomo. My quick response is ending up being a larger piece on race, so let me just get the news out first.

Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General for the State of New York and Hillary Clinton supporter, has earned not just a culturekitchen Demotard award. He also gets to hang on his door a Reappropriate "Racism Fairy" badge and enjoy a video prelude from Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing :

Andrew Cuomo (who could easily be played by John Tuturro, the italian guy in the video clip) said of the primary process that, “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference ... all those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.”

A book arrived in the mail, sent by Public Affairs, one of the publishers that Culture Kitchen and Daily Gotham has dealt with before. Based on what I had done with them in the past, they wanted me to reveiw the book. At the time I was excessively busy and had little intention of getting around to it. But, just to be fair, and since I didn't have another book going at that moment, I picked it up for my subway ride to work. Well, I have to admit that it was inevitable that it would grab me. So here I am reviewing it.

The book is The Political Brain, by Drew Westen. It is no surprise that it grabbed me since it combines two of my obsessions: politics (particularly liberal politics) with science (psychology and neurosciences). More to the point, it takes the concept of "framing" and explains why framing is so necessary, and takes it one step further. The Political Mind is a must read for each and every Democratic campaign out there and it explains in no uncertain terms why Democrats, despite having a voter registration advantage, being better at governing, having better ideas, and, in general, better sharing the values of the average American, lose elections to Republicans whose ideas are atrocious and whose values consist of blind greed, corruption and cronyism.

Sometimes the best person for the job is not the best candidate. In fact very often the best person for the job is NOT the winning candidate. This is a flaw in any democratic system that is probably unavoidable. People win because they are considered appealing by voters, not because they are qualified. If all it took to win was the best resume and skills, Gore would have won by a landslide and Bill Richardson would be a shoe in.