It’s Final: Clinton Is UnelectableSometime last week, the narrative of Clinton’s candidacy changed from the inevitability of her nomination to, as today’s Daily News lede helpfully summarizes, “Where did Hillary Clinton’s mojo go?” We dare propose it went right up the widening gyre of the news cycle: At this point, the media continue an enthusiastic pileup — while lamenting that pileup’s largely imaginary toll. (“Clinton remains way ahead in national polls,” the News admits in the story’s tenth graph, “Though some have shown a slip.”) Not to worry: The next, equally specious, chapter will probably be about how the victimized Hillary is racking up sympathy votes. With any luck, we can go through five or six more of these twists before Iowa, basing each one on a 3 percent shift in a poll with a 4 percent error margin. In the meantime, the latest outrages.
intel
Gloria Steinem Remembers Norman MailerIt wasn’t lost on the activists at the National Women’s Conference at Hunter College that literary lion Norman Mailer, whose writing became a target of feminist wrath during the seventies, died in New York on the same day that their event began. The weekend-long program, which drew members of some 50 women’s and girls’ organizations, was planned by the late congresswoman Bella Abzug’s daughter Liz to mark the 30th anniversary of the first such gathering in Houston. And while the elder Abzug once told Mailer, “We think your views on women are full of s—,” she supported him in his losing 1969 campaign for mayor of New York, as did Gloria Steinem, who spoke Sunday morning to a cheering crowd of about 600 women from 21 states who had attended workshops with titles like “Smashing the Glass Ceiling.”
it just happened
Kanye West’s Mom Dies During Cosmetic Procedure
Kanye West’s number-one fan, his mom Donda West, died this weekend in Los Angeles from complications related to a cosmetic procedure, CNN has just reported. Donda, 58, was the author of Raising Kanye: Life Lessons From the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar, which was released earlier this year. She once compared her son to Jesus, and the worship was apparently mutual. “Hey Mama, I wanna scream so loud for you, cuz I’m so proud of you,” he sang on 2005’s Late Registration. West’s publicist won’t say what type of cosmetic surgery she was having, but we’re putting all of our liposuction plans on permanent hold.
Kanye West’s Mother Dies After Cosmetic Procedure [CNN]
Kanye West’s Mother On Parenting [Baltimore Sun]