(I apologize in advance for linking to anything from TMZ.com. I promise that I will do my best to avoid it in the future.)
You know that anytime you have to use the words “Clay Aiken” and “artificial insemination” in the same sentence, something seriously creepy is afoot. But here goes:
Clay Aiken has reportedly impregnated someone via artificial imsemination.
You may think that’s creepy enough as it is, if you’re not a fan of the American Idol Season 2 runner-up. But that’s not even the creepiest part.
The mother is Aiken’s best friend, Jaymes Foster, who has produced several of Aiken’s records. Aiken stays with Foster when he’s in L.A.
Can you imagine what that conversation must have been like?
Ew.
Foster is 50.
Aiken is 29.
I know that doesn’t matter when it comes to artificial insemination, but I mention it because, as TMZ.com so delicately puts it, “Clay is a lot more than sperm.“
That’s TMZ-speak for, Aiken will have an active role in raising the child, who is due in August.
Can I just point out right now that this is why I don’t understand why people think my preoccupation with politics is disturbing—especially when they have a preoccupation with things like this?
Clay Aiken is having a child with his best friend and record producer, who is 21 years his senior.
If you read my Wednesday post about Scott McClellan, you know I’m no fan of his—or his book.
White House officials have met news of McClellan’s charges in his book with surprise and measured scorn. From USA Today:
Ari Fleischer, McClellan’s predecessor at the podium, called the book “a wholesale jumping ship.“
Current press secretary Dana Perino said of McClellan’s transformation, “It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.“
“I’m just flabbergasted,“ Trent Duffy, one of McClellan’s former subordinates. “Scott never hinted, whispered, breathed any shred of this when we worked together 2½ years.“
For his part, Bush himself is said to be “puzzled, and he doesn’t recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years.“
But none of that is stopping Bush haters everywhere—including in the popular press—from accepting McClellan’s allegations as Gospel truth. Conservative commentator Rich Galen put it this way:
“When he stood behind that podium, nobody believed a word he said. Now that he’s saying bad things about the president, he’s a Delphic oracle.“
But why the curious, some might even say inexplicable, change of heart from one who was a Texas transplant, one of the original true Bush believers?
Whitney Peeling is the publicity director for McClellan’s publisher. Maybe we have a clue in her breezy brush-off of questions about the book’s six-week delay in hitting the streets.
It “just needed a bit more time,“ she said.
Fleischer talked with McClellan on Tuesday, ahead of the start of McClellan’s publicity tour. Perhaps Fleischer provided us with another clue when he said McClellan’s book used “the language of the other side in a very harsh, accusatory manner.“ In addition, according to USA Today, “Fleischer implied that McClellan’s book became more critical during the editing process. ‘The book changed a lot from the way Scott first described it to me,‘ he said.“
And McClellan “was sheepish,“ Fleischer said. “He was starting to worry that he had crossed the Rubicon, and how bad he was going to feel.“
Why, then, the “critical tone” that USA Today even called “striking?“
Is it “a money-grubbing act of betrayal?“ the newspaper wondered.
Appearing on the Today show yesterday, McClellan dodged a question that might have provided the answer.
Asked why he’s releasing the book now, McClellan stuck to what he says is “the larger message [that] has been sort of lost in the mix,“ what he called “the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C.“
“My hope is that in some small way it might help us from the destructive, partisan warfare from the past 15 years,“ McClellan said.
(Warning: Sarcasm ahead.)
McClellan, completely ignoring the posed question and robotically regurgitating a stale sound bite? That’s not like him at ALL!!!
(End sarcasm)
Whatever his true motivation, whether his conscience or a deflated bank account, McClellan’s final product is pleasing, at least, to his publisher.
“Lots in the works!“ Peeling squealed about the publicity tour, which includes a sit-down with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” at 5 p.m. CST today.
I still say it’s impossible to believe someone who is trying to convince you now that he had lied to you before. Even if he’s telling the truth now (and there’s no way to be sure he is), he’s lost every shred of credibility, so in the end, his “revelation” doesn’t matter, anyway.
The Birmingham News has a good editorial this morning about the state of the education budget. Alabama Education Association godfather and uberlobbyist Paul Hubbert won the battle of the budgets, the News says, as the Senate committee that writes the education budget gave the go-ahead to the Hubbert-approved numbers yesterday during the Legislature’s special session.
Never mind that the universities had banded together to fight the proposed 11 percent cut in their budgets and warned that what the News called “draconian cuts” would likely lead to “staggering tuition hikes” to make up the difference.
As the News says, “So much for principle.“
Wednesday, with the agreement of higher education officials and their Senate supporters, a Senate committee voted 14-0 for an education budget that gives universities $5 million less than they would have gotten under the budget that died May 19.
What gives? Or maybe more accurately, who gives? Teachers’ lobbyist Paul Hubbert once again is getting his way, and punishing those who dared stand up to him.
As the News explains, the budget diverts $5 million from higher education to K-12 transportation costs. And there is the possibility, if only in theory, of more: The budget also includes conditional appropriations for higher education of $30 million—“conditional on the economy being much stronger than forecast,“ the News says.
As for Hubbert?
“It’s enough probably to get their attention, but not enough to be vindictive,“ he said of the new numbers. “It’s kind of a tap on the wrist.“
Is Hubbert trying to sound magnanimous? Is that a joke?
And what’s with the universities? Is this their mantra now:
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Hubbert, wise and generous one, for only tapping us on the wrist. We now see the error of our ways and the futility of fighting against the enduring strength and assured inevitability of your will. We are eternally grateful for your mercy and your willingness to suffer our insolent presence just one (special) session more.“
Notice that no one’s said anything this go-round about tuition hikes. Are those off the table, thanks to the “not-enough-to-be-vindictive” nature of the new budget?
And here are a few questions for Hubbert, whose organization supposedly looks out for the interests of teachers and K-12 education:
How are university tuition hikes good for K-12 teachers? Many of those teachers have college-aged children they are trying to put through school. Don’t cuts to university budgets squeeze those teachers’ household budgets, too?
Don’t university cuts, at the very least, make it more difficult for all K-12 teachers to see their students succeed in higher education, because they have the effect of raising the financial bar that keeps many students from being able to afford college?
And won’t the effect of those university cuts eventually be felt at the K-12 level anyway, since less money means fewer university classes, fewer education graduates and fewer new teachers entering the ranks of K-12 instructors? (And won’t that mean fewer dues for the AEA?)
And all of the preceding leaves aside completely the ramifications to the universities’ programs, efforts to recruit outstanding professors, research capabilities and all the other functions universities serve.
Congratulations, Dr. Hubbert; you’ve won a resounding Pyrrhic victory.
Good luck in the overall war to keep Alabama’s kids competitive with the rest of the country.
The spokesman who defended President Bush’s policies through Hurricane Katrina and the early years of the Iraq war is now blasting his former employers, saying the Bush administration became mired in propaganda and political spin and at times played loose with the truth.
Let me say from the outset, and in fairness, that Scott McClellan held the job of White House spokesman during a difficult—and perhaps the most difficult—period of President Bush’s administration.
OK, I threw him a bone. But now I’m going to beat him with it.
McClellan whines—a lot—about Bush, Bush policies, Bush advisers, the White House cook, Beltway traffic, D.C. weather (yeah, so I made up those last three, but I’m sure they’re in the book somewhere).
The truth is that Scott McClellan was doomed to failure from the start—not because of what he may or may not have known and when he might or might not have known it, but because, as the briefings made clear, he was sorely outmatched in the briefing room.
Here’s the thing about being the press secretary: Whatever your failings, you can’t be weak. And McClellan—for all his protestations of being “deceived” and for all his efforts to blame Bush advisers for his failures, McClellan was weak. Need proof? Watch NBC’s David Gregory kick him around like a hacky sack in this infamous exchange. You almost feel like going and getting the teacher, because the dorky kid is being beaten to a pulp on the playground. Seeing him in a gaggle, I sometimes forgot whether I was watching a post-briefing on C-SPAN or an Animal Planet clip of lions devouring zebras at some remote African watering hole.
(Keep in mind when you watch that clip that McClellan says in his new book that the Press Corps “wasn’t aggressive enough.” I couldn’t disagree more. McClellan suffers from a complete lack of even a rudimentary understanding not only of his role as press secretary, but also of journalists’ roles—and responsibilities—as part of the Corps.)
Bush adviser Fran Townsend pointed out on CNN last night that McClellan never raised any objections about Bush policy while he was part of the administration.
“No one stands on principle and resigns,” Anderson Cooper remarked. “Everyone waits and writes a book.”
Well, not everyone, Anderson.
One of McClellan’s predecessors at the podium was a guy who was renowned for performing well in strenuous circumstances and under fire from a similarly grumpy Press Corps.
I’m talking about former Clinton White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. Feeding the press from 1995 to late 1998, McCurry was simply brilliant before the hungry piranha, earning rave reviews for his apt handling of the Corps. Later in his “term,“ he was charged with talking to journalists in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Faced with an increasing discomfort about having to go before the press with incomplete information, he resigned in October 1998.
White House journalists were – can it be? – downright sad when he left.
But where Scott McClellan whines, “I allowed myself to be deceived” about the Valerie Plame affair, Mike McCurry intentionally kept himself out of the inner circle to avoid being put in a position of having to provide inaccurate information to the press.
See the difference?
And when McCurry left the Clinton White House, guess what he didn’t do?
Actually, this question has multiple right answers. “Write a book,” “Go on a publicity tour,” “Sell out his former boss” and “Try out for the lead in a Benedict Arnold play” would all work.
The unfortunate thing about all this is that McClellan’s criticisms may be right on the money. But he’s developed a track record of – how to say this politely? – being a lying opportunist.
So, which Scott McClellan are we to believe: The one who allowed himself to be deceived and who then peddled those deceptions to the American public through its press? Or the one who now swears he’ll tell you the truth about the Bush White House (for $27.95, of course)?
We already knew from watching him in front of the White House Press Corps that McClellan was witless and hapless. Now, with the release of his book, we can add “sniveling,“ “unprofessional” and “disloyal” to the list. It seems that Bush’s errors in judgment, whatever they may be, now include his assessment of Scott McClellan’s character.
McClellan adds in his new book, “I still like and admire President Bush.”
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the feeling’s not mutual.
