Oh Caroline!

A very entertaining piece on Caroline Kennedy’s “run” for the vacant Senate seat in New York by Larissa MacFarquhar in this week’s New Yorker. There are moments at which one feels rather sorry for Kennedy, but overall the piece is not, shall we say, flattering. And what to make of this splendidly amusing stuff from her courtiers?

Now Caroline Kennedy has had her moment and flubbed it. Paterson has appointed Kirsten Gillibrand, a second-term congresswoman from Hudson, near Albany. “Paterson has no comprehension of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has chosen someone better at representing cows than people,” Lawrence O’Donnell says. “What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter of a former President or the son of a former governor. This is the hack world producing the hack result that the hacks are happy with.” To Caroline Kennedy’s friends, her putting herself forward for the Senate, whatever the result, was a step of great courage and significance.