Sometimes satire is the best medicine

The President showed quite a bit of humor at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. His sketch with Luther as his anger translator was probably the highlight of the evening. Judging by some of the looks in the audience, not everyone found it so funny, but the President eventually let his own "anger" go over climate change, which brought down most of the house. It seems satire is the best way to go after your critics. If nothing else it throws your political adversaries off guard. His little zinger at Michelle Bachmann was perfect. Anything more and it would have looked like he was actually taking her seriously.

Obama is entering the "fourth quarter" of his administration and feeling "looser than ever." It shows. The Republican presidential candidates still see him as a convenient foil, but there will be no overtime. At some point they will actually have to offer their visions for the presidency, not just run as anti-Obamas.

For a political party that thinks it has the best "field" since Reagan, it seems to be looking very chaotic. Not that the field back in 1980 was any great shakes. You had Reagan, George H.W. Bush and John Anderson, who became so disappointed with the direction of the GOP that he ran as an independent in the general election and won seven per cent of the vote. Not that it stopped the Gipper, who rode his white horse to one of the biggest electoral victories in presidential history.

So far, only three Republicans have declared their candidacy, although May looks to be a big month with the "Good Doctor" Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jeb "Caveman" Bush and Chris Christie all potentially declaring their candidacies. It is convenient for guys like Jeb to hold off as long as possible, as he can raise money through PACs outside the campaign laws that bind candidates somewhat on the trail.

The odd part is that you would think Obama was running for a third term, as the person who comes up over and over and over again on the campaign trail is the President. It's like these GOP'ers haven't been able to wrap their thoughts around anyone else, although Rand Paul is soliciting dirt on Hillary Clinton through his website. That's generally what you have a campaign staff for, but right now he has to focus more on Marco Rubio, who for whatever strange reason has leaped to the top of the pack in the early polls. He, like Rand and Ted Cruz, have modeled their political careers to some degree on Obama, using vocal first terms in the Senate to climb the Republican ladder with the hope that voters want a fresh face, as they did in 2008.

None of them showed up for the Correspondents Dinner, even though they were all invited. I guess they didn't want to be the brunt of the President's jokes on television news clips. Better to look like you are above such a jocular evening, consulting the good book while on the campaign trail in Iowa. Looks to me that these guys are following the George W. Bush 2000 game plan more so than that of the Gipper. I would just like to see a little bit of humor emerge on the campaign trail, rather than have these guys all acting like God is on their side.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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