new yorker – Moe Lane

It’s a planet, dammit.

This week, amid so much discouraging news of irredentist militias and unrepentant neocons, there was a small bit of news that might cheer people up, at least a little: Pluto, it seems, may be accepted back into the club of planets.

It will not surprise you to hear that the New Yorker is as sneeringly patronizing to pro-Plutonians as it is to us dread ‘neocons,’ not to mention everybody else that the author’s tribe hates. Which makes this a bit of an ironic article on the fellow’s behalf, given that he probably doesn’t realize that he’s being as reflexively supportive of his own tribal prejudices as the people that he was sneering at. I’m not mad about that, mind you: I’m cheerful, you see, that we’re making promise in getting Pluto back into its rightful place. Continue reading I make no bones about this site being pro-Pluto.

His problem is that passages like this:

Someone got up and announced that Sharron Angle would speak next, because she had a plane to catch. Angle is a small woman, a sixty-one-year-old grandmother with a broad, open face, a toothy smile, and red hair worn in a pageboy. She has a friendly manner and a firm handshake, along with a set of basic political skills that Harry Reid lacks. These include the ability to chat pleasantly for a minute or two and then tactfully extract herself, and to say what she stands for quickly, with real passion but usually without seeming odd or threatening.

…and this…

Although [Harry Reid] first ran for office at the age of twenty-eight and he is now seventy, he is still strikingly bad at the public part of his job. His voice is soft, with little resonance. When he’s talking to someone, he has a habit of looking down instead of into the person’s eyes. His gestures on a podium are awkward hand chops.

…and this:

Two years ago, Reid published an autobiography, “The Good Fight,” written with the assistance of Mark Warren, of Esquire. Like the autobiographies of Reid’s Republican colleague John McCain, it was meant to “humanize” (as they say in politics) a top-ranking official who had a reputation for being hard to love. But what shines through is Reid’s lack of the natural gregariousness and geniality that most people associate with the political personality.

…are showing up in what are supposed to be puff pieces about him. Continue reading #rsrh Harry Reid has a problem.