Are educated, intelligent adults allowed to complain that they didn't get what Obama's smiling 2008 campaign persona made them feel they could get?

Ah, it's a free country. You can complain about anything you want, but you look foolish if you don't take responsibility for your own gullibility.

Thomas Frank interviews Cornel West:

Frank: I... remember... being impressed by Barack Obama who was running for president... I sometimes thought that he looked like he had what this country needed... That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.

West: No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair.... 

Another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair? That's what I hoped I might get when I voted for Obama in 2008. He never assured us he'd be a left-winger, but some people — people who wanted that — projected their hope onto him, and of course, he invited everyone to see him as the embodiment of whatever it was they hoped for.

West: And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. 

That's crudely stated, and I wouldn't talk like that, but that's about exactly what I hoped for. A pragmatic centrist like Bill Clinton, and as a bonus, we get the first African American President. I didn't vote merely on that hope. It was also the case that John McCain lost me. It's always only a choice between 2 (or, rarely, 3) candidates. You can't get everything you want, and you can't know everything about what you are getting.

"This is my little hourglass, and it has like over 5,000 little diamonds in it. And they're real."

A view from inside what Kimora Lee Simmons calls her "brain" — that is, her closet, her "satellite closet, a smaller version of the the mother ship."

***

Meade overhead me playing the video that's at the link, and asked, from across the big room, who it is...

Me: Kimora Lee Simmos.

Meade: Mara Liasson? NPR?

Which — you've got to watch the video — is really quite hilarious. Imagine Mara Liasson showing off her fancy shoes and handbags like that. But maybe the NPR folk actually do go home to posh mansions and wealth beyond belief.

Now, "go in peace, and be fabulous." That could be an NPR sign-off, don't you think?

If NPR must now prove it is principled, what a bloodbath is coming!

NPR fired Juan Williams and justified it, via CEO Vivian Schiller, by invoking an official editorial policy:

"[A 'news analyst' has] a very different role than that of a commentator or columnist. News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts, and that's what’s happened in this situation. As you all well know, we offer views of all kinds on your air every day, but those views are expressed by those we interview — not our reporters and analysts....

"... NPR’s ethics code [states]: 'In appearing on TV or other media. ... NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows ... that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.”

"More fundamentally, 'In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists  should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.'"

Now, NPR is in a position where it must prove that's not a pretext by applying that policy, with comparable severity, to its other on-air personalities. Lefties and righties are getting into this game. The lefties are targeting Mara Liasson. Here's Eric Boehlert at Media Matters:

[I]f you look at NPR's code of ethics, there's simply no way Liasson should be making appearances on Fox....

Liasson is part of the Fox News family. Period. For instance, Liasson appears on the Fox News website as a "Fox News contributor," not as "Fox News contributor to the sorta/kinda serious shows." The only way she'd really be able to defend her continued alliance would be to argue that Fox News in its entirely (i.e. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity) is a serious endeavor worthy of NPR's status. But if Liasson can't defend all of Fox News, then her half-pregnant approach (i.e. she's only employed by a tiny portion of Fox News) just doesn't fly.

On the right, at the Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes points at Nina Totenberg:

Over the past month, in her regular appearances on “Inside Washington,” she has: criticized a ruling of the Roberts Court as scandalous; claimed that Michelle Obama gives people “warm and fuzzy” feelings; called Bill Clinton “the most gifted politician I’ve ever seen;” and lamented that the Democratic Party is diverse enough to include moderates that want to extend all Bush tax cuts....

Her most partisan comment came when Charles Krauthammer pointed out that 31 Democrats in the House had written to Nancy Pelosi to call for extending the Bush tax cuts, Totenberg wished them out of the party. “When a party actually has a huge majority, it has a huge diversity.  And that is part of the problem that Democrats have.  But would I like it to be otherwise?  Of course.”

Hayes goes on, marshaling the evidence. You get the idea. It's open season on NPR news analysts... with 11 days to go before election day. A grisly October surprise.