Caroline Kennedy Asks to be Time's Person of the Year Andy Borowitz
Caroline Kennedy would like to be considered Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2009 and has let the magazine's editor know of her interest in the honor, aides to Ms. Kennedy confirmed today.
While some observers considered Ms. Kennedy's bid to be premature, especially since 2009 has not officially begun, aides to the New York senatorial aspirant said that it reflected her view that 2009 will be a very big year for her.
"I think Caroline's calling Time magazine and asking to be put on the cover shows just what a tireless worker she is," said cousin Kerry Kennedy. "When she really wants something, she's not afraid to roll up her sleeves and make a phone call."
Her cousin said that having witnessed Caroline's work ethic, she has no doubt that she is deserving of Time's highest honor: "I can't tell you how many times she's gotten the wrong number, been put on hold, or had calls dropped altogether."
In addition to the Person of the Year honors, Kerry Kennedy said that Caroline had also expressed an interest in next year's Nobel Peace Prize.
"That's a call she hasn't made yet," Ms. Kennedy said. "She has to figure out the time difference in Oslo."
Researchers recently announced the results of a study about dogs and fairness that sheds new light on the auto industry bailout debate.
Trust me. There’s going to be a connection. But first, the scientific news: Folks at the University of Vienna conducted a test in which dogs were asked to shake hands over and over and over again. If you have any experience with dogs, you will not be surprised to hear that they were absolutely delighted. And they didn’t care about being paid! The opportunity to perform the same trick endlessly with a stranger in a white coat was reward enough.
Then the researchers brought in new dogs that were given a piece of bread as a reward for every handshake. The uncompensated dogs watched, lost their innate love of mindless repetition and grew sullen.
“They get so mad that they look at you and just don’t give you the paw anymore,” said Friederike Range, one of the scientists.
So O.K. Dogs are secretly obsessed with fairness. (And bread. Who knew?)
Now, let’s turn our attention to the U.S. Senate where a plan to bail out the auto industry went down the drain Thursday night. It was a stopgap measure, not necessarily the best bill in the world — although it did pass my own personal quality-control test, which is to find out what Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama thinks and go the other way.
But its defeat doesn’t bode well for our prospects in coming up with a sensible response to the current economic unpleasantness. And the debate had an unnerving number of complaints about who was getting more than whom.
“We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out,” said Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
Some Democrats denounced the bill because they said that it was unfair that the union workers were getting dumped on while a lot of the Wall Street fat cats got to keep their golden parachutes. Republicans complained that it was unfair that General Motors paid its workers more than Toyota or Honda does. Many senators took the DeMint line and wanted to know what made the autoworkers’ jobs more important than the home builders or waitresses who were getting laid off, too.
There were so many fairness arguments that you really did expect Harry Reid to start walking down the aisle dropping pieces of toast in peoples’ mouths.
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri threatened to vote against the bill because somebody had stuck in a provision giving federal judges a cost-of-living raise while other Americans were going without Christmas presents. “And my phone is ringing off the hook, Mr. President,” she said, “from people who want to be federal judges.” (Funny. My phone is ringing off the hook from people who want to be the U.S. senator from Illinois.)
If you took the long view of the pay raise for judges, you’d have to say that: 1) they deserve it; 2) now isn’t the best time; and 3) making a statement on the timing is not quite as important as saving several hundred thousand auto-related jobs. But in the end, the judge provision was dropped, the bill died anyway and the Bush administration will have to do something to keep the automakers afloat until Barack Obama becomes president. Which, although I know it’s hard to believe, is eventually going to happen.
The really hard lifting still lies ahead, and we cannot possibly do it if we’re going to dwell too much on the fairness thing. It’s just too easy for lawmakers to dodge the tough vote by reminding their constituents that somebody else is getting more breaks than they are.
Which somebody always is. If Senator DeMint’s constituents are going to riot over a bailout for the auto industry, they’ll wind up being met by tool-and-die makers waving torches and yelling about soybean subsidies. If the lawmakers from Alabama say their constituents do not want their tax money going to bail out Michigan, the people in Michigan are going to say that they never really enjoyed paying more taxes to the federal government than their state received in aid, while Alabama got a return of $1.61 on the dollar. And anytime a representative from the Great Plains opens his mouth, the people from New York are going to point out that while every state gets the same number of senators, there are more people waiting for a subway in Brooklyn in rush hour than inhabit all of Wyoming.
We can really get tiresome on the subject. You don’t want to go there.
Any mammal can obsess about fairness. (Did I mention how ticked off monkeys get if they find out they’re getting cucumbers while somebody in the next cage has a grape?) The real human trick is to get past the quid pro quo and try to focus on the common good.
Set a better example, guys. It’s two years until the next election.
I have a question for all those working-class Democrats - especially the ones employed directly or indirectly by the U.S. auto industry - who in the 80s became so-called "Reagan Democrats" and voted Republican for the next twenty years. The question is this: Given the "fuck you" attitude being contemptuously displayed by Senate Republicans where it concerns a rescue plan for your industry, your job, your life, how do you feel now about your abandonment of the Democratic Party?
Huh? Got an answer? Nothing deep. Just a quick sentence or two would do. I mean, how does it feel to have spent all those years voting your bigotry and your willful political ignorance and your sheep-like need to be manipulated by the thugs who infest right-wing talk radio, and now that your whole life is collapsing because of the policies of these Republicans (who never gave a shit about you anyway) you get to watch and listen as they kick you and your family to the curb and say, naw, we don't think the "taxpayers" wanna bail out the auto industry; we don't care if another three or four million more families head for the homeless shelters and food stamp offices.
Seriously. I'm just curious. Because, you know, there were a whole clutch of us on the near left (we were called liberals) who warned about this happening; who screamed and beat our fists on the floor for years and said to our fellow Democrats, don't be fooled, don't buy the lies, stay in the Democratic Party, fight for your rights, your families, your jobs. If the Democratic Party need reforming, stay and do it. Don't get sucked into the abyss created by Republicans who want to see you and your kids and your spouses and your dreams shredded, ripped to pieces by their insatiable greed and their hot-blooded insistence on turning this country hard right, neofascist, ugly, divided.
And, so, here we are today, right? While you are being eaten alive with anxiety and fear and uncertainty about the immediate future, a bunch of these slimy, stinking Republicans are refusing to allocate a miserable 15 billion - the cost of a few of weeks of death and destruction in Iraq - in an attempt put together by those Democrats you willingly abandoned in the 80s to save your industry. Arrogant bottom-feeders like Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, sounding like he had a mouthful of grits and boiled owl shit, tells the press, naw, he ain't goin' along with no bail-out plan cuz then whut? Those boys'll jest be back with their hands out next March and our beloved taxpayers ain't gonna go fer this.
Jesus god. How do you do it? How do you support these right-wing vermin election after election? How many times do they have to bleed you dry before you realize their game? What are you getting in return? Laws that stop the queers from getting married? Bullshit talk about the sanctity of marriage? Phony-ass tax cuts that never, ever benefit you? The right to stop a woman from getting an abortion if she feels it's necessary? What in god's name is it?
Well, never mind. Don't answer. Don't waste the energy you're going to need in figuring out how you're going to survive in an economy that was designed in the Reagan years to utterly bankrupt every single social safety net put in place over the last 75 years. They're nearly all gone now. Soon to be completely useless. Bankrupt. Empty. So . . . how does it feel? Are you satisfied? Happy? Feel like your team won?
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