Bush’s Dick Morris is a nerdy, middle-class guy who, unlike his candidate, has had to work his way up the political ladder. Rove is paid to simultaneously sedate the press, reel in the cashola and win the hearts and votes of the American people. It’s a strange job: He knows what it takes to win an election, but doesn’t possess that quality himself.

Rozen does more than just profile one political consultant: she offers pointed, skeptical commentary on the businesslike m.o. of the modern-day presidential campaign and the apathy of journalists who are content to regurgitate every consultant-orchestrated soundbite.

The bad news is, stories about the brilliant lives of political consultants still do little to illuminate the Big Issues Affecting us All, such as: Did George W. Bush once stand on a table in a topless bar, masturbating onto a crucifix with a vial of coke dangling from each nostril, or did he not? (Note to George’s lawyers: I made that up). But if campaigns were about issues, Rove would be munching on raw cabbage outside the unemployment office. The hope is that in taking apart the machine, we can better understand the evolved, though not necessarily improved, state of our democracy. Rozen’s article is a good start.

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The Stranger (Seattle), May 12-18

“Into Gothic Air” by D. Travers Scott

The “Sick Fuck of the Week” Award goes to D. Travers Scott, who holed him or herself up in a house on an island for three weeks and read every novel ever written by the three sisters Brontk. The only fate I can think of worse than this would be to be a Brontk sister. To Scott’s credit, the final report on this sick and twisted experiment is far more amusing — and brief — than the experience must have been. We’re spared the horror and left with delightful nuggets like this one: “Today I learned that Haworth is the town where the Brontks lived — it’s also the name of my next book’s publishing company. Strange coincidence; a supernatural air grows thick around me.” And this summary of “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne Brontk (of whom that delightful reader’s compendium, “Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia,” writes, “It is possible that neither of (her) books would be remembered today if she were not the sister of Charlotte and Emily”): “A smart woman makes a stupid choice. She learns; her choice gets stupider and eventually kills himself. To keep men from turning into stupid choices, you should make them fags. 2,498 pages.” I feel compelled to add that this article is published in conjunction with a 15-hour “Jane Eyre” celebration that includes a madwoman-in-the-attic screaming contest. Yaaaa!

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Village Voice, May 12-18

“The Force Will Always Be With Us” by J. Hoberman

First things first: It is George Lucas’ job to hype his own movie; all filmmakers do it for films of all budgets, audience and scale. So if critics want to snark about how goddam over-hyped “Episode I — The Phantom Menace” is, then they can start by quelling their own impulse to ramble on about it for page after boring-ass page. Aside from the trailers, I’ve seen little advertising devoted to this movie — but, oh sweet Jesus, take a look at your local newsstand or Web site. Editors are hyping “Phantom Menace”; Lucas is just responding to their requests for interviews.

That said, J. Hoberman’s piece on the much-anticipated, sure-to-sink-”Titanic” blockbuster-to-be is hype. Contrarian hype, but hype nonetheless. Yes, “Star Wars” was a big movie; it impacted culture; it changed movies; it made a few little boys wet their pants. It is not a religion. And the new movie? I’ve seen it. It’s not bad, but I do think it’s a little, well, over-hyped.

“Rebel Without a Smoke” by Donna Ladd

A recent Eddie Bauer ad features a famous photo of James Dean, only with the cigarette Photoshopped out (funny, nobody ever thinks to remove his sports car). Donna Ladd reports on the debate over whether it’s wrong to alter historic images. What this debate and Ladd’s article miss is the bigger question: Would Dean want to be peddling T-shirts for Eddie Bauer? Did Einstein really Think Different? Did Fred Astair truly prefer a Hoover? Then again, perhaps it’s too late to be asking.

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New Times L.A., May 13-19

“Return of the Teenager” by Glen Gaslin

Glen Gaslin supplies the world with another long-winded piece on teen culture, with all the requisite references to “Dawson’s Creek,” Teen People and the queen of bland blondness, Reese Witherspoon. While Gaslin is an entertaining writer and his commentary on what the writers and producers of hit television shows are saying about teenagers today is more pithy than most of this sort, who the hell cares? Even Gaslin himself admits that little of what he’s writing about has any long-term, cultural significance. Of course, it’s better than those op-ed screeds about teen outcasts listening to Marilyn Manson while polishing their semi-automatic handguns. I suppose well-written pop culture think pieces clobber simpleminded punditry any old day. Still, I think our man in L.A. should take a cue from our friend in Dallas, Miriam Rozen: deconstruct, baby. From what post-pubescent minds are these entertainment products spawned? And why? The teenagers love the deconstruction, man. It sells! And teens, they’re big these days, in case you hadn’t heard. Really big.

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Phoenix New Times, May 12-18

“Mystery Men” by Serene Dominic

Speaking of teen pop culture, perhaps like me you’ve been wondering whatever happened to the boppin’ harmonic duo the Everly Brothers. Or perhaps not. But I’ve always loved the guys, and Serene Dominic’s fun where-are-they-now piece is as sad and interesting as any I’ve read. “Wake up, little Susie! Wake up!”

Seattle Weekly, May 12-18

Solid as an ’88 Sable by Rick Anderson

Local story, national angle, nicely done. Rick Anderson reports on the less-than-stellar performance of Boeing’s Apache helicopters in Kosovo. Long story short: They are crashing and burning, and that’s just on the practice runs. Is this why Milosevic has that happy, Newt-like grin all the time?

“TiVolution” by Larry Sarchin

For the longest time, Internet companies were stealing all their metaphors from the world of TV. Remember channels, anyone? The interesting thing about Larry Sarchin’s article on the latest in computer/boob-tube technology is not the gadgets themselves, but statements like this one from Jim Plant, marketing director for a technology company called Replay: “It’s like Yahoo! for your TV … It’s a portal for television.” I think I’ll go link to another channel now …

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When they’re not selling classified ads for bondage or listing performances by bar bands, alternative weeklies are pursuing the lefty spin on the local news. This is what they exist for; it’s what they’re good at. Below are stories to make your heart bleed and ache with deep yearning to make a difference.

The Boston Phoenix, May 13-19

Clinton’s Mexican narco-pals by Al Giordano

Quick! Somebody alert Project Censored! This story was not covered by the news media! Oh, wait, it’s being covered now, and it’s actually quite good. Al Giordano writes about how President Clinton’s visit to Mexico in February was hosted by a coke trafficker and not a single American journalist typed one word about it, even though it was headline news throughout the summit. Of course, even if they had, would anybody care?

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Willamette Week, May 12-18

“A Night at the Races” by Mac Montandon

OK. Mac Montandon’s article is a fun and peppy piece on all the colorful characters that go to greyhound races. But it is preceded by an ominous disclosure: “According to People for Animal Rights, as many as 20,000 dogs die each year in the greyhound-racing industry.” Not just any old dogs, either: beautiful, sleek animals who are pushed to their physical limits and rewarded with more cruelty while their owners get fat. There are organizations working now to save these dogs, rescuing them from the tracks and putting them up for adoption.

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Salt Lake City Weekly, May 13-19

“Kids on the Street” by Leslie Reynolds

It’s the kind of story they dole out Society of Professional Journalists awards for every year: a real, heartbreaking account of homeless teens — teens are big! huge! — told by a passionate journalist, usually female. I’m not saying it’s not an important issue. It is. And this piece is a fine example of how to write these stories. But every time I read this story, I have to roll my eyes, just a little.

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San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 12-18

“Crossing the Line” by Arturo Perez, as told to Don Ray

I don’t think I’ve seen any other story like this. It’s a first-person account by someone who crossed the U.S. border from Mexico. I’ve read accounts by journalists who’ve gone along with groups of immigrants; I’ve read interviews with those who’ve crossed and hadn’t made it. But this account is unshaped by an outsider’s point of view, save for whatever editing was necessary to make it publishable. “As told to” stories are easy to do, and enrich content, but generally don’t run because journalists like to see their bylines attached to their “take.” And alas, stories like this one are seldom told.

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L.A. Weekly, May 14-20

“Unsocial Studies” by Erin J. Aubry

This article is not the “Greek tragedy,” that “can only be described in epic terms” that writer (and sometime Salon contributor) Erin J. Aubry describes it as (Sheesh!). But it is a powerful and provocative look at the explosion of racial tensions at one L.A. high school. Aubry writes from the perspective of the not-so-open-minded observer whose ideas about the good guys and the bad guys get mangled as she investigates charges that two teachers are racists.

“If there’s a team, no one has asked me to join. As a conservative, I normally write more favorably about Republicans than Democrats and I routinely treat conservative ideas as superior to liberal ones. But I’ve never been part of a discussion with conservative writers about how we could most help the Republican or the conservative team.”

This assertion of political purity struck me as false, coming from a journalist who has appeared repeatedly as a speaker at Republican Party events across the country — a breach of the political boundaries of “traditional journalism” that few, if any, of the writers on Journolist, for example, would ever contemplate.

Nevertheless, it is true that Barnes has enjoyed greater credibility than other journalists on the partisan right throughout his career. After all, he is a former reporter for such publications as the Washington Star, the Baltimore Sun and the New Republic. He was once a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and served as one of three panelists for the first nationally televised debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale in 1984.

Now, however, there is further evidence that Barnes not only routinely helped Republicans raise money as a banquet speaker, but accepted tens of thousands of dollars from party organizations as well:

• In February 2006, Barnes was paid $10,000 plus travel expenses by Oregon’s Lane County Republican Central Committee to deliver the keynote address at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner. (Thanks to Carla Axtman for research assistance.) These payments, recorded in filings with the Oregon secretary of state, were evidently made through the Premier Speakers Bureau of Franklin, Tenn., which represents other Fox personalities including Sean Hannity, Dick Morris and Mike Huckabee. Barnes is no longer listed on the Premier website, but the company did not respond to phone or e-mail inquiries about its relationship with him.

• In February 2007, Barnes spoke at the annual  Lincoln-Reagan Dinner held by the Republican Party of Fort Bend County, Texas — home of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who purchased a ticket to the event. The party organization’s filing with the Texas Ethics Commission shows two payments of $5,000 each on April 26, 2007, to Premiere Speakers Bureau (with the notation “LRD 2007 Speaker – Fred Barnes”) and travel expenses of $1,823. Photos of a smiling Barnes with various local dignitaries at the event, which netted a reported $70,000 for the party, can be viewed  here.

• In early March 2008, Barnes served as the keynote speaker for the Republican Party of Palm Beach County at its annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Whether he received the customary $10,000 is not clear because the party’s  filing with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections show only a single payment of $5,500 to Premiere Speakers Bureau on Feb. 18. The committee reported net $120,000 in net proceeds from the event.

Barnes didn’t return a call seeking comment. Neither did a Fox News spokeswoman. The question they avoided answering is whether accepting money from party organizations is appropriate for any political journalist, and whether such payments fall within the ethical guidelines of Fox News. Whatever Fox might say, the Murdoch network’s  long history of excessive coziness with Republican politicians and organizations offers little reassurance.

I hoped to ask Barnes whether he agrees that being on the team payroll means he is indeed “on the team” — the Republican Party team. Understandably, he may prefer not to respond. But he ought to reflect on his standing to criticize the behavior of other journalists, left or right, before he mounts his high horse again.

Exactly what is so disturbing about the Upper West Side? As Joan Walsh notes, it is a place renowned as liberal in politics, Jewish in ethnicity, and therefore, according to Kyl’s implication, foreign to the nation’s heartland. Never mind that some of the greatest American authors, musicians, actors and artists — including very many who happened not to be Jews — lived and worked in that special slice of urban landscape over the past century or so, including Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, J.D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, Humphrey Bogart, Harry Belafonte and George M. Cohan, an Irish Catholic who won the Congressional Gold Medal in 1936 for composing “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” among other achievements. (Rush Limbaugh used to live there, too. And Joe Scarborough says he “loves” living there with his family today.)

Beyond the narrow and ignorant parochialism of such remarks by Kyl and others, what is most galling is their absolute phoniness. Scarcely anyone on the Republican right ever suggests that Weekly Standard editor William Kristol ought to shut up because he was raised on the un-American Upper West Side, a few blocks from Ms. Kagan. Anyone who does so is rightly rebuked for appealing to prejudice. Are Kristol and all the other neoconservatives who have inhabited that neighborhood, beginning with those named Podhoretz, to be tarred as “un-American” too? In May, Commentary editor John Podhoretz published a timely, quasi-nostalgic essay about his family’s half-century in the neighborhood, candidly dismissing the right-wing stereotypes:

Conservatives sometimes invoke the Upper West Side in their lists of petri-dish-like leftist enclaves along with Cambridge and Berkeley, but despite its homogeneous radicalism, it didn’t then and doesn’t now offer much in the way of interesting, unexpected, or comical ideological excess.

Podhoretz goes on to mention that it was anything but sociologically monolithic or elite:

It might have been the most integrated area in the United States. According to a 1966 study, out of 150,000 residents, 105,000 were white (of whom 40,000 were Jews); 26,000 came from Spanish-speaking homes; and 18,000 were black. “Only in Honolulu,” wrote the journalist Joseph P. Lyford, “is there a greater confusion of blood, ancestry, language, and culture in as small a space.” But though there were racial and ethnic tensions aplenty, and these would grow exponentially as the years passed, the division in the neighborhood was primarily one of class — a division between the middle class and the lower class. (There weren’t many rich people on the Upper West Side then, a situation much altered today.)

Let’s not forget Dick Morris, cousin of Roy Cohn and Upper West Side native, who earned his political spurs in the neighborhood’s Democratic clubhouses. Will Fox News dump the voice of Fox Nation as an Upper West Sider and potential crypto-socialist? Of course not. He’s a Republican now, and those nasty ethnogeographical snarks are reserved for Democrats only.

The spurious resentments encouraged by Republicans only begin with Kagan’s home turf. Moving on to her legal education, they sought to demean the memory of Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked — and for whom she expresses unreserved admiration, despite the fact that he called her “Shorty.” The late justice was best known for his life’s work ending legal discrimination in America, culminating in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which struck down “separate but equal” education in public schools. This is a topic that Republicans might wish to avoid, considering their recent embarrassment when Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul started a debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its violation of his “freedom” to discriminate in public accommodations. But Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, along with several of his colleagues, could not resist a gratuitous assault on Marshall as a “judicial activist.”

Coming from Sessions, this sounded like a dog-whistle appeal to segregationist nostalgia. But even if that isn’t what he meant, the “activism” complaint is bogus. Republicans endorse activist decisions whenever they like the result. The most notorious example is still Bush v. Gore, but the current Supreme Court majority is just as eager to overturn precedent and engineer society from the bench, as they proved this year in the Citizens United decision. Reversing more than a century of the jurisprudence that upheld congressional authority to regulate corporate political speech, the conservative justices overturned basic precedent to make a sweeping and ominous change in law. Indeed they seized an opportunity to venture far beyond the issues at hand in that case to free corporations from any restriction and corrupt our politics even further.

How did Chief Justice John Roberts justify that outrage, after repeatedly and falsely promising during his nomination hearings to respect precedent? He cited Brown v. Board of Ed, writing that had the court observed precedent in 1954, “segregation would be legal.” Many legal scholars would quarrel with that claim, but the point is plain enough: Activism is fine, as long as we like the outcome.

It is probably a forlorn hope, but before these hearings conclude the Republicans should stop pandering to their dimmest constituencies and instead try to elicit the actual views of this accomplished American woman, who is almost certain to join the high court next fall.

Such hysterics must be expected from every carnival barker in Fox Nation, especially a featured player like Morris – and the shrill rhetoric surely helps to separate the rubes from their money, in this case through donations to the League of American Voters, sponsor of this morning’s e-mail and many more from him.

Scamming aside, however, a prediction is a prediction, and Democratic legislators preparing to vote yea on reform should be comforted whenever Morris prognosticates their demise, because he is dead wrong with almost perfect consistency.

Only two months ago, following the election of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate special election, the excitable Morris looked into his crystal ball and  told Fox listeners that he had seen the effective end of Obama’s presidency. “Let’s just stop for a second and understand the magnitude of the earthquake that hit Massachusetts … ultimately, this is the end of the Obama ascendancy, he will never get another major piece of legislation passed,” he pronounced. (Which must mean that the healthcare bill is almost certain to pass next weekend.)

During the 2008 election cycle, Morris offered many forecasts, none of which were right. Early on he picked Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani as almost certain nominees of their respective parties and trashed John McCain as a sure loser. In January 2007, he told an audience of conservative journalists: “I think what’s going to happen in the world is that Hillary’s going to be the next president.” Not too long after that, he and wife Eileen McGann wrote a column for the New York Post headlined “It’s Now a Rudy Romp.” A year later, he was predicting that Clinton would crash and burn in the New Hampshire primary, right up to the evening before that election. Her tears had proved to voters that she was unfit to serve as president, he explained. When she won the following night, he overreacted again by predicting that she would surely go on to secure the nomination. (Back when Clinton was running for the U.S. Senate from New York in the 2000 cycle, Morris similarly made one delusional prediction after another, claiming that she would never run, withdraw, falter, lose, and so on. She ran and won, of course.)

Among Dick’s wackiest blunders in recent years was his confident assertion — on the eve of the 2006 midterm election — that North Korea would become the overriding issue in that campaign, eclipsing taxes, the war in Iraq, and Republican corruption. As Glenn Greenwald observed back then in a mordant post: “It’s just not possible to be more wrong than this.”

By Election Day, Dick had forgotten about North Korea and could no longer ignore the unanimity of polls showing that the Republicans were on the verge of a historic defeat. (He occasionally gets it right, if he waits until moments before the polls close to place his bet.)

Part of Dick’s problem, in the years since he sold out completely to the Republicans, is his irrepressible urge to spin rather than analyze. This has led him to some fantastically stupid conjectures, captured on video. One of my favorites came in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when President Dubya made a desultory speech in New Orleans.

On Fox News, Morris rated the weak speech as “fantastic!” Building up a head of steam, he cruelly raised Republican hopes. “The people who said this storm is going to hurt Bush’s presidency,” he declared, “are just wrong.” Defying polls that showed the president’s public approval scraping bottom, he went on to assure listeners that the Katrina fiasco would be nothing more than “a distant memory,” while the city’s recovery would prove to be “a huge positive for Bush. That will be a second term legacy … [Bush] can get all the money he wants out of Congress ’cause of this disaster, the people will be solidly behind him, the media will cover it like crazy and he’s gonna look like Santa Claus.”

Obviously he pulls a lot of these prognostications straight out of his butt, with no polling or expertise required. Certainly there are plenty of polls showing that the Democrats will face serious trouble come fall (although there are also surveys showing a hint of daylight now, too). But when someone like Morris warns of catastrophe, there just may be reason for optimism. 

Fortunately for Romney, the good news is very good: Given Morris’ recent history of prognostication, it’s probably best to now consider Romney the front-runner for the nomination, if not a lock to win in the general.

Most people have probably forgotten by now — or, at least, that’s probably what Morris is hoping — but the former strategist for Bill Clinton turned professional Clinton-hater was the author of a book, published in 2005, titled “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” In it, he and his wife, Eileen McGann, wrote:

[A]s of this moment, there is no doubt that Hillary Clinton is on a virtually uncontested trajectory to win the Democratic nomination and, very likely, the 2008 presidential election ….

But her victory is not inevitable. There is one, and only one, figure in America who can stop Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State Condoleezza “Condi” Rice.