No, no, no. When we say “you never get out of junior high school” we’re not referring to the candidates, we’re referring to the great chattering class.
And a mystery – how old is Howard Fineman? Why can’t one find his birth date online?
Back to the stupidity.
You knew Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high school. At least I did. They were candidates in the student senate election. She was the worthy but puffed-up Miss Perfect, all poodle skirts and multicolored binders clutched to her chest. He was the lanky, mysterious transfer student-from Hawaii by way of Indonesia no less-who Knew Things and was way too cool to carry more than one book at a time. Who would be leader of the pack…?
[emphasis added]
Jaw droppingly stupid and shallow political writing.
Lance Manion dices up this dreck with properly titrated sarcasm:
Yep. Exactly as I remember it. Our high school student government had a multi-trillion dollar budget to play around with, a stockpile of nuclear weapons, thousands and thousands of miles of roads to repair and bridges to inspect, and trade treaties with Japan, China, and Great Britain all set to expire.
My junior year the big issue in the class elections was whether or not the incoming student president would continue the war in the Middle East the previous administration had started. There was a lot of angry debate about redeployment and whether or not what one of the candidates was proposing should be called a surge or escalation.
We are not worthy.
So, how old is Howard?
Why is that an appropriate question? Well, as Lance Manion points out, poodle skirt references are appropriate for a certain era in America. And for Oliva Newton-John movies. A-ha. A clue! 1978.
Howard went to Colgate. When did he graduate?
…with Howard Fineman ’70, Newsweek chief political correspondent, for a luncheon discussion of the hot political issues of the day.
More than 200 Colgate alumni, students, parents, and friends attended the May 19…
Okay. Let’s see. Possibly started school when he was 18. Took four years to graduate. Add a year for a margin of error. 1947.
Who else was born in 1947? Now I get it. Howard never got over high school.
Poodle skirts. When were those in vogue? 1950’s. Maybe Howard had a big sister.
What were they wearing when Howard was in high school? No poodle skirts.
When was “Leader of the Pack” a hit song? 1964! Bingo!
A sixty year old writer with a platform provided by a national magazine needs to do better than distill the current presidential race into nostalgia for his lost youth. Grow up Howard.
See Glenn Greenwald on just this topic here and here. After citing and linking to numerous examples of purile political reporting referencing high school. which these writers seem to believe constitutes our one area of shared expereince, he asks:
You’re right about poodle skirts; they were popular when I was in 7th grade, ca. 1958 (I wanted one with my whole heart, but to no avail).