-
Senator Evan Bayh speaks - Source: Reuters -
Related
So Nicole Richie will walk the aisle , supported by her proud father Lionel, into the arms of the father of her two kids. Well, marriage is the last-but-one stop before utter respectability (i.e. death) for a girl who used to be Paris's BFF.
I always figured Nicole for a quitter, one of those too-eager, all-too-easily influenced kids who constantly zip around the playground, torn between the naughty cool ones, and the dreary but safe realms of the nerd. Nicole was Paris without the ambition, and - it must be added - the sex tape.
Yet Paris, too, is loved up and out of the headlines; only Lindsay Lohan seems to understand the commitment required to entertain and enthral millions.
To get bread, you really do need a circus.
"It is not possible to step into the same river twice... or to come into contact with a mortal being in the same state." That may sound like New Age fortune cookie doggerel, but is in fact Plutarch recalling the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
Heraclitus was widely believed to hold that the only constant is change, which may explain some of the turnarounds we've seen lately.
You won't know Senator Evan Bayh (pron: 'bye'), but he's an Indiana senator, a familial Democrat (his father Birch Bayh was also a Senator) who had carved out a name as a bipartisan dealmaker. One of the faceless politicians that are the oil in the US political system, he's leaving politics, and vacating his Senate seat (presenting Obama and Democrats with more legislative erosion). Why? "Congress just... isn't working too well." The culprits are partisanship and gridlock, he says, though others allege the transparency of the system nowadays makes compromise impossible.
Patrick Kennedy quit politics recently, essentially leaving the family business; a withdrawal that was covered almost as much as the decision by Kevin Eubanks, a bass player in Jay Leno's studio band, to go elsewhere. Then again, Jay Leno's stock isn't what it used to be either.
Barack Obama is a president so green he once admitted that he was the kind of guy who would patrol the White House turning out errant lightbulbs. On Wednesday he promised to loan states billions of Federal dollars to build nuclear power plants . There hasn't been a nuke plant built in three decades in the US, "fallout" you might say, from the near meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.
Obama's move was similar to laws pushed by Dick Cheney and George Bush.
An aside: The nuclear power company Exelon is one of the largest contributors to Democrats in Illinois, the state where Obama cut his political teeth. Exelon staff call themselves "the president's utility".
This may be the anti-Heraclitus moment. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Right now it's Fashion Week in New York City, and the usual parade of tramps, scamps and schemers are kicking their high heels through the snow-laden tents at Bryant Park in midtown. A cameraman friend of mine is shooting it. We were talking the other day about Haiti. He described a perfection of horror and chaos, kids missing limbs, corpses piled on the streets, people walking around unclothed: They had fled their houses naked, unable to return. The prisons had been cracked open. My pal saw someone walk up to a man in the street and shoot him in the head because the shooter believed he raped one relative and killed the other.
Photographing a Fashion Week event, my cameraman-pal recounted that a fashionista had been screaming at him about how important the show was.
Perhaps the kindest thing you can say about this is that the screamer believed every squeal they made, but it's also the saddest thing. Some people will not quit.
One more quote from Heraclitus: "Character is destiny." Put it another way: No-one ever quits when they're ahead.
Read more of Tim Wilson's blogs.
World News Video
-
Dangerous rush to Everest summit (1:59)
-
Dozens killed in Syrian massacre (2:09)
-
'King of Romance' competes in Eurovision (1:46)
