If you had to constantly stand next to Cindy McCain, you might spend $150,000 on clothes, too.
The Republican National Committee spent more than that on Sarah Palin's wardrobe in the seven weeks since she was selected as John McCain's running mate, politico.com reports today.
There was almost $50,000 invested at Saks Fifth Avenue stores in St. Louis and New York. (Had she chosen to shop at the Bala Cynwyd branch, she would have saved the RNC sales tax!)
In early September, the RNC gave Palin more than $75,000 to drop at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis.
Doesn't this make running for veep sound like a great job, or what? Maybe Palin can single-handedly boost retail sales.
Palin looks good. Her clothing is smart and appropriate. And we're guessing Anchorage isn't exactly a mecca of sartorial style.
But that sure is a lot of capital to spend on duds for a 10-week run as the vice presidential candidate.
Now we know why Palin looks so happy. She's won valuable prizes! A whole new career wardrobe, running for a job that usually just requires a nice assortment of power ties. (Plus there's the almost $5,000 on hair and makeup in September.) When most of us switch jobs, we don't even get a Phillies shirt.
The choice to spend so much, and so quickly, seems counterintuitive to the campaign's rhetoric.
John McCain has made a big deal about "Joe the Plumber," so much so that some wags have suggested he's the senator's new running mate.
Palin speaks frequently about "Joe Sixpack" and "Main Street" as opposed to Wall Street.
Saks and Neiman Marcus aren't exactly your Main Street, unless your Main Street happents to be Fifth Avenue.
The Atlantic.com reports that clothes were also purchased at Barneys on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, the snootiest, hautiest store imaginable with posibly the most superior sales staff outside of Paris. It's the very definition of the East Coast elite. (The Eastern media elite can hardly afford to shop there.)
Which illuminates another issue: the idea that a candidate should mirror the electorate.
Candidates aren't like us. It takes a certain kind of personality, drive and experience to run for higher office.
And, now, a certain kind of wardrobe.
The RNC can spend money however it sees fit. But this kind of expense account makes it a whole lot harder to claim to be one of the people, a Sarah Sixpack, when you're packing a $150,000 wardrobe more suitable with Cristal.
The Parent-Infant Center in West Philadelphia has a waiting list of more than 100 babies for its infant care.
That's right, 100 babies.
It might be easier to get into college.
Here's a column on the shortage of top daycare in West Philadelphia and Center City.
Karen Heller: So many kids, so little day care
Not law or medical school but the Parent-Infant Center, a veritable Louvre of finger paintings in West Philadelphia celebrating its 30th anniversary next week.
Sylvia is 20 months old. Her mother, Hien Lu, began looking at day-care programs - oh, let's be honest - "before I was pregnant."
When Lu was expecting for all of one month, she registered "Baby Landis" at PIC and six other city day-care programs.
Currently, more than 100 babies are waiting for spaces at PIC. That's right, 100.
Many panicked parents call monthly. Most babies, like Faith Applegate, never get off the infant list. "We registered when she was a month old," says her mother, Binh. "She didn't get in until this fall."
Faith is 51/2.
Baby-care blues
Situated in a former Episcopal divinity school, PIC serves 230 children, from ages 6 weeks to 5 years. Waiting lists exist for every age group.
A 3 percent spike in city-born babies last year alone can't explain the increased demand all centers are experiencing. More affluent families have settled in the urban core, West Philadelphia (the Applegates), Northern Liberties (Sylvia and her parents), and Queen Village.
Parents often opt to place infants and young children at centers near their offices. (Once children are in kindergarten, the focus shifts toward home.) Some programs pull from five counties.
The shortage can be attributed in part to cost. Building rents can be prohibitive. Top staff is hard to retain without proper pay and benefits.
An informal survey of five West Philadelphia day-care centers found 700 names on the combined waiting lists. Many are duplicates, but still . . .
Getting into college may prove easier.
Funkids at Fourth and Market? For Wachovia employees only. Penn Children's Center? Ninety percent of the 179 spots are reserved for university employees. For younger infants, there's a waiting list of 18 months to 24 months. Same is true at the Montgomery Infant Friendship Center in West Philadelphia. How can any parent be that prescient? By the time babies get in, they're no longer babies.
Top programs, like PIC, Penn, the Caring Center and the Infant Friendship Center, have approval from the National Association for the Education of Young Children as well as four Keystone stars, the highest rating from the state's Department of Public Welfare.
There are 35 NAEYC-accredited centers in the city. In West Philadelphia and Center City, seven.
Cries for care
And they're costly, too, especially for infants and toddlers who require more staff. Child care is the inverse of private-school tuition, going down as a child ages.University employees pay $323 weekly for full-time infant care at Penn's Children Center. PIC charges $1,415 monthly, though many children attend part-time.
That's almost $17,000 annually, $5,500 more than Temple tuition.
Why not hire a sitter? "With a nanny, you're dependent on one person," says Lu. With licensed child care, parents qualify for tax credits and employee flex spending.
Last autumn, PIC's director of 25 years, Marni Sweet, died after a short, brutal battle with brain cancer. Parents and alumni parents raised funds for an appropriate tribute. They planted a dozen Winter King Hawthorn trees lining 42d Street, each adorned with a tag sporting Sweet's photograph.
Director Cynthia Roberts hopes to expand Sweet's vision. A building on PIC's campus, owned by Penn and empty for years, requiring at least $1.5 million to renovate, could accommodate 50 more students.
Which Roberts could find within hours.
Contact staff writer Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.
Oliver Stone's new movie, W., may be a case of too much too soon. Is this really what people want to rush out and see this weekend?
It's hard to go pay to watch an impersonation of someone we see almost daily in the news. I caught a snippet of Josh Brolin's performance on NPR's Fresh Air and he sounds eerily like the president, but is that compelling enough to draw people into the theater, particularly when the president's approval rating is at an all-time low?
It's like paying to watch a dramatic rendition of the Detroit Lions.
Here's one of America's most controversial directors on the subject of one of America's most controversial administrations. Not sure that popcorn is going to make the experience of watching Richard Dreyfuss, an acquired taste, play Dick Cheney (ditto), any more pleasant. Perhaps gum surgery might be preferable.
Distance is a terrific gift when it comes to analysis and interpretation. Movies dealing with Iraq, the decision to go to war, and the aftershocks of Sept. 11 have done poorly at the box office with a citzenry still not ready to spend free time being "entertained" by what is still news.
In the Valley of Elah, Redacted, Rendition, Lions for Lambs and Home of the Brave have all fared poorly at the box office. Most of them were critically panned, as well.
HBO's Generation Kill failed to generate much attention, despite being created by David Simon and Ed Burns, the talents behind The Wire. Perhaps, in a few years, we can all work up to watching it.
In the mean time, watching the Red Sox square off against Tampa Bay looks like a better use of time.
So, in the last question of the last debate -- both candidates have cumulatively debated 40 times, a Biblical number that -- education finally came up.
One question, folks.
In this economy, we should be far more concerned about education.
For future generations. For retraining workers. For improving our nation and making it competitive.
Instead, it's a lot of talk about taxes.
Guess what? If we don't educate our children and workers, they'll make less money. They'll pay fewer taxes.
The economy will suffer, as will the country's standing in the world.
Health care and education really matter. Especially now. Without them, what do you have?
Here's what I wrote in Tuesday's column.
Karen Heller: Health, education foremost for voters
These are universal concerns. Without health or education, we can't go forward. We can't even tread water. Education is the great equalizer and the biggest key to financial advancement and independence, far more than race, ethnicity, country of birth, or your parents' financial situation.
Educated citizens land better jobs, ones with health insurance. A healthy, educated country is a more prosperous one. If that's elite, we should all be for it.
When Americans are uninsured and sick, they drain the entire system. We all end up paying for it. And the nation suffers.
During the Republican National Convention, education came up maybe twice. You can't have the "best workers in the world," as both candidates claim, without educating them well.
Otherwise, you don't simply leave a child behind, you leave a nation.
The McCain campaign rarely mentions education. On health care, it applies the same marvelous free-market applications that got us into this fiscal disaster. The campaign is too busy fighting community organizers and former domestic terrorists, who often amount to the same thing. Who knows, they could be anywhere. I attended the same school as Bill Ayers' wife, in the neighborhood where they live. Possibly some errant terrorist dust rubbed off on me.
Unhealthy, unwealthy
When businesses sputter or fail, employees' benefits do, too. In the coming months, America is going to have a boom in uninsured citizens, working and laid off.
How can you have "the greatest nation" on Earth, as the candidates state, and not provide health care for its hard workers? Before adjourning Wednesday for the year to campaign at voters' expense, the part-time, full-pay, molto-perk Pennsylvania Senate voted to improve dog kennel conditions and require vet checkups every six months, but did not a thing about health care for almost a million uninsured residents.
Pennsylvania: We love puppies. People? Not so much.
You can tell plenty about how a nation cares for its children, its sick and wounded, its veterans. The government will bail out bankers but balks at health insurance because it seems "socialized." To some of us, this seems only humane. Meanwhile, we've socialized the banks.
On the whole, Europeans and Canadians making less money live better than Americans because they don't go broke paying for health care or higher education.
Frankly, I'm suspicious of the "best workers in the world" claims because many Americans aren't trained to do much more than flip burgers and we don't make much except debt and vacant housing that no one needed.
In recent weeks, the chasm between red and blue has been bridged by green. It's the economy. It's always the economy, not the threat of domestic terrorists from the 1960s or community organizers who have the temerity to register nonwhite, nonrich voters.
On Saturday in Philadelphia, Sen. Barack Obama said, "I don't quote Ronald Reagan that often, but are you better off than you were four years ago?" Americans able to save for retirement - an increasingly phantom concept - are most likely worse off than they were four weeks ago. John McCain is, too.
And they are the fortunate. Most people are drowning in credit, carrying an average debt of $8,565 on their carnivorous plastic. Meanwhile, the average annual household savings is $392, the lowest since the Depression. We're living above our means.
Fight, baby, fight
Twenty days to go, McCain and his running mate are still talking about 1960s terrorists. The Republican National Committee sends daily e-mails about ACORN, the community organization registering poor black voters.McCain launched a new speech yesterday, absent specifics but big on bellicose rhetoric. "Stand up. Stand up and fight," McCain said in Virginia Beach, Va. "America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history."
Were these outtakes from Patton?
Sarah Palin took another opportunity to bash the East Coast elite, which, someone might tell her, McCain has been a member of since birth. "There is anger about the insider dealings of lobbyists and anger about the greed on Wall Street and anger about the arrogance of the Washington elite and anger about voter fraud," she said. "America, let John McCain turn that anger into action!"
After 20 months of campaigning that seems like 20 years, we get one last debate tomorrow, one last chance for McCain - a patriot, to be sure - to lose the anger, the desperate claims, and make clear what he's running for and the important changes he wants to make.
Obviously, you watch the Phils.
During commercial breaks, switch to the debate.
During any pitching changes -- with any luck, only for the Dodgers -- switch to the debate.
Do you know how many pitchers pitched Monday? A baker's dozen.
Any time a candidate mentions "change," switch back.
Ditto for McCain calling anyone "my friends," especially if they're not.
On Monday, we became so anxious, we switched briefly to Jon Stewart's opening monologue.
When we switched back, the Phils took charge. Which is change we can believe in.
And, now, the quote of the day from Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker.
"Last week, the global economy, struggling to agree on a price for its components, in an environment without leverage or liquidity, found pretty much everything (except gold bars and Phillies tickets) to be worth a lot less than everyone thought. Your house, your billfold, your portfolio, your clout, your talent: market to market, these will, apparently, fetch a fraction of what you’d expected or depended upon. As haircuts go, this is a scalping."
See! The Phils are the only thing that are actually increasing in value.
John McCain and Barack Obama seem to have forgotten about Florida this season. Sure, it's great they're spending so much time in Pennsylvania and Ohio they could qualify for residency. Obama is so at home that he pledged his support for the Phils during his Philadelphia visit Saturday, a potential political risk if Tampa Bay makes it to the World Series. As for the Red Sox or, dare we mention, the Dodgers, those teams are based in true blue states.
Yes, it's wonderful to be so popular. We love to have all these candidates hanging around and benefitting from national exposure, though it is tiring to perpetually hear the region reduced to the "rust belt." Perhaps commentators are speaking about the foliage.
Perhaps they like this region because Ohio and Pennsylvania are neighbors. Philadelphia also gives candidate solid media exposure into three states.
The Delaware Valley isn't far from New York, where McCain plans to grovel before a ticked-off David Letterman Thursday after standing him up and unleashing a week's worth of bilious monologues. It's also close to Washington, D.C. where, correct me if I'm wrong, the two men, as well as Democratic veep candidate Joe Biden, actually hold jobs.
Scranton has become quite the political hot spot with Biden and the Clintons, both claiming heritage there, that it's become famous for more than The Office. It's the go-to photo op.
Are the candidates ever leaving? Are they ever heading South to Florida? Could it be that the place was such a voting nightmare the candidates are fearful of any repeats? Perhaps, with so many different media markets, Florida is too expensive and difficult to conquer. Meanwhile, we'll just enjoy all the attention and feeling like the keystone state is the key to it all.
Let us now praise a famous man, Paul Newman, who was more than a movie star in the pantheon of great movie stars. He was a sublime actor, an indelible cinematic character and a man of immense charity and purpose.He died at the age of 82, leaving behind a legacy rarely rivaled in Hollywood history. Foremost, because he didn't live in Hollywood but in rural Connecticut and kept company with the same wife, the glorious Joanne Woodward, for many, many decades. He always said she was the more talented of the two, an uxurious stance that endeared him to multiple generations of women even more.
Newman treated his surreal good looks -- he was the Brad Pitt and George Clooney of his day -- as something to overcome rather than exploit. He preferred to play the outsider, the ne'er do well, rather than the hero and simple rake, though he had more pluck and charm than any actor in recent memory.
Newman didn't coast on stardom. He used it do support his true interests. He did small films. He directed. He raced cars and refused to play the Hollywood game. He never risked turning into Tony Curtis, who let his game go flat after so much promise.
Newman never seemed to care about the money or the ephemeral, extravagant flippery of fame except in that it allowed him to be more independent and philanthropic. (Like his dear friend and co-star Robert Redford, though the Sundance Kid has always seemed less generous as an actor and a human being skilled at interpersonal relationships.)
How many actors have raised $200 million for charity, children with cancer foremost among his concerns, with less craving for gratitude? Elizabeth Taylor has done wonders for Aids charities, but she expected to be treated as royalty while living like a princess. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are doing their share, but with the cameras always zoning in on the white heat of their fame and, even worse, their children.
Newman did it all with characteristic humilty and humor.
If you're lucky, you get to experience the thrill of such a great star, a great man, and a beautiful human being in every sense of the word every half century or so.
At a Republican National Convention that threatened to be overtaken by Hurricane Gustav and a surprise vice presidential pick, John McCain finally owned his convention.
In the build-up to his appearance, it didn’t help that his own wife, Cindy, described her husband’s running mate in Daniel Boone-like mythic proportions: “a reform-minded, hockey-mommin’, basketball-shootin’, moose-huntin’, fly-fishin’, pistol-packing mother of five.”
McCain, a man who speaks better without a text and more passionately on the subject of others, was asked to tell his own heroic story, again. The stories of both parties’ candidates are now so well-known that they have passed into legend. This may be the first presidential contest between two best-selling memoirists.
In the last hour of a convention that spread out over three days and change, the nominee, in his acceptance speech, finally spoke about what he would do in his presidency, not solely about the greatness of the country and the evil of the terrorists.
Though Republican operatives have set this up as a battle between Western candidates of action and achievement versus Washington insiders of words, the Republican gathering in St. Paul was huge on platitudes about the country and honor and McCain’s heroic struggle in Vietnam, and relatively short on a specific plan of action.
In his 50-minute speech, McCain dropped his trademark “my friends” six times. He finally referred to the elephant in the room, mentioning economic “hard times” on a day the Dow has plummeted almost 355 points. The issue of health care was addressed in a solitary sentence. The environment wasn’t even accorded that.
The greatest difference between the two conventions was how they viewed Americans’ worries. For the Republicans, the fear was all about the nation being harmed and evil that lurks abroad. For the Democrats, the fear was all about the economy, losing jobs, health care and homes. The real test will be which fears weigh more profoundly on the electorate.
McCain, who has served in the U.S. Senate for more than two decades, is running as an outsider. He delivered a speech that made it seem as if a party other than his own has been governing the nation for the past eight years.
He mentioned the president once, and not by name. The name of the vice president, arguably the most powerful in history, was never uttered during an evening speech. Number of times Osama Bin Laden’s face was shown: Once. Number of times Dick Cheney’s was displayed: Zero.
“We need to change the way government does almost everything,” McCain said, adding, “We’re going to finally start getting things done for the people who are counting on us.”
In the introductory video, in the most surprising turn of the evening, the phrase that was cited as summing up John McCain was not the oft-used maverick but “mama’s boy.”
It’s not every 72-year-old presidential candidate that can still call himself that and shout out to his 96-year-old mother in the crowd.
Another surprise was the grace of Cindy McCain’s speech. Over the years, she’s been a constant but relatively silent campaign partner. Thursday evening showed that she is an effective force in delivering her husband’s message.
At a convention that celebrated faith and God, the speeches of both McCain and his wife were relatively free of religious references, drawing more on service, charity, character and experience. McCain was gracious in his references to Barack Obama and
downright civil in mentioning the Democratic party. He’s waited a long time for this moment, and clearly was relishing the achievement.
The night ended with the customary balloon drop, a tradition that was skipped at the Democratic gathering last week due to Obama’s stadium acceptance speech. In Denver, the Democrats had rock stars and fireworks. The Republicans didn’t have any rock stars serenade the candidate but made sure the night and convention ended in a blizzard of balloons and streamers. Not to be outdone, a virtual fusillade of fireworks appeared on the giant monitor behind McCain, Palin and their families.
Now, the campaign begins anew. Sixty days to election day and counting.
Turns out, people are watching. (Actually, due to Monday's truncated schedule it was possible to watch Cindy McCain and Gossip Girl.)
Wednesday's speech by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speech generated 37.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen television research. That's 1.1 million viewers short of Barack Obama's acceptance speech, Greek columns and all, on the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention.
Strikingly, the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee's speech was broadcast on six
networks while the Obama speech was carried on ten (BET, TV
One, Univision and Telemundo).
Palin attracted a large female audience, 19.5 million women, or
4.9 million viewers that watched Hillary Clinton's speech in Denver.
Unsurprisingly, ratings for viewers 55 and older (25.2 million viewers) has been consistently ten times
higher than the teenage audience (2.2 million) which may, indeed, have tuned in to Project Runway.
On Wednesday, the Republicans turned it on with a vengeance, painting the media -- every single member of it as if our hearts all beat as one -- as the enemy, along with the elite and the East Coast establishment.
"And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone," Alaska Gov. and presumptive Republican vice president nominee Sarah Palin said last night at the Xcel Energy Center.
"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."
Well thanks, at least, for labeling us "the right people."
This is the same Sarah Palin who, since last Friday, has been treated to unprecedented media coverage, and much of it more positive than the Republicans claim. Check out the glowing headlines today in both New York tabloids. Palin might want to think twice about bashing Washington insiders. If running mate Sen. John McCain is elected, she's going to have to work with members of the United States Senate, not against them.
The ultimate irony of the Republicans' bashing the media is that no politician -- not one -- has benefitted more from the gaze then John McCain. By allowing unfettered access in past campaigns, by playing nice, by offering free rides on the Straight Talk Express and constant on-the-record remarks, McCain enjoyed true love from the press.
When Al Gore and John Kerry proved aloof, or George Bush and Bill Clinton limited access -- his wife, too -- McCain enjoyed a serious Big Bad Love between himself and the media.
In addition to the press, McCain is the darling of the late-night talk shows because of his candor and constant availability. Consequently, he's rarely mocked, except on the subject of his age and then too much so. Something he makes light of, too, and also too often. Comedian Jon Stewart, who has sliced and diced most politicians, has been positively dainty in his treatment of his No. 1 political friend who has appeared so regularly on The Daily Show he might be considered a cast member.
The late, great Washington Post political columnist Mary McGrory, a liberal with a huge bleeding heart, had unabashed love for the Arizona senator. I remember riding on the Straight Talk Express with McGrory and watching her give him the type of gaze rarely offered by the a reporter to a politician, the sort of gaze Nancy Reagan reserved solely for her Ronny.
If McCain continues this theme tonight and onto the truncated two-month general campaign, biting the ink-stained hands that have so generously stroked him during the past dozen years, he may find that the wolf pack is quite capable of biting back.
Recent Karen Heller columns
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