Over at Hub Politics, there's a must-read omnibus post on the latest developments in the perplexingly energetic Massachusetts Senate race. Most interesting is a link to a candid video of union workers wearing shirts for Martha Coakley--and admitting they were paid to do it. Honestly, as a lifelong resident of the Bay State, I can't figure out what's going on here. All of the sudden, about half of the Commonwealth's citizen-dopes are coming to their senses at the behest of Scott Brown, the Wrentham gallant from the Gallant Old Party. I really thought most of the men and women of Massachusetts would sooner surrender their first-borns than vote Republican. But maybe that was just Northampton. Why, get a look at this video, which documents the energy of the campaign but is rather misleadingly labeled. It's really nice to be the national center of attention for once: during Jeopardy today, two-thirds of the ads were for one or the other candidate, including this new Coakley attack ad, which is sort of funny cause, if I were running, I'd run practically the same ad for myself. Six days before the polls close, I really think Scott Brown will pull ahead just in time to take it all.

If the late Edward M. Kennedy made a contrite and concise confession before his passing, I am sure he is interceding for the same at the throne of God.

In other news, look at this neat tea service Atobe sent me (there are two). He told me he's back in the country in preparation for the new semester, and found these vintage service, of Japanese manufacture, at a garage sale he insisted on visiting. They were wrapped in a Daily Hampshire Gazette from 1990; one of the headlines was "Unemployment Soars to 6.4%". Ah, the good old days!

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While Atobe will be heading back soon for tennis practice, I must return for SGA training, but at least I got plenty--but never, never enough--over the break. Foremost among reads completed was Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life. At first I wasn't planning to ask it for Christmas, but after one too many of David Letterman's things more fun than reading the Sarah Palin memoir, I realized the purchase would as much spite him as reward her. Certainly not a regrettable impulse request. She is a fine writer, with a compelling story to tell. Though there is some of the requisite surface understanding of issues, it isn't any worse than in, say, Joe Biden's memoirs. Her frequent life in Alaska stories and jokes are in good taste, and are just one of many occasions when her motherly nature shows through. Alaska must be like a different world; by the time she relates John McCain's VP offer, I'd almost forgotten she's also an American. And as against the manifold accusations against Palin the media tosses about, it's refreshing to hear her side of the story; by the end of the four hundred page memoir, the recurring attacks on Palin seem belittling indeed. While her story sometimes contradicts the accounts of her critics, she does recall some of the same anecdotes, such as her need to study up on some areas of foreign policy, and embarrassingly calling her opponent Joe O'Biden.

I perceived two rather pesky shortcomings in Palin's worldview as she explained it. Firstly, she never tires of grandstanding for the independent spirit of the Last Frontier. Alaskans, she frequently reminds us, cherish individual freedom, and are rugged and self-reliant. Yet, when she recounts her time as mayor of Wasilla, she tries to frame her concern for economic development as an expression of that independent spirit. This denotes a misunderstanding of how such a independent spirit is fostered in the first place. Though Palin spends the balance of her time talking up her fiscal conservatism, she also brags about paving many of the city's dirt roads, thereby attracting several chains, most notably Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, that everyman's cornucopia, obviously is not going to enhance the Alaskan individualism she loves, or for that matter the Alaskan harmony with nature she grew up experiencing. Far as I can tell, the only time Wal-Mart ever bettered self-reliance was when it inspired this very nice liberal quilt. If liberals deserve credit for anything, it is for despising Wal-Mart, albeit mostly just so they can unionize it, which creates a host of new problems while only partially solving the original problem. As she should have realized, Frontier individualism arises from removal from the comforts and easy life of developed, modern society, compelling them to live hard, rich lives. Palin frequently notes that Alaskans supplement their groceries with fishing and game hunting; when Alaskans can get fresh fish and meat without hunting, see how often they still will. If she wanted to preserve the spirit of freedom in Wasilla, rather than building roads, she should've cut taxes still further, and strengthened zoning laws so to preserve the community's rural character. Secondly, Palin wasn't bluffing when she said she was a feminist in her interviews. My, by the end of the book, she seemed like just another angry feminist hornet, though a Christian and unflinchingly pro-life. To her credit, she speaks in terms of her experiences (ex. bragging about sportive tough, daughters) rather than of ideology, she believes Alaskans appreciate the equality of the sexes because of the frontiersmen and women naturally lived without refined sex roles. Again, I think she misunderstands the what the Frontier, essentially, is. Around the same time I read an article in Chronicles magazine which perpetuated a similar misconception. Thomas Fleming, who should have known better, attributed America's conservatism, in part, to the Frontier experience, which he said recreated the conditions of the Middle Ages. The men of the Middle Ages lived in relative privation, yes, and they relied on their own handicrafts, but Medieval life was far more communal and sophisticated than Frontier life. Need I mention guilds, fashion, or prevalent forms of worship? There was scant individualism--individualism certainly promotes some salutary ethics--yet life was more purely and truly human than at virtually any time in Western history (I know I am going against Tocqueville in this, but so be it). Nice as the Frontier life may be, Palin should have realized that the Frontier lifestyle, which informs the American character, is a pale, primitive shadow of the excellence human society can attain in a long-established, communal, stratified, aristocratic society.

Translation: peons, despite Going Rogue's flaws, buy, buy, buy.

I won't say as much about Ann Coulter's Guilty, but I don't need to. Unlike Sarah Palin, the more I read this woman's books and columns, the more I'm convinced that she's a real conservative in an movement of liberals disgruntled that the Left's historical dialectic passed them by. While Palin, happily, refused to approve of teenage pregnancy when the news of her daughter's pregnancy broke, your life will not be complete until you read Ann compare single mothers, unfavorably, to drug dealers. Of all the liberal taboos she's broken, her long, hellishly funny chapter on how single mothers victimize the rest of America is perhaps the most daring. Until I read it, even our Crusader (formerly Pundit) was largely unaware of just how much single motherhood undermines society. Even if you already have Ann's first six volumes, your library will be severely wanting unless you have her seventh.

Ta ta. Atobe and I will be busy till Monday or Tuesday, when classes begin at Assumption College.