When they get around to writing it, the screenwriter will use Molly Ringwald’s op-ed as a starting point:

None of the films that he made subsequently [“Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club”] had the same kind of personal feeling to me. They were funny, yes, wildly successful, to be sure, but I recognized very little of the John I knew in them, of his youthful, urgent, unmistakable vulnerability. It was like his heart had closed, or at least was no longer open for public view. A darker spin can be gleaned from the words John put into the mouth of Allison in “The Breakfast Club”: “When you grow up … your heart dies.”

I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. Though it does seem sadly poignant that physically, at least, John’s heart really did die. It also seems undeniably meaningful: His was a heavy heart, deeply sensitive, prone to injury — easily broken.

Most people who knew John knew that he was able to hold a grudge longer than anyone — his grudges were almost supernatural things, enduring for years, even decades. Michael suspects that he was never forgiven for turning down parts in “Pretty in Pink” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I turned down later films as well. Not because I didn’t want to work with John anymore — I loved working with him, more than anyone before or since.

. . .

Eventually, though, I felt that I needed to work with other people as well. I wanted to grow up, something I felt (rightly or wrongly) I couldn’t do while working with John. Sometimes I wonder if that was what he found so unforgivable. We were like the Darling children when they made the decision to leave Neverland. And John was Peter Pan, warning us that if we left we could never come back. And, true to his word, not only were we unable to return, but he went one step further. He did away with Neverland itself.

Salient detail: Ringwald adds that Hughes made “mixed tapes” for the cast . . . the visual of John Hughes hovering over a stereo and affixing a label to a blank cassette tape just about breaks my heart; I say that scene either goes in the first ten minutes (to convey his “eagerness”) or in the last ten minutes (to express something “yearning” about his persona) — take your pick.

President Barack Obama can’t stand to be without his “Entourage.”

Call it a guilty pleasure, or maybe it just rings familiar to him. The HBO series about an aspiring actor features a fast-talking agent named Ari, based on the real-life brother of Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

. . .

“When you hear he likes ‘Entourage,’ you have to go, ‘That figures,’” said Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University. “Anything Obama does is cool by definition. He’s the Internet president, he’s the BlackBerry president, and now, I suppose, he could be called the HBO president.” Obama likes “Entourage” so much he even rearranged his campaign schedule not to miss an episode.

“We would talk about ‘Entourage’ all the time,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

“A couple of times during the campaign, we would have these Sunday night calls at the same time as ‘Entourage,’” Gibbs recalled. “I remember one time I e-mailed him because the call was scheduled for the last 15 minutes of ‘Entourage’ and I said, ‘Just be late and we can just watch “Entourage” and still get on and do the call.’”

“And it worked,” Gibbs continued, laughing. “We got to see ‘Entourage.’”

Having already heard that his favorite TV show is The Wire, this confirms something we’ve long suspected about the President — he had to have caught some episodes of Entourage in there! And while I’m pretty sure he would never say “If I have a guilty TV viewing pleasure, it’s watching hapless Turtle getting really baked, spending too much time chasing down expensive pairs of sneakers and not getting laid” obviously Obama’s guilty pleasure is watching hapless Turtle getting really baked, spending too much time chasing down expensive pairs of sneakers and not getting laid.

So if you were Obama and you were the President-Elect and you could have Ari Gold’s brother as your chief of staff, wouldn’t you totally work that angle?

QED. Now let’s hug it out, bitch.

What’s So Special About a Team of Rivals?

What’s the Value of a Big Bonus?

What’s the Point of Daylight Time?

The black-white Oughts (both George W. Bush’s us-versus-them and the opposition’s are-you-f-ing-kidding-me response to it) will give way to a decade of contrarianism, where everything you know is wrong (and in some cases will be used to give Obama some ideological cover).

I spent a few weeks in Girdwood a number of years ago, and based on the amount of a certain herbal smoke that consistently wafted through the air during my morning walks, the Senator’s evaluation of the Internet as a “series of tubes” now makes perfect sense.

It’s called Matanuska Thunderf@#k for a reason.

Can I just say this would be a bad idea? And not only because you’d have Hillary’s negatives dragging down the ticket. Obama would be a fool to allow Hillaryland and the Clintonistas to set up shop in the Naval Observatory. Think Cheney but without the loyalty to Bush. Having Howard Wolfson and Harold Ickes (not to mention Bubba himself) running around the hill scheming and undermining your agenda and not having any desire to be managed or told what to do sounds like a total mess.

Update: What Josh Marshall said, too.

Update: Looks like it wasn’t just the New Yorkers who were expecting something like this. Check out Matski’s post below for a more informed take on this story.

My instinct in reading this news was to wonder what counties had not reported when the GOP stopped counting. To this end, I flipped over to MSNBC and CNN, and looked for county by county results. On the Republican side, guess what I found?

I’ll admit to obsessively following the numbers on the Democratic side, and not really paying attention to how the GOP caucuses have been reporting. So my question for the loyal readership is, were there vote counts posted yesterday that have somehow disappeared? Does the Washington GOP simply not report until they’re done? Has the overall competence of the Bush Administration simply filtered down to the state level? Or is the fix in?

Update: TPM has bitten into this one with a vengeance, and directs us to a CBS news story claiming that Luke Esser, Chairman of the State GOP, hung up on Lauren Huckabee when she requested that an attorney monitor completion of the vote count.

Stay classy, Luke! You do your party proud!

Been puttering around the internet today trying to think of things to write, and mainly what I see are endorsements for Barack Obama, some explicit, some implicit. Andrew Sullivan, of course, has been beating the Obama drum for some time. Matt Yglesias’s vote for the guy won’t come as a surprise. James Fallows is clearly leaning towards Obama, and Chris Hayes left no doubt where his loyalties lie…

And the list goes on from there.

Some of those endorsements were expected. Some were not. But I really didn’t foresee this unanimity. A couple months ago, Hillary Clinton had far more traction among this group, and Obama hadn’t come anywhere near assuaging concerns abut his candidacy.

If you posit that these endorsements reflect the mood of the Democratic Party apparatus and the superdelegates, you may conclude that Clinton no longer has the confidence of the party. The superdelegates may conclude that if Clinton couldn’t beat an upstart Senator from Chicago, she’s not the candidate to run against McCain in the general election. Theoretical advantage Obama, and previous assumption about a brokered convention turned on its head.

Back in 2004, Will Saletan argued that Wes Clark did just well enough in the February primaries to stay alive, thus splitting the Southern vote and depriving Edwards of the one-on-one fight with Kerry he needed to win:

But when the history of the 2004 race is written, my guess is that we’ll look back at Oklahoma as Edwards’ Stalingrad. He had to kill off Clark. The media were itching to write off Clark, and a no-win night would have given them license to do so. Now they can’t. Clark will go on to Tennessee and Virginia, where he’ll do what he did in Oklahoma: split the non-Yankee vote and keep Kerry in the lead. Maybe Edwards will win Tennessee and Virginia, and Clark will fade. But by then it may too late to stop Kerry.

Now in 2007, the names have changed, but the dynamic is the same. The media keeps wanting to make this a two-way race between Clinton and Obama, but Edwards won’t let them. He’s playing Clark’s role, too strong to write off but not strong enough to win. (For proof, just look at National Journal‘s latest race rankings: they’ve put Edwards in “2.5 place.” He’s in the top tier… sort of.)

With Trippi on his side, Edwards will only get stronger, all the while splitting the progressive (or rather the anyone-but-Hillary) vote with Obama and effectively giving Hillary a clear run at the end zone.

With that in mind, I can’t help but wonder when Sen. Jim Webb’s assistant gets caught “accidentally” bringing Webb’s loaded handgun into the Capitol building. And just days after the Supreme Court strikes down D.C.’s anti-handgun law. Was this a wink-wink to Webb’s Virginia constituents, reminding them he’s still a strong pro-gun vote? I’ll admit that it would be foolish and irresponsible to have your aide intentionally committing crimes (like carrying a concealed weapon without a permit) just to help you in a re-election campaign that’s still 5 years away. Still… there’s more here than meets the eye.

Here’s a great quote from Postman’s interview:

“We’re not going to drive into the future looking into the rear view mirror. We’re as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War. I’m sure Franklin Roosevelt admired Abraham Lincoln. But he didn’t build an industrial economy around 1865 princples and we’re not going to build a 21st Century economy around the principles of 1935.”

Hear, hear. What a refreshing P.O.V. from a labor leader. Still, the implications of the PAC are unclear. It’s based on the conservative Club for Growth, which attacks moderate Republicans by running hard-right primary challengers:

In Michgian the Club for Growth backed Tim Walberg over Congressman Joe Schwarz, who had been endorsed by President Bush and Sen. John McCain. Schwarz was what the group calls a RINO, Republican in name only.

Ultra-conservative Walberg has succeeded only in making a once-safe GOP seat a viable Democratic pick-up opportunity. In other words, by running a hard-right candidate, Club for Growth’s strategy may completely backfire: the GOP may lose the seat altogether.

So if Stern’s strategy is to run primary challenges against safe Democrats, I have a hard time seeing how he’s going to achieve his objectives. The short term result of such a strategy could well be more Republicans in Congress.

I wonder if New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been paying attention. (What’s more, 55 percent of respondents to the Gallup poll think we’re ready for a Jewish President!)

Now that the war is over (to take Phil Ochs out of context — since both pro- and anti-war people are working to figure out the best way to bring the troops home, for all intents and purposes the war is basically over) and Republicans no longer have an ideology, all Democrats have to do is play a prevent defense and slide right in to power.

At the risk of sounding all George Tenetty about it, even if Congress doesn’t flip this year, it’s basically a slam dunk for the Democratic agenda in the years ahead. I’m not talking anything crazy like universal health care or anything, but long term, expect something Kerry-like or Clinton-like. And I think a majority would be cool with that.