In vino veritas, said the old Romans, accepting strong drink as truth serum.  Now it’s In epistola veritas, as in letter to editor during a political campaign.  No?  What if you’re an Oak Parker (IL) indignant at what a columnist said about her favorite female candidate?  I discuss it in my Wednesday Journal blog:

The fire-Hubbuch movement is under way. Good. Throw him and his out on the street. It’s in this letter from an Oak Park woman whose attention he caught with a column in which he mentions Hillary as “the most famous cuckquean in American history,” explaining . . . that this is “a woman whose husband strays” from connubial obligations.

She is left holding the shame bag, as it were. 

But fire Hubbuch?  What’s that about? 

You should have pulled this [column] or excised part of it. Remarks regarding Hillary Clinton’s qualifications for president were derogatory to all women.

So.  Douse the column, says the writer, warming to the task of advising the editor.  She closes:

Hubbuch lacks intelligence and sensitivity. You have control over his employment.

There it is.  Did you get that?  She wants him not only edited but dismissed.  In epistola veritas.  She’s a Hillary supporter, a Democrat, indeed a former Cook County judge, slated by Chi Ald. Ed Burke’s committee some time back.  She’s a liberal.

BUT WHEN THE COLUMNIST WRITES WHAT SHE DOESN’T LIKE, SHE WANTS HIM OUT OF THERE!

Puts me in mind of that new book, Liberal Fascism.

We have already heard of Hillary’s incompetence as manager.  Here’s the ultimate anti-Hillary Dick Morris and wife Eileen McGann on B.O. as manager:

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.

As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.

We will be hearing more about this about O., I think.  Already there’s a lot.

Here’s a site devoted to B.O. as Him Whom We Have Been Waiting For, spouting in millenarian fashion and being received in the same spirit.  Prominent is this quote:

“… a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany … and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama” – Barack Obama, Lebanon, New Hampshire.
January 7, 2008.

[Frantic update: If he said this in New Hampshire or anywhere else, this web site is the only one who reported it, or heard it, for that matter.  In short, it’s a gag.]

[Another update: Hillary does it too:

In Rhode Island, Hillary Clinton took on the Obamamania that has swept Democratic primary electorates by directly ridiculing the speeches of her opponent as unrealistic appeals by someone posing as a secular saint. “Now I could stand up here and say: Let’s get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The skies will open. The lights will come down. And you know the celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone we know will do the right thing. And the world will be perfect,” Mrs. Clinton said with bitter sarcasm.

[Peas in a pod, she and the Obama-as-Messiah fellow]

Reader Nancy Thorne:

What Obama really is is a throw back to a period of unenlightenment.  His change and reform are but camouflage for 1920 – 1930 hard core socialism and isolationism.   His campaign has become a dangerous movement.  Obama is wholly unqualified and is as radical as any person who has ever run for the presidency.  He’s a 1960’s anti-war war radical with the template of a college student.  His success would not bode well for the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

As they say in far lesser circumstances, it’s scary.  The guy’s self-esteem is at the heart of it, I fear.

To paraphrase Maurice Chevalier, thank heaven (Barack does) for little girls (as in go-girl), little (not real little) Afro-American girls like Mary Mitchell, who can come to the aid of their Afr-Am heroines, getting them out of hot water.

I  understood exactly what Michelle Obama meant when she expressed a renewed pride in America. Look at what’s happening.

Michelle committed a hugely self-revealing boo-boo born of some sort of frustration, digging deep in her psyche for her undifferentiated angst about being you know what in America, but to the rescue came Mary, not only columnizing but commandeering the entire multi-color front page of the splashiest newspaper west of the New York Post.

Michelle: I’ve always been proud of U.S.

PRIDE IN AMERICA | No reason to apologize — she had it right the first time

Go girls!

INSPIRED BY CHANGE MAYBE? — An Oak Park letter writer has warmed globally to Sen. Obama as reminiscent of JFK almost 50 years ago with his stirring “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” But O’s message is just the opposite, consisting entirely about what your country should do for you, though admittedly details are vague even about this.

Is this David Axelrod’s idea, for women to swoon and Barack to toss them bottles?

There seems to be a trend at Obama rallies … women fainting. And interestingly enough the Senator responds the same way every time, almost as if … naah, couldn’t be.

Connecticut DJ Jim Vicevich did some research.  In Hartford, New Hampshire, Seattle, LA, and Madison, the emotion of the moment overwhelmed them.

when a woman appeared to faint in the standing-only VIP section in front of the podium, Obama paused his speech for over a minute as he directed the crowd to make way for an EMT team and tossed a bottle of water from the stage.

In New Hampshire he reached beneath the podium top, found a bottle, and handed it to someone before they wheeled the woman out on a gurney.

Climate change, the Iraq war and Obama tossing a bottle of water to a woman about to faint all received big cheers [in Seattle]. As Obama told the crowd to part so that the woman in question could leave and called for help, a young girl in the crowd shouted out, “What a man!”
 
The audience roared with laughter (although the press that has seen this happen before rolled its eyes).

In LA:

A woman standing in front of the stage appeared to faint as Obama spoke about Iraq. The candidate paused and asked the crowd to make way for firefighters.One supporter shouted, “You’re a good man,” leaving Obama momentarily at a loss for words.”Well, I’m not the only one stopping to help her,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed.

Before he even got to the Madison crowd,

students were tossing around an inflatable cow above the crowd. Three people fainted in the midst of all the enthusiasm.

“This could be a really swell game,” commented the DJ.  “Count the number of people on the campaign overcome by the “vapas”.

James Taranto was more serious about it:

What exactly are we to make of this? A cynic might wonder if the whole thing isn’t staged, given how often it happens and how well-honed and self-serving Obama’s standard response seems to be.

But if it’s spontaneous, that’s in a way even more unsettling. . . . . 

Obama has a talent for eliciting intense emotion–an ability that can be dangerous in a politician. What more does he have to offer? That’s a hard question to answer . . .

And he could be The Man.

In further Adventures of the Ed Page at Chi Trib, we see or may surmise that State’s Attorney Dick Devine went for top billing for an op-ed with this, beginning thus:

In recent weeks the Tribune has mentioned prosecutorial “misconduct” in its editorial pages. This is a term that grabs the public’s attention, so it is important that the efforts of our office on this issue be stated.

Nothing doing, as the world turned.  Instead, unlike Mayor Daley yesterday and Congr. Jesse Jackson Jr. the day before, he is awarded no such encomium.  His Voice of the People contribution, on the other hand, is a mere letter, albeit the lede.

No surprise there.  He’s county, neither city nor congressional district, and lame duck besides.

Substantively speaking, he offers this as part of his defense of his office, recently criticized in a primary campaign and already criticized in the general:

Our office handles 70,000 felonies and more than 200,000 misdemeanor cases each year.  . . . .   In 2007, the last year for which full numbers are available, the appellate courts in Illinois heard a number of appeals from guilty verdicts in Cook County. Our examination of the public record shows that of those appeals, only four even mention prosecutorial error and only one was sent back to the trial courts for reconsideration based on that error.

And if Tony Petraica has something to say about that, he can write a letter too.

This is for starters in Nicholas von Hoffman’s case for Condoleezza Rice as John McCain’s running mate:

McCain’s troubles with the religious wing of his party could well evaporate with the churchgoing Rice at his side. She solidifies that part of his base overnight.

Republicans love her.  (Who says they love McCain?)  She’s a killer debater.  She’s a “superstar” and “a fancy dresser.”  She trumps Dems on diversity.  As pro-war, she goes well with McCain.  She’s cover for sexist and racist accusations when going after either O. or H.C.  Her experience went beyond being someone’s wife.

They can challenge [H.C.’s] boast that she is a strong, independent woman and paint her as a weak, hopelessly-in-love woman under the spell of a man subject not only to “bimbo eruptions” but also eruptions of smarmy deals with shady business figures.

Wait.  They wouldn’t do that, would they?

Lastly, Rice is a notorious sports fan with excruciatingly detailed knowledge of much of its arcana. She’s often said that her dream job is commissioner of the National Football League; however, in a pinch she would probably settle for Vice President of the United States.

Now that’s the Nick von Hoffman who once hit non-softball home runs for the Chicago Daily News.

==============

Update: Reader D. is having none of it:

The guy who wrote that article was a real nimrod. What’s the next worst entity in our country after sleeper cells and liberals? The State Department! Condoleezza has NOT changed State, she’s blended right in. She’s horrible. No self-respecting [citizen] would ever vote for her. She has the ear of Bush and she whispers sweet nothings that aren’t sweet. Plus I don’t like her voice. She always sounds like she’s ready to break down and cry. I thought we had put this pipe dream to sleep.

Chi Trib is at it again, 2^nd day in a row, surrendering top-billed op-ed space (hard-copy: it’s buried on the web site) to a politician blowing his own horn:

Property tax bills went out across Chicago last week, and homeowners are rightly concerned. They’re seeing the evidence that our property tax assessment system is broken and needs to be reformed.

The increases in property tax bills are due largely to higher assessments determined by the Cook County assessor, not a tax increase by the City of Chicago.

That’s the mayor speaking or writing, but who thinks he wrote it?  And why, if he can be so calm and lucid, doesn’t he talk that way?

Again, we have perhaps a standing practice, in its best light encouraging op-ed dueling.  But if that’s it, then give equal space, equally billed, to that highly suspect Cook County assessor.  He is mentioned, yes:

I am asking Cook County Assessor James Houlihan to correct the assessed values of homes in Chicago’s hardest-hit neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods where home values increased the most as a result of the 2006 assessment and have decreased in the current economic downturn.

But of course, this being commentary not news — that Daley’s saying this about a political enemy — no reporter seeks rebuttal.  This is political infighting, but without opposition. 

And Houlihan would write his own, I’ll bet.  Speaking to a small group in Oak Park a few years back, he was calm and lucid.  Wouldn’t it be nice to see him cheek by jowl with the mayor on the Trib’s op-ed page?

I suppose this is standard, to let your hometown Congressman puff for the state’s favorite son, which is what Rep. J.J., Jr. is given top-billing op-ed space today to do.  But it’s too much bending over (backward) to let the man have his say, ignoring the purely partisan politics of the case:

The Democratic Party is on fire. We have two talented, precedent-shattering, history-making candidates. We have a fired-up, mobilized, energized base, breaking voting turnout records. We have a grass-roots donor base that is using the Internet to set new fundraising records every time we turn around.

That’s his lede for a 680-word argument aimed at heading off the Hillary cause, which favors those super delegates.  What, no Hillary spokesman?

Rep. J.J.’s position deserves airing, but not in this position of privilege and not at such length in words entirely of his choosing, well chosen though they may be.  Rather, they belong in a news story in which Hillary people can offer their views of the matter, decline comment, whatever.