S H A M b l o g

OK, so my guy won and I'm thrilled. Let there be no mistake. The observations contained herein have nothing to do with the "buyer's remorse" that several of the pundits on Brit Hume's FOX show kept wishing on entrenched Obama supporters in the final days, when a McCain defeat began to look inevitable. But now that the election is a done deal, I want to say a few things about what we seek in a candidate and leader. I'm mindful of this primarily because of all the chatter about Sarah Palin's natural ascension to the leadership of the GOP for 2012 (and I can't even believe people are already talking about that at a time when that silly jingle from McCain's TV ads still rings in our ea rs). Thing is, I have to say it applies, at least somewhat, to Barack, too. We've talked around the edges of this before. I think we need to address it head-on. What makes someone a good candidate? That he or she "connects with voters"? Has "charisma...

I like Obama's new deficit-reduction plan, as well as his in-your-face way of debuting it. Good for him. The way he was going for a while there, he had everybody mad at him, including his base. If his presidency is destined to go down in flames, he might as well do it being the guy whom some of us elected.... ************************ Had a brief but interesting Twitter-spar with Deepak Chopra over the weekend. Was a little bit surprised that he would "engage," given his sometimes-imperial demeanor and his very vocal unhappiness with me over this piece for The Wall Street Journal ; y ou can read his response here . However, I think I might have caught him with his logic down. Here are the tweets in chronological order: DEEPAK : "Only life creates life." ME : "But if only life creates life, then I'm assuming you dispute the validity of evolution/Big Bang etc." DEEPAK : "I do not dispute big bang , evolution, cosmogenesis — they are all express...

Rhonda Byrne may have been a tad late getting to her own party, but the positive-review-athon for The Pow-errrrr appears finally to have kicked in with a vengeance (no doubt with Amazon looking studiously the other way, if not actively participating in the conspiracy). All three of what we used to call "spotli ght reviews" for the book are now glowing 5-stars, as are all 10 of the most recent reviews featured in the sidebar. My negative review has been kicked down the stairs to the cellar...along with a thoughtful and quite-literary take from Kathryn Price that once held sway among the spotlights with a helpful rating of over 70 pe rcent but can no longer compete with the recent slew of 100-percent-helpful 5-stars. ================================= Speaking of unwarranted hype, last week I finally saw Michael Moore's highly engrossing logical quagmire, Bowling for Columbine . As far as I can tell, here is Moore's thesis: The words racism and violence have almos...

Let's start, boys and girls, with a disclaimer/confession: I have not read Rhonda Byrne 's new book, The Pow-errrrr . (And can't you imagine the phrase being uttered just that way, in breathy tones that drip with a practiced air of mysterioso? The Pow-errrrr ... One almost hears distant nighttime thunder and gusty winds rustling through trees in the background. Whooooossshhhhh ....) That said, I ask you to read her publisher's own product description, as appearing on Amazon, and experience for yourself the utter contempt for the collective intelligence of her target market: The Secret revealed the law of attraction. Now Rhonda Byrne reveals the greatest power in the universe— The Power to have anything you want. In this book you will come to understand that all it takes is just one thing to change your relationships, money, health, happiness, career, and your entire life. Every discovery, invention, and human creation comes from The Power . Perfect health, incredible ...

What a lot of people miss about the New Age is that in philosophy and tone, it is very much aligned with latter-day conservatism and the sorts of things we saw happening, say, at AIG and Goldman-Sachs before the f all. The Secret , after all, is nothing if not wildly, irredeemably, unapologetically aspirational. Along with its philosophical sibling movements in the megachurches — such as that run by our friend Joel ("the gospel according to Vera Wang") Osteen — The Secret legitimizes the idea of endless upward mobility and a reality in which wealth is not zero-sum, but in fac t can be attained by everyone everywhere at the same time if "you just want it enough." Secret alum Lisa Nichols says it flat-out in the very title of her CD: " You Deserve It !" In the world according to Rhonda Byrne and her (pseudo-)philosophical protégés, every man (and woman) is an island, and all of those islands are the Caymans . Both The Secret and cons ervatism encourage a...

Today, boys and girls, we have one of my occasional guest columns, this time by a regular who pops in now and then under the name "Frances." A few prerequisites. First — as is always the case when I present these columns — they are not to be interpreted as anything beyond "one person's opinion." * I am showcasing the following thoughts not under the guise of presenting universal truth (though I do think they cut pretty close to the heart of the mat ter , or perhaps in this case the breast of it); I'm showcasing them because I find them interesting and on-message. Second, by the ir nature, all posts of this type deal in anecdotal evidence. Frances is comparing the plight of one high-profile cancer victim who turned to conventional medicine to the plight of another high-profile cancer victim who turned to The Secret . Bear in mind, however, that in the latter instance, anecdotal evidence of failure carries more weight than in the former instance, because devo...