Lefty Marin.
Chicago media’s most notorious journalistic lefty who, inexplicably has a career arm-lock on key newspaper-TV outlets, Carol Marin (Sun-Times columnist, NBC 5 and WTTW-11 interviewer) has struck again…this time in a Sun-Times column linking former GOP vice presidential nominee and ex-Alaska governor Sarah Palin with Rod Blagojevich, impeached former Illinois governor who’s indicted and awaiting trial for mail fraud, solicitation of bribery.
It’s Marin’s lowest gutter job since she vindictively and falsely accused the National Rifle Association of conspiring with the Center for Disease Control to obscure and/or hide statistics on children killed with firearms…a column she had to retract totally and apologize for, the column being withdrawn from the newspaper’s website to avoid a lawsuit.
No one at the apparently rudderless Sun-Times has the taste or power to edit Marin’s stuff, which reads what it truthfully is: a diatribe written by an embittered portside ideologue in the same category…but assuredly not the same league…as Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, dotty as she has become, who wrote last week she distinctly feels Congressman Joe Wilson meant “You lie, BOY!” except that he didn’t say “boy.” Dowd is going over the edge but at least she hasn’t rivaled Marin in vitriol—yet.
“Let’s just say it,” Marin’s column yesterday began, “Rod Blagojevich is Sarah Palin.” Marin thinks the impeached and indicted Blagojevich is the same as Palin because the former Alaska governor is writing a book, as did Blagojevich.
See? That’s all Marin has to show that they’re identical: Blagojevich wrote a book and Palin is working on one.
Everything else, though, between Blagojevich and Palin is dissimilar.
Marin thinks Palin is identical with Norma Desmond, the overage silent film actress in her late `60s played by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 Billy Wilder classic “Sunset Boulevard.” Swanson was shown as aging and over-the-hill: in fact slightly demented (“tell Mr. DeMille I’m ready for my closeup!”).
Actually, Swanson (born on the North Side and who as a teen-ager took tickets at a movie-house on Lincoln avenue near Saint Alphonsus church and who vaguely knew my father who was exactly her age) was only 51 when the film was made—a couple of years younger, I would imagine, than Marin is now (talk about over-the-hill). Ergo: what is comparative is Swanson’s age then and Marin’s…but I daresay Marin has Swanson topped by at least a decade.
Moreover, Palin is 45, had a baby last year…had the moral courage to go ahead with the birth of a Down Syndrome baby when the secular world would want her to abort… and as presidential candidates go…and she is an incipient one by modern polling measurement…is just a kid, a colt, a yearling, with at least 20 more years ahead of her where she could reasonably be a candidate. Which means in her chosen profession, public service, she has a lot more years in her than Marin has in hers…unless Marin wants to equal the dean of the White House press corps--Helen Thomas of Hearst who just marked her 89th birthday. But the more I think of it, talk about similarities, I definitely think there’s several between Thomas and Marin.
Thomas says that of all the presidents in U. S. history, George W. Bush was the worst because he launched the preemptive strike on Iraq. That seems to square with Marin. Thomas has said that “what else should a reporter be but liberal?” That’s in synch with Marin. But there similarities end. Thomas used to be—and maybe still is--a very good reporter: Marin never was. She was an anchor who read the words of others. When she started writing her own stuff, she got into trouble. Watch and see, as she continues she’s bound to get in more-and-more.
Flurry of Establishment Candidates.
As I have said many times previously, I am for State Sen. Kirk Dillard for the Republican nomination for governor because (a) his record on conservative social issues squares with mine—his steady support of pro-life and his gutsy introduction of conceal-carry, (b) I believe that there’s something to be said…despite the mythology…that experience in office deserves high consideration and (c) that when you add these things to the need of one to be elected, it is wise when considering one for high office to know how he has worked out in lesser office. I have never supported a candidate for office who has pleased me in all things, including a governor for whom I loyally worked. At any rate, I don’t want to encourage a debate about this—this is simply where I stand.
Having said that, I think there might well be diminished odds against my favorite candidate. His general mien on other issues tends to be moderate (which doesn’t disturb me unduly) but he now faces competitors who may lay claim to his constituency. Bob Schillerstrom, the DuPage board chairman is pro-choice but on other things may bite into Dillard’s following. And now the entry of Andy McKenna, Jr. may also do this—although McKenna is by no means a proven commodity and has a track record of failure in the political posts he has held barring money-raising. His race for the Senate nomination was dismal given that he spent a Chinese ransom to get his name across. His state chairmanship was very mediocre in a post that demanded vibrant leadership.
Yet McKenna is obviously prepared to spend another fortune in his own behalf. That leaves the two brilliantly outspoken conservative candidates...Adam Andrzejewski and Dan Proft. Of these two I prefer Andrzejewski for several reasons (not important to enumerate here) but in fact they may well split the conservative vote in the suburbs and collar counties. That would leave it to Bill Brady to scoop up the leavings. And in answer to one who wrote me saying why didn’t I comment on Brady, I didn’t because I am very opposed to his candidacy. Why when he espouses much of what I believe? Because I remember how he gutted Jim Oberweis…far from a gifted candidate but a fine, decent conservative… the last time and worked…if not concertedly at least wholeheartedly by himself…to give us Topinka for whom I could not vote. All the while, Gidwitz was taking on Topinka the front-runner could have been expected by Brady as well.
The Brady attacks on Oberweis instead of Topinka made me suspicious of this fair-haired, utterly handsome candidate that he might be a kind of “ringer”—extolling views favorable to conservatives but following a strangely divergent course, Another thing I learned about Brady is that he is decidedly not…in my view…on top of the issues. I remember on my radio show when none other than Becky Carroll, an assistant press secretary to Blagojevich, tied him in knots. That almost did it. Then earlier this year, Brady, the self-styled “conservative” when faced with a choice for Senate GOP leader voted for Christine Radogno, the darling of Personal PAC, as pro-abort as they come. There—THAT did it. There are other reservations I have beyond these things that are not for elucidation here…but suffice to say Brady would be my very last…and I mean very last…choice.
But the calculus of the Republican primary as now stands leads me to think that Brady has a distinct chance…coming as the only candidate from downstate…to grab it all. Not certain, of course. And it depends on the intensity of the campaign which really hasn’t gone public sufficiently yet.
These are my thoughts. Your comments? By the way, about Topinka. I once thought I’d oppose her for anything she runs for in the future. I have decided that she does bring a certain following to the ticket and that she can’t do much harm, at age 65, running for Controller. So let her ride in all the Gay Rights parades she wants to since that’s her style. I didn’t say I’d vote for her, understand…I’d just be content to let her be.
Now…time to go to bed.
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