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Opening Arguments

The family business

Wonkette takes on Maureen Dowd, and it's no contest:

To Maureen Dowd, the problem is not that Senate seats have been traded back and forth between the same four or five families for the past hundred years, it's that Caroline Kennedy hasn't gotten one yet.

Here is a thought: Instead of just appointing some nice lady because she is nice, the governor of New York might appoint somebody who has already, you know, WON ELECTION to some other public office. Then it would at least have the appearance of legitimacy, or fairness of some sort, or something.

Or he could just give it to Kennedy, because everybody knows the Kennedys are imbued with special powers of public servitude that makes it very cruel of us to prevent them from serving in whatever capacity they think is most appropriate.

But Wonkette is being the idealistic one here, which is to say, naive. Politics is like any other enterprise, which means it is vulnerable to becoming a family business. Even Fort Wayne's political life (and therefore its government) is largely ruled by a handful of families, sad to say.

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