I bet Ben Joravsky or John Kass would be happy to go on Milt Rosenberg and discuss the significance of Barack Obama’s ties to the Chicago Democratic machine, but it’s clearly not as sexy as importing a guy from D.C. to talk about Obama’s tenuous ties to an employee of a city-located state university whom the mayor has actually employed. (To Stanley Kurtz’s credit, he does eventually get around to talking about substance, i.e. Ayers, the Annenberg initiative, and CPS policy–but Milt interrupts him to whine about angry e-mailers.)
I will be very confused if Mayor Daley’s ties to Ayers aren’t making everyone freak out come election season. Confused in a separate, abstract, alternate universe, at least.
The normally sensible Eric Zorn is in a snit–of all things–the backdrop to Obama’s speech: “The faux grandeur of this set will create a distracting controversy and for what reason?” Because they don’t care what once-every-four-years theater critics think? Good for them. Kitschy neoclassicism is far from a radical aesthetic for a politician. It’s tacky, fine, but it’s in considerably better taste than the crucifix the Republicans used four years ago.
Go read this, it’s interesting and significant.
Update: The Washington Post has done some more interesting investigative work on the Obama campaign recently, and here’s another piece; via the Beachwood Reporter.