Tales from the American Oligarchy

Los oligargas y "patricios" están en todas partes... ¿Hasta cuando todo este conchabeo elitista?

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whose main qualification has always been her willingness to stay married to the neoliberal womanizer Bill Clinton (and to keep using his brand name), will become Secretary of State, based of course on her excellent judgment and high moral standards as exemplified by her unapologetic support for the criminal war of aggression against Iraq. Now that her seat is to be vacated, Caroline Kennedy, whose main qualification is that she is the daughter of a former womanizing President, wants to be named to the New York Senate seat. That journalists, opinion makers, and ordinary citizens do not laugh in her face at the very idea tells us everything we need to know about the oligarchy in America.

And, of course, we're not done yet with the clan of Bush cretins and miscreants.

As if on cue, the New York Times, longtime aider and abettor of the oligarchy, weighs in:

"She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. Yet Caroline Kennedy’s decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012.

Already, some columnists, bloggers and even potential colleagues in Congress have begun asking if she would be taken seriously if not for her surname.

(Only "some"?)

Representative Gary Ackerman, a Queens Democrat, told a radio host on Wednesday that he did not know what Ms. Kennedy’s qualifications were, “except that she has name recognition — but so does J. Lo.”

(I suggest Ackerman be appointed)

Aside from a 22-month, three-day-a-week stint as director of strategic partnerships for the New York City schools, her commitments generally involve nonprofit boards: the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., the American Ballet Theater, the Commission on Presidential Debates and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

But friends and associates say that Ms. Kennedy, 51, is no dilettante, and that her career is replete with examples of the kind of hands-on policy work and behind-the-scenes maneuvering that could serve her well."

That's precious, her "friends" support her. I wonder whether the reporter who wrote this article felt any unease about writing this article as though there were really "two sides" to this debate?

Brian Leiter in "A Philosophy Blog"