Fred Kaplan

Ornette Coleman stands before Jackson Pollock’s Number 13 (1949), one of the more poetic splatter  read more »

Slate's Fred Kaplan has a pointed response to Greg Sargent's recent plea for New York Democrats to vote against Mike, an article Kaplan sees as essentially a symptom of the Democrats' problems.

"The lament misses the point. The VIPs' real concern is that they don't want the party to be associated with the hacks and second-raters who are somehow running the local branch. The real puzzler is why the city's Democratic establishment doesn't take the task of governing more seriously.... This is what most New Yorkers -- most voters -- want in a modern mayor: a competent manager who protects the city's people and treats them fairly. The problem with the Democrats' mayoral candidates in recent years is that they don't exude this air of basic competence."

Certainly, Kaplan's right that more people are going to vote on his theory than on concerns about national partisan realignments.

His conclusion: "If New Yorkers are going to trust the Dems to run their city, the Dems have to start fielding candidates capable of winning that trust."  read more »

(Via Neighborhood Retail Alliance, which doesn't think Mike's so competent.)

Gore Vidal: A Biography , by Fred Kaplan. Doubleday, 850 pages, $35.Ah, to have been Gore Vidal!  read more »