Mother of mercy, could this be the end of Obama?

It’s hard to tell how political scandals are going to play and what kind of shelf life they will ultimately have. Some like Spitzer’s (below) come out of nowhere and swallow up whole careers and families in a tsunami-like instant. Others start off troubling and just get more so. The news about Obama’s break with his former pastor was getting a lot of play on the evening news last night, with CNN’s Anderson Cooper devoting his entire broadcast to it. and each of the network news program putting it at the top of their political coverage. The junior senator from Illinois made the rounds of the programs himself, telling anyone who would listen that he never heard the Reverend Jeremiah Wright declare this country ran on racism, or say, just days after 9.11, that the attacks were the result of US foreign policy karma.

What’s troubling is not the way the contretemps got heated up, either. John McCain pushed an editorial from the Wall Street Journal on reporters (so that’s where they get their ideas!) and Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox News (who still haven’t forgiven Obama for not wearing an American flag lapel pin) fanned the flames, sending thousands to see for themselves on YouTube. No, the thing that’s the most unnerving about this fiasco is the Clinton camp’s silence.

It’s no secret that part of her strategy has been to hang in there until something stuck to Obama, and this time it wasn’t even mud she or one of her minions tossed. (Neat how the Wright story pushed that Ferraro unpleasantness off the front page.) They have claimed for months that only once the press started looking hard at Obama’s background would his mettle be tested and in this case they might be right. Why wasn’t Obama’s campaign out ahead of this one? Given the rev’s shoot-from-the-hip style, in the already shoot-from-the-hip world of black preachers, shouldn’t someone have had a look at those tapes themselves? Now the press is sure to play gotcha, looking for proof that Obama was in church during a sermon when Wright was on record saying something controversial.

The great pity is that Obama wanted his campaign to get beyond the race issue and some of us have joined him in that hope (see more below). Now a bunch of potential voters are going to hear the same sound bites of Wright and confuse his rhetoric with the message of the candidate. Context means next to nothing in a political year: of course our history is racist, just as its obvious that Al Qaeda’s hatred of the US stems from our foreign policy history. But truth and nuance won’t get you to the White House.

The only good news in all of this was more bad news: stories of the government’s bailout of Bear Stearns pushed the Obama-Wright story below the fold ,or later in the program, and the dire predictions of many economists made the rantings of a retired reverend seem quite trivial indeed. On Jim Lehrer’s News Hour, the essential oatmeal of evening newscasts, Newsweek’s Jane Bryant Quinn was one of a chorus voices on the air last night telling Americans to fasten their seat belts.

“If you look at where America is in the world, relatively speaking, we are getting poorer, because we’ve been a debtor nation for so long,” Quinn told Judy Woodruff. “And the dollar going down means that internationally we are getting to be a poorer country, and we are not doing as well as we did in the past. This is going to be a hard thing for Americans to face.”

Feel better?

Is there anything left to say about the Spitzer scandal? It has to have set the land record for fastest revelation-to-elimination cycle of any modern political sex scandal (“In by Monday, out by Thursday”) and any TV talk show host who chose to take this week off could probably bring the house down just by opening with the line, “Did I miss anything?”

Our hyper-speed, internet-fueled, media-minded punditocracy sure didn’t. It reminds me of those Amazonian pirranha that strip a man down to his bones in a frenzied bloodlust… well, at least in a James Bond movie, which was where half of my childhood education came from. (The other half came from Mad magazine.) Watching the news cycle over the last three days, spending more time than usual at home with my ailing daughter, I have seen each possible angle picked up, run with and ultimately devoured. (The last line of interest is, of course, “Why are we all so interested?)

This time the fate of the political wives got more than usual traction, perhaps because Hillary is casting such a large shadow on our psychic landscape, or perhaps because Silda Wall Spitzer was so clearly devastated, standing beside Governor McLovin. “Why do the wives have to stand up there with them?” Franny asked when we were watching Keith Olbermann Monday night (that’s how sick she was!) and my line about the kabuki like dance to the death that is modern political marriage meant little to her. As I heard a comedienne ask at the end of that first evening (forgive me for not remembering who, there have been so many), “Why does the wife have to stand up there? Why doesn’t he stand up there with the hooker — that’s the one everyone wants to see!”

And now everyone has. Images of the real Kristen has been paraded all over the tabs and the talk shows and I bet visits to her My Space page came close to crashing the server. (I don’t know about you, but internet speed has been very slow here this week — don’t you think it’s Spitzer related?) She is, not surprisingly, an aspiring singer from a broken home. Who knows if those aspects of her personality were ever revealed to the governor (they did see each other more than once, you know). I like to envision a scene like those in Citizen Kane where the miserable millionaire and gubernatorial aspirant Charles Foster Kane starts visiting the chorine who would be the undoing of his marriage and political future. Nothing new here, keep moving.

A hundred years ago the Trial of the Century was that of Harry Shaw, a demented scion of a wealthy Pittsburgh family who murdered the lecherous NY architect Stanford White for White’s past dalliances with Shaw’s wife, a singer herself named Evelyn Nesbit. She came to be known, in tabloid legend and later movies, as the Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. White, who was presented as a serial defiler of young women in Shaw’s seven-month trial, had a special little love nest on in the Flatiron District where he entertained the teenaged Nesbit; she would swing in the red velvet swing, unencumbered by unessential clothing until White finally pounced.

It was a little game they played, just their little secret until the whole world came to know about it. (The phrase, “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?” came out of that trial as well — it was one of White’s pickup lines — and entered the popular consciousness.) It’s doubtful anything quite as memorable will come out of the Spitzer imbroglio — Client Nine just doesn’t have much of a ring to it — but at least it will all be over sooner. The Nesbit story had legs. Why it was just a few months ago that the building that housed White’s literal swing house collapsed. That was just an old structure, his former trysting spot, meant to fall apart. White’s family was never the same, either.

What to make of the suggestion being floated by the Clinton camp that Obama might be her running mate? First Bill came out and endorsed the idea over the weekend, saying the match-up would make “for an almost unstoppable force.” (What is an “almost unstoppable force,” anyway? Is that like the New England Patriots?) Then Hillary said in a campaign rally that she had heard from voters who said they wish they could vote for both her and Obama and she replied, “Well, that might be possible someday.” Even PA governor Ed Rendell got in on the act, saying on Meet the Press Sunday, “It would be a great ticket.”

The day wasn’t over before Obama threw some cold water on the Clinton fantasy, pointing out that he had more delegates than she did, had won more states than she had and in poll after poll was considered a stronger candidate to beat John McCain in November. And he added a reference to the logic behind HIllary’s three am phone call ad: “I don’t understand. If I’m not ready, how is it that you think that I should be such a great vice president?” he said at a rally in Columbus, Mississippi. “You can’t say that he’s not ready on day one — unless he’s willing to be your vice president, then he’s ready on day one.”

The problem with either combo — Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton — is that both candidates would have to then campaign wearing T-shirts that said I’m With Stupid. You can’t trash somebody for being an inexperienced jive-talker or a duplicitous pushover for seven months and then marry them on the eighth, can you? I mean it happens in Shakespeare and Hollywood romantic comedies, and there have been some odd pairings in presidential races within memory. (How about the first George Bush and his derision of Ronald Reagan’s “voodoo economics”? Didn’t stand in the way of walking down the aisle with the voodoo priest himself.) But if Clinton says Obama is not ready to be president, he’s not ready to be vice president, because the stand-in aspect is the most important part of the job. And if part of Obama’s argument for him over Hillary is that she has more negatives — smoking baggage with stickers that say Whitewater and Travelgate on them — bringing her along would only ruin the party. If not the Party.

Speaking of stupid, it also appears that the little girl seen sleeping so soundly in Hillary’s three am ad is not a little girl anymore: she’s a 17-year-old Obama supporter named Casey Knowleswhose stock image was used in the ad without her knowledge. Now she is lighting up the morning talk shows, labeling the spot “fear-mongering” and “a cheap hit.” Free publicity! And a reminder that you don’t want to make a woman look the fool on a national stage, even if she was just pretending to be asleep.

Just ask Mrs. Eliot Spitzer.

I speak here not of Obama but of my favorite first novel of the year to date: Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. Sharp Teeth (the title is the only thing about the book I’m not 100% sure of, if for no other reason than I have trouble remembering it) is the story of werewolves in Los Angeles — great, you say, another one of those. But before you clutter your head with images of Michael Landon or Warren Zevon I should point out that this book features werewolves competing in bridge tournaments, and at least one who grapples with the lure of Kibbles & Bits. Call it the Call of the Domesticated.

And did I mention that it is written in blank verse? You know, like the Aenied. I’ve been avoiding the reviews, as I usually do when I’m enjoying something, but I gather some critics were put off by Barlow’s use of this rather antiquated form. Me, I think it gives the whole proceedings a kind of heroic (and occasionally mock-heroic) quality that the story told straight wouldn’t have. Some reviewers also seem to resent the fact that Barlow is the creative director of an advertising agency in Detroit (as opposed to a Trustafarian graduate of some prestigious writing program living in Brooklyn) and suspect everything right down to the packaging. (The hardcover is dust-jacket free, with blurbs from favorable British reviews printed inside.)

But how did the book come to be reviewed in the UK first? Because it was published there first, and I would love to see the rejection letters Barlow collected from US publishers while trying to get someone to have a good look at it here. (Harper Collins no doubt found it easier to print the book once it had enjoyed success overseas.) It’s hard out there for a pimp, let alone a lycanthrope: As my friend Charlie Haas said to me recently, the publishing business is run by reading groups. If your book isn’t the kind that will stand up to those sorts of questions that are posed in the backs of books meant to get a coffee klatsch started, then your effort is probably dead meat. The kind even werewolves won’t touch.

And book groups are mostly made up of women (news flash), and most women reading “werewolves in modern LA” are going to turn the page or put the book back on the table at Barnes & Noble in favor of some Elizabeth Gilbert knock-off. (Barlow’s book might better have been titled Eat, Prey, Run.) More’s the pity. Sharp Teeth features at least one great female character (yeah, she turns into a wolf too) but more importantly deals, on a pretty visceral level, with a lot of those man-woman questions of the shall-I-trust-him-or-kill-him-first variety familiar to anyone who has ever been in love.

But monster, even monster as metaphor is something I think most publishers don’t believe women would gravitate towards. (Which is why they’ve stayed away in droves from Beauty and the Beast.) I’m glad Harper Collins had the cojones to publish this funny, gripping and original book. Is it coincidence that the same house will be publishing Charlie’s first novel, that went through its own share or rejections and rewrites? Only a fool would write a novel in this day and age, I’ve heard it said, and, as I embark on revising my own, I confess to be one of those fools. At least I can sleep through a full moon.

I wanted to watch the season finale of The Wire last night but was stymied by HBO On Demand. Generally HBOOD subscribers have been able to watch episodes a week before they air but now that the series is coming to a close, and my favorite characters are getting killed off (goodbye, Omar! so long, Snoop!), I’ve been told that I have to wait until March 10 — a day after the finale airs.

Well, what’s the point of that? I want to fast forward to the conclusion — just like I would prefer to speed through the coming six weeks and get to the Pennsylvania primary to see what’s going to happen. Of course I was disappointed in the results of this week (though they’re still digging through the TX caucus results as I write) and hate to think that this thing is going to be settled by the kind of fear-mongering displayed in Hillary’s three am phone call ad, which seems to have played pretty well in Ohio. But mostly I would just like to get to the part where we’re fighting with Republicans again.

I mean, I like political process more than most but at the end of the day, it’s hard to really dislike Hillary. She’s just kind of a boring scold with a dangerous sense of self-entitlement — not a possibly deranged, Frankenstein monster of a conservative like the GOP’s presumptive nominee. That fight will be a lot more fun. We can all sing “Fie on Goodness,” along with the restless knights of Camelot. (“Ah, to spend a tortured evening staring at the floor/Guilty and alive once more!”)

But now the rest of these states want to vote and if Hillary does as well as polls (and her people) indicate she will in PA, she will continue to crow about her electability and Obama’s amateur status. And he has made a few missteps this week, blaming the press for being mean to him and then giving a mish-mash of a speech Tuesday night that sounded more like a joint effort by Mister Potato Head and Woody Guthrie than the kind of ringing poetry we’ve come to expect from the man.

But if setbacks like the Ohio and Texas defeats really knock him off his game, he probably doesn’t deserve to be president. Hillary is right to say that she has been vetted more than Obama has, mostly because she’s been out there longer, drawing fire from the GOP death squads. I think Obama needs to learn to take her kitchen-sink attacks — deal with the Rezko connection, answer the NAFTA memo questions — and lob back a few of his own. Might I suggest he look at a little documentary called The War Room? That’s where we saw Bill Clinton’s then-cornermen, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville perfect the art of the modern political counter-punch.

As far as The Wire goes, I’m not expecting any miracles. Generally each season has ended the same way, with the same old crooks in power, doing the same old same old. But there is also, always, a glimmer of hope. You just have to wait for it.