barack-o-rama

4:02 PM P: Did you get my text abuot sketchy Chicago corruption?

 me: yeah!

  crazy

  you're gonna love this new yorker piece

  the photo at the front is breathtakingly gorgeous

 P: yeah, if you want a government contract here, apparently there are lines of crooked fuckers who get a cut of your bribe money

4:03 PM Taped phone calls were played during the Rezko trial that were like: "We can't accept bags full of cash at the office anymore; you'll have to meet me after work. Sorry, it's a new rule or something."

4:04 PM me: it was talking about how he had to navigate all these labyrinthine alliances

  I mean, he had to like piss people off to get a coalition of any size of Democrats

  cause they have like 10,000 different kinds of Democrats there and they all hate each other?!  I never knew there could be so many kinds of Democrats.

4:05 PM P: hmm, I guess so. Geographically the entire state is red, but Chicago democrats run the show(s).

4:06 PM me: it has this old Abner Mikva story about when he first came there and tried to volunteer for the Adlai Stevenson campaign

  and they were like, "who sent you?"

  and he was like, "no one sent me, I'm here to volunteer,"

  and they were like "we don't want nobody nobody sent."

4:07 PM P: haha

 me: Which of course Obama has riffed on to gorgeous effect in his campaign speeches there

  about how simultaneously nobody "sent" him and the single mothers sent him and the jobless men sent him...

4:08 PM (sniff! omg I can't think about it too much, it makes me cry.)

4:09 PM P: I need to read that. Sadly, it's hard to find among all the google results talking about the issue cover.

  I'm about sick of the media covering the media.

4:17 PM me: I know, right

4:22 PM i actually thought it was awful and unfunny

  the cover
once I saw it in person
E.J. Graff is totally right about it on slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/07/16/sex-race-lies-and-stereotypes.aspx