Democrats need look no further. Their four-month search for a viable corporate strategy can come to end. They now have the National Hockey League to emulate. A season on the brink has become a season canceled. The NHL’s finest have taken their skills abroad, particularly to the former Soviet Union where professional hockey’s Arctic and Tundra divisions report constant shortages of warm-blooded skating talent. Democrats could do their part by shoring up Russia’s democratic lines. Wouldn’t Nancy Pelosi look cute in fur? Harry Reid as an icebox vendor? Comrade Hillary as league commissar? Let’s all go with them.
On second thought, let’s make sure Temple’s basketball Trotsky, John Chaney, isn’t sentenced to join them, an object lesson in Crime and Punishment. Last year he flirted with treason as he joined forces with a group called “Coaches for Kerry.” Flames flared from his nostrils when he spoke about President Bush. As one report put it, “‘I hope and pray that Sen. Kerry just crushes this guy,’ he boomed, ‘and I’ll do anything possible to help assure that it happens.'” When John Kerry proved an inadequate enforcer, Chaney turned to one of his own “goons.” With Bush nowhere in sight, Chaney’s stooge did everything possible to crush opposing players as if they were getting out the vote for the GOP. One of them ended up with a broken arm, his career over. Chaney has been suspended and may be forced to resign. A plea bargain might land him in Siberia, though he really should be running the Coaches for Kerry Clinic at Guantanamo Bay.
Ronald Reagan’s star continues to rise beyond infinity. Time was when the powers that be would ridicule his every utterance. They especially slapped knees whenever they heard him refer to Bolshevism’s St. Vladimir contemptuously as “Nikolai” Lenin. A 1983 New York Times story, for instance, corrected Reagan by turning to Dr. Robert Allen, area specialist for Russia and the Soviet Union at the Library of Congress, for confirmation that Lenin’s first name was indeed Vladimir. But that was then. Now comes the Washington Post, reporting on the effort of conservative bolsheviks to storm Social Security’s winter palace, a move reporter Jeffrey Birnbaum writes is modeled on “Nikolai Lenin’s effort to undermine capitalism.” Log in to MediaMatters.org as it chides Mr. Birnbaum and the Post for succumbing to a Reaganite bias.
Dana Milbank is another Postie having trouble keeping his factoids straight. On Sunday he noted that USA Next’s fabulous and friendly AARP ad ran on “the American Spectator’s Website for a few minutes last week…” A few minutes? Heck, Enemy Central alone spent the better part of four days ogling the photograph at the heart of recent discussion. Then, again, time flies when you’re sharing bliss.
More disturbing is that progressive forces in our midst found themselves deeply troubled by a photograph depicting two elegantly dressed men at a wedding. Is it fair to expect nuptials to be restricted exclusively to women? It would appear that these same forces are still paying the price for the job they did on the inventive Jeff Gannon. On finding that he may be many of the things they are, they John Chaneyed him. Certainly they knew exactly where to look. But Gannon’s not one to go on any disabled list. Already he’s announced that he intends to appear at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which otherwise is wanting for star attractions this year, unless Dana Milbank is your cup of tea. We’re hoping he’s good sport enough to jump out of a cake at Barney Frank’s next birthday bash.
Barney Frank, the hero of Davos, deserves to be feted for saving the world from Eason Jordan. And thus from David Gergen, who would empty a Correspondents’ Dinner faster than a fire marshal. Jordan can only be described as a fool, falling in love with one Sharon Stone just as she decides she’s at a point in her life at which women might be more attractive. But Gergen is something else entirely. He’s been oozing sycophancy on behalf of privilege since at least the reign of Louis XVI, finding time eventually to put in a good word for Robespierre while serving as Talleyrand’s gofer. But whereas the last survived purely to give cynicism a place at the table, Gergen always does so in the name of morality. So at Davos he famously suggested Mr. Jordan had “walked himself back” from the poison he’d planted, as if dropping the big one were the equivalent of tossing a water-filled balloon.
Needless to say, Gergen’s intervention was about successful as Putin’s in Ukraine. Undeterred, he returned to the U.S. in time to inject himself into the Harvard wars, this time with a call of unpalatable advice to its Jeff Gannon, one Lawrence Summers. A leading critic of Summers had said she had to leave the room on hearing what he’d said, lest she threw up. Thanks to EOW Dave Gergen, we know the feeling.
