Tuesday 16 December 2008

Hollywood in the East

Caroline Kennedy seems like a very nice lady, and no doubt her charitable activities are laudable, but I wish national stars would stop treating our state as if it were Macy’s. Just because Kennedy got a sudden desire for a pretty seat in the U.S. Senate doesn’t mean she should have one.

After decades of Albany gridlock, the Democrats have finally won control of both houses of the state legislature, and we just might be able to get the upstate conservatives to stop resenting the city and pull the state machinery out of the molasses pit. However, awarding yet another Senate plum to another Manhattan icon will hardly endear folks in Buffalo and Binghampton to us or to the state’s leaders who now all hail from the five boroughs.

Governor Paterson now has the unenviable task of presiding over painful cutbacks, and he has a lot of sympathy. So perhaps he isn’t in a position to block what is obviously a full-court press from the Kennedy clan for Hillary Clinton’s seat. But if he were to make a choice based on merit, sorry, there are dozens of people in line before this celebrity miss.

It looks likely that Kennedy will get the nod, and no doubt she’ll do an adequate job down in Washington. Meanwhile, our state government is just as likely to continue its long tradition of undemocratic dysfunctionality.

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