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Sarah Palin Defends Miss California Carrie Prejean--Why?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2009 Comment (22)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The weighty issue of Sarah Palin's position on Carrie Prejean has finally been resolved: Alaska's most famous beauty queen approves of California's. Not a surprise in and of itself, but I still wonder, why weigh in?
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Miss California Faces Donald Trump's Judgment, But the Media is the Big Loser
Tweet Share on Facebook May 12, 2009 Comment (20)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I've felt a measure of sympathy this morning for my colleagues in the media as they have had to treat the impending fate of Miss California as if it was a very serious story. There is an MSNBC anchor quizzing a former Miss Rhode Island about the propriety of political questions in pageants (not to mention whether there are double-standards at work: Miss Rhode Island posed in Maxim—but, crucially, disclosed her exposure).
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As Miss California Turns: The Devil, Donald Trump, and James Dobson Weigh In
Tweet Share on Facebook May 11, 2009 Comment (14)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's something about the ongoing saga of Miss California beyond the fact of (depending on your view) a vapid beauty queen voicing homophobic platitudes or the upstanding woman being sleazily attacked for nothing more than expressing her moral convictions.
Maybe the fascination with Carrie Prejean, the maybe-not-for-long Miss California, is related to the increasingly bizarre neo-reality TV quality that has descended upon the quote-unquote controversy. Where else could one find Satan, Donald Trump, and a beauty queen in trouble for both dressing skimpily and for lobbying on behalf of heterosexual marriage?
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Star Trek Marks a Shift in the National Mood
Tweet Share on Facebook May 8, 2009 Comment (12)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The national mood can be traced in some ways by the movies the country produces and consumes.* I wonder if we won't look back in a few years and see in Star Trek the demarcation of a new such era.
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MoveOn.org to Specter: Be a Democrat or Be Gone in a Primary
Tweet Share on Facebook May 8, 2009 Comment (10)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Arlen Specter left the GOP under threat of a primary threat from the right and with the understanding (he said) that he would retain seniority. First we learned that he'll have to wait on seniority (and as one of the TV talking heads observed, what makes him think that 85 percent of his Democratic colleagues will, in effect, vote to reduce their own seniority by honoring his?).
Now MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group that brought you the Democratic primary defeat of the unsinkable Joe Lieberman, has released the results of a new poll and ad threatening Specter with...a primary from the left.
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Do Obama and Miss California Have the Same Position on Gay Marriage? Sort of.
Tweet Share on Facebook May 4, 2009 Comment (124)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I was at a, err, opposite-sex wedding over the weekend when one of the guests asked me, presumably as the member of the MSM on hand, why Carrie Prejean, Miss California, gets lambasted for being anti-gay marriage, while Barack Obama, the president of the United States, gets a free pass while having essentially the same position.
The answer lies in tone and nuance.
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Gay Marriage Advances in Maine, New Hampshire as Conservative Rhetoric Evolves
Tweet Share on Facebook May 1, 2009 Comment (31)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I noted with satisfaction that Maine's senate passed a gay marriage bill this week. So too did the New Hampshire senate. Whether the two lower chambers will pass the accompanying bills is unclear (New Hampshire's house passed a slightly different version, so they have to address it again), and whether the governors would sign the bills is also not known (Maine's governor used to be opposed but now says he may be open to the experience). As Josh Marshall points out, it may be that we've reached some sort of societal tipping point on this issue—I can only hope so.
Another measure of where we've come on the issue can be found in this post on NRO's The Corner, referring to the Maine legislation:
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3 Things You Need to Know About the Souter Supreme Court Vacancy
Tweet Share on Facebook May 1, 2009 Comment (5)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There have been a number of good takes on the Souter retirement announcement today. Here are points on three angles I thought were most interesting/perceptive:
