Frank Rich: The Rush of the New Rat Pack

[Snellius]

Rush Limbaugh trades cigar boxes stuffed with cash for his fixes of "baby blues" in Palm Beach. Bill Bennett bets everything but the milk money on the slots in sex-drenched Vegas. A Kennedy-by-marriage movie-star-turned-governor freely admits to a "rowdy" past of soundstage gropings in Hollywood.

Ring-a-ding-ding! The Rat Pack is back!
...
But this year the right seems to have finally found its place in the klieg lights. It has not only chosen to countenance (and then some) pill popping, gambling, boorish womanizing, seamy show-biz glitz and the Kennedy mythos — but it has done so at the exact moment when that Rat Pack spirit is resurgent in the culture as a whole. While the Rat Pack belonged to the 60's, too, it belonged to the early, pre-Beatles, pre-Vietnam 60's — the conservative 60's. It's just the kind of hedonism that fits this moment — "swanky nightspots, sharp outfits, neat haircuts, stiff drinks and cigarette packs free of Surgeon General's Warnings," in the summation of Shawn Levy's nostalgic history, "Rat Pack Confidential."
...
On the right-wing editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the celebration of the Rat Pack revival's cultural values began on the Schwarzenegger victory night. "He's cool," wrote the paper's deputy editorial page editor, Daniel Henninger, in his mash note to Arnold. "It looks as if the first party to get totally wired-in to a mega-celebrity is, incredibly, the G.O.P. Something weirdly attractive was coming off the Schwarzenegger camp's victory stage on TV round about midnight Tuesday." To make his case, he swooned over Maria Shriver, Jay Leno's "funny introduction," Rob Lowe, Eunice and Sargent Shriver and "a sea of young, attractive faces." Somehow, Mr. Henninger missed Gary Busey, but never mind. "Liberal pundits will mock this scene unmercifully," his essay concluded, "but in terms of mass-market politics it was as hip as any politician could ever hope for."

Mock this erotic fantasy? Coming from the same editorial page that devoted years to tut-tutting about the whereabouts of Mr. Clinton's penis? Not me.
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Some on the right have also tried to airbrush Governor-elect Schwarzenegger's well-documented history of sexcapades, hoping to attribute his antics not to the man himself but to The Los Angeles Times, which provided the unexpurgated account. This is as silly as liberals' putting the blame for Monicagate on the Starr report, and politically self-defeating besides. The voters, including women, have spoken: they didn't want the groper's march on Sacramento to be impeded by his sex life. Arnold's private behavior is no longer merely Clintonesque — it's been elevated to Kennedyesque and Sinatraesque. As The Wall Street Journal says, he's cool.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/arts/19RICH.html

[mmm]

1. This is the rat turd pack

they eat human shit. Big deal.

[ex_jew]

2. I think the Gary Bauer angle is big !

What do Arnold, Rush and Bill Bennett have to offer those deluded souls who vote Republican because it's "the party of morals" ? These people are CONSTANTLY on the lookout for anything that offends their principles, and will be totally turned off by any attempt to segue into some type of lounge act philosophy (as cool as that is). Sorry W, this is known as "forgetting the base", and it's widely recognized as a re-election stopper. Too darn bad !

[frustrated_dem]

3. I feel sorry

for anybody that has an addiction...