Caroline Kennedy

This has been hard to watch. I'm very fond of Caroline as a public figure, but she has not managed the public roll-out very well.
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Part of the appeal of being appointed the first time as opposed to running may just be a distaste for the sharp elbows needed to make it in a primary, much less a general election. It's too bad that being able to withstand the vagaries of a campaign is a qualification for public office. That may sound strange, but take Blagojevich for example. Very smooth, very able to say the right thing in public, utterly without value as a public servant - whereas it might be that Kennedy (or some other person) might do an admirable job of managing constituent services and legislating.
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About the only comparison to Sarah Palin that's apt is not managing her verbal tick unsuited to public speaking. If you read a transcript Caroline knows how to put an actual sentence together that means something. That is not true for Sarah Palin.
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v. good article as usual. It's just sad that what you write is true.

What Kathy said. I'm very sympathetic toward CK. It seems like her heart's in the right place, and I suspect I'd like her votes in the Senate (I'm not a New Yorker), but I think she needed to establish herself as a public presence, an advocate before she tried for a Senate seat. She needs to get used to being asked questions, and people need to get used to her.
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As for the comparison to Sarah Palin: Palin's hallmark is her instinct for mean-spirited demagoguery and playing on resentments, fears and hatred. Even her cheerful Quayle-esque ignorance is overshadowed by the fact that she's Father Coughlin in (very expensive) drag.

When Caroline Kennedy gets a tough question she'd rather avoid, she comes across to me as absolutely disgusted with the questioner, the question, and the very idea of having to endure it. Makes my skin crawl and I strongly oppose her appointment.

Digby suggests my preferred appointment candidate --the perfect-for-the-job US Representative Carolyn Maloney:
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If I were a New Yorker, I'd be lobbying for Representative Carolyn Maloney to get the slot. She's been in the congress for 16 years and is an unabashed liberal, feminist woman who has been fighting these battles for decades and knows whereof she speaks. Her recent book is called Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated and it catalogs a list of institutional, political and cultural inequities which are still so embedded in our system that we hardly even know to question them.
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For instance, after 9/11, when the government was putting together its compensation fund, the government was blithely planning to shortchange female victims' families by hundreds of thousands of dollars because they were using discriminatory projected earnings tables that reflected the wage gap. It took a concerted campaign to persuade the government that the earnings estimates that determined the value of the payout should be gender blind. It wasn't a matter of conscious discrimination. They just didn't consider whether it made sense that the family of a woman who made the same salary as a man at the time of her death should be compensated equally. Maloney organized 11 members of the New York delegation to pursue the matter and reverse the policy. (Insurance companies around the country still use those outdated formulas, by the way.)
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And speaking of Wall Street, Maloney compiles some stories about discrimination against women in the financial industry that make your hair stand on end. Morgan Stanley had paid out nearly $100 million in sex discrimination money to many of the top female employees in the past few years. Apparently, as with Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born, the common excuse was that these women just weren't "team players" --- mostly because they weren't welcome at the strip clubs and golf courses where so many of the deals were made. And they just wouldn't get with the program when it came to looking the other way at unethical or reckless practices. (The wimmin are always raining on the parade that way.) Maloney thinks that instead of giving tax deductions to companies for their strip club expenses, most citizens would prefer for that families be allowed to deduct their child care expenses --- and has introduced legislation to do that.

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Here's what I wrote (here and at dKos) two weeks ago:
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Talk about "more and better Democrats"...Carolyn Maloney has been with us voting our way in the House at every single opportunity.
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Why would we pass over such a dedicated, quality Democrat such as Carolyn Maloney?
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From voting to de-fund the occupation to voting against the FISA tyranny, from voting against the credit card company-written bankruptcy bill to voting for expanding health coverage, Carolyn Maloney has been on the right side of every issue for the past nine years she's been elected to represent New York in the Congress. If we'd had ten more of her in the Senate, we'd be out of Iraq by now.
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I don't work for or volunteer for Carolyn Maloney, but I probably should. I just know that every time I've signed a petition online that reached her office, every time I've begged "Please please don't let this happen" in an email, she's responded with an email or a letter telling me something like "Hey, I did/will do my best. I voiced our position in the debate as loudly as I could, and I voted against my leadership. I just want you to know that we're on the same side, and that I won't stop fighting the good fight."
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Nothing against Ms. Kennedy, but check out the record of Carolyn Maloney, either legislative or electoral, and then wonder why her name has been blacked out by the shiny object-obsessed MSM...

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Digby also notes:

It's hard to believe, but I didn't know there was a movement afoot to push Maloney when I wrote this. Here's an article on the subject from the NY Daily News.

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I know that Carolyn Maloney's record of standing up against the tide of Kate O'Beirne-ism over the past decade just isn't as fun for Tweety to croon about as somebody with the name "Kennedy", but perhaps --and I know I'm guilty of the worst Beltway heresy, here shudder-- that attribute shouldn't matter to us?

@KT,
While I neither know nor care enough to judge whether Ms. Kennedy would make a good Senator, I do find the tone of your article surprising. Actually the word that comes to mind is 'scathing' Is there a bit of you personal reaction coming through or is the subject of the article really that clueless?

KT: I read about Mrs Kennedy and saw bits and pieces on tv. She comes across as diffident. The Sharpton lunch episode was bizarre. I don't know why she wants to be a Senator. I don't understood how she has such a lackluster public voting record. Does she really to work at getting this job?

Good article, Karen and Happy New Year Everyone!

I think there may have been a "head start" for Kennedys some time ago, but now there just seems to be a hostile backlash.

I think Caroline really just wants to be a public servant. She has more money than she'll ever spend, her kids are older, and she believes she can make a difference. While she certainly hasn't been media-savvy, I think there's a gotcha quality to some of these journalists. As a fellow introvert who also has passionate beliefs, I find her treatment appaling. Just because she's not slick doesn't mean she wouldn't do a good job.

Stuart - I'm not a New Yorker, but Maloney came to mind as a possibility right away. I wish Caroline were doing better, but she's not, and so I hope Maloney gets this.
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Do we know if she wants to become Senator?

Why don't we stop using dead tree edition and use memorial tree edition.

It's not like the tree died on its own and we just found the corpse laying in woods.

rainbow - Happy New Year back at you (and all my fellow swampers). I've seldom looked forward to the New Year as much as this. The symbolism of starting over has always worked wonders for my psyche - just as every new September did in school.
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Any plans? I'd love to do First Night in Burlington, but we always seem to get a blast of cold air in time for New Year's, and I'm too old to enjoy walking around in a wind chill of -10. [Enjoy your current 63 (I just looked it up.) There has to be something to balance out the hurricanes.] I'll cuddle up with some hot cocoa and try to enjoy the inanity on the teevee.

Why no love for Fran Drecher who also wants the seat? Damn liberal media bias!
And hasn't Caroline gone by her married name for years? Now suddenly she is "Kennedy" again.

Aaaaagh! Don't do that to me. I hate the sound of trees being felled. I did a convocation many years ago with an environmentalist who said he asked his (high-minded) vegetarian students "Do you plan to kill that carrot outright, or slowly chew it to death?"

Kathy:

Even New Orleans is getting in on the new start bandwagon. No longer will they drop a gumbo bowl (our ball), but it will be a Fleur de Lis.

My kids have spent all day with their 5 cousins. Tonight my husband is grilling steaks and my aunt and uncle are bringing fireworks.

Found a quote in Barnes and Noble from George Eliot and hung it on my wall: "It is never too late to be what you might have been." Thought it was beautiful. We all have things about ourselves we'd love to have do-overs, but I'm a firm believer in life offering up second chances. Kathy and everyone else, have a wonderful, blessed new year! Will check back after the new year.

New beginnings encourage me, too.

KT - Halperin just featured your article on the Page

Wow, lots of good comments. stuart writes: "nothing against..." and I think that's true. There are several good candidates in our state, and fair or not, the determining factor may not be the one who is most deserving, or hardest-working.
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Politico is writing that in light of the Blago/Burris/Rush use of the race card and that there is no black member of the Senate, the situation might mean that David Paterson may appoint....himself. Certainly, there is no glory in being a governor these days, especially in NY, which just had its tax base cut off at the knees. Without the finance industry money (corporate and individual income tax), the state is facing unprecedented deficits in the billions. It will call upon the governor to approve of new and unpopular tax increases, 88 proposed ones including those on soda and music downloads. Who wants the headaches? Paterson may take the easy way out by leaving town and heading for Washington, and leave the tax increases to some other chump.

What I find surprising is that someone in her circle didn't tell her about the "you knows". They had to know this would happen.

AP is reporting that Paterson may appoint a "caretaker" to fill Hillary's seat. Someone who wouldn't be interested in actually running for it in 2010. All the hopefulls could then duke it out by actually running for the office. Would that just foil everyone!

KT
That's the point, sg told you. Who told Caroline?

We've watched a 2 year job interview with Obama, and at least 6-12 mos. for other local and national candidates, allowing us a chance to vet their ideas as well as their ability to address the media and public. These appointments to empty seats eliminate that process, and frankly I'm glad that CK has been hit hard with a compressed effort to see what she's all about. Reaction to even the rudest or most unfair comments and questions can be a telling way to judge a person's character, and it seems she's not scoring so well on that test.

on another note... Happy New Year Swamplanders! Not 8 years of Bush baggage, nor the dire issues we face, will kill my optimism for 2009 - yes I'm livin' in Obama-la-la land (at least for now), So pop the corks and cheers to all!!

ording to a count by the British Daily Telegraph, she used the phrase "you know" 142 times in that interview with the New York Times
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So were all the "you know"s included in the transcript or Did the telegraph have the audio? And is isn't still common practice to edit out such verbal tics when creating a print version? Or does that reflect the editor's opinion of the subject?
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Note that I'm not trying to be snide. I actually want to know.