I've been remiss in posting over the last couple days. (I was in Chicago taping this weekend's episode of Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!) New material forthcoming, I promise.

In the meantime, a cautionary tale for politicians and pundits who don't know how to stop talking...



For the record, I feel a little guilty re-watching this.

The Gupta is In. And Oz is Out.

The appointment of Dr. Sanjay Gupta to Surgeon General is a wise one. The role is largely about communication: he will be the leading spokesperson on matters of public health. Gupta is a master communicator -- clear, concise and always sympathetic. And of course he is a real doctor, still practicing today. (Read my review of Planet in Peril 2 here.)

It also represents the end of a long - and sometimes brutal - rivalry between Gupta and Dr. Mehmet Oz. (Oprah is said to be furious at the rebuff of her candidate.) Ironically it was the "heart" of Neurosurgeon Gupta that won out over the too cool and brainy Cardiac Surgeon Oz.

Dr. Oz is expected to concede defeat sometime today. Waiting any longer would be perceived as divisive. Surely he recognizes that marshaling fans of both men behind the rightfully appointed SG is the American thing to do.

President-elect Obama takes office in just 13 days and there are still appointments to be made.

They mop our floors, bus our tables, take care of our kids and pick our apples. Illegal aliens' lives are about working hard, and in the shadows. It's a lonely existence: far from home, putting in 15 back-breaking hours a day, before returning each night to cell-like apartments they share with other undocumented workers. Sure, once in a while they might have a cerveza with their compadres.

But rarely, if ever, do they have time to cruise for sex.

Does anyone else feel badly about this? Fanny does.

I met Fanny through my friend Ramone. Ramone manages a cake shop in Brooklyn. The shop employs a number of bakers including Pablo, an undocumented worker from Honduras. Pablo is a terrifically talented baker and a tireless worker, never a second late and always working long past closing time.

When the cake shop had its Christmas party this year, Pablo took his once-a-year break for fun. After he'd had tres or cuatro Dos Equis, Fanny and her sister Deanna waltzed in. ("Waltz" might be a little generous, since the two gorgeous sisters had already had a few of their own at another party.)

By all accounts the party was a blast. But around midnight Fanny, picking at the remains of a chocolate layer cake in back of the shop, felt a hand on her shoulder.

"It was Pablo," she said. "I don't remember what he said. But we just started making out."

This wouldn't be remarkable -- after all, they were both a little rocked -- but Fanny has a very distinctive type: tall thin and pale. (She's obsessed with basketball player Dirk Nowitzki.) Pablo is, um, not that type.

"Did you enjoy it?" I asked.

"Pablo is so sweet," she said, deflecting. "And Ramone says he works incredibly hard. And he has no family here." I could see that she felt great sympathy for him. As she described it, they made out for a while, until Pablo grabbed her hand and placed it on his crotch (over his clothes). She gently clasped his hand and withdrew it.

It was hard to tell how much Fanny enjoyed the encounter. Either way it seemed like something more than alcohol was at play: not pity, rather tribute to a good man doing a job that might otherwise go undone (even in this teetering economy) -- a man removed from his family, but sending virtually every dime back to his family. Fanny was like the canteen singer entertaining our boys overseas (with more than her voice). She was like the massage therapists who "comforted" distress emergency workers at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11.

After Fanny withdrew her hand from Pablo's crotch, Pablo quietly moved over to Deanna and put the moves on her. Deanna was less sympathetic. (Mind you, her views on immigration are somewhat to the right of Tom Tancredo's.)

"Fanny was fine with it. I was not. I don't care how hard the guy works." She rejected his advances without so much as a "no, gracias."

What do you think? Do the hard and lonely lives of undocumented workers make you more inclined to sleep with them? Or does it have no effect on you either way? Are you more like Fanny or Deanna?

You may have not have noticed when it happened (there was no announcement, no fanfare, no constitutional amendment I know of), but the qualifications for women seeking higher office have changed: motherhood is now considered experience on par with, say, elective office or any other professional experience.

It started at least as far back as 1992 when Patty Murray won her Washington state Senate seat campaigning as just a "mom in tennis shoes."

The progeny-as-experience argument was back in the news when Barbara Boxer grilled Condi Rice over military casualties in Iraq in January 2007: the California senator said the childless Secretary of State had no "personal price" to pay in the war.

Then a year and a half later Sarah Palin paraded her brood (and soon-to-be grandbrood) on the campaign trail, as supporters like Fred Thompson touted her "experience not only in politics but in life ... She's a mother of five."

And now comes Caroline Kennedy, who brings her experience "as a mother, as a woman, as a lawyer" -- in that order. (She's also extremely wealthy, or just a "mom in Manolos.")

Am I willing to dismiss her motherhood as experience? Of course not. I plan to walk outside at some point today -- and I'd rather not be castrated by an angry gang of knife-wielding stay-at-homes. (In that sense I'm no different than any of the other male TV or print journalists who have yet to question the "mommy" credential.)

But is having kids an unqualified qualification? If it were, the RNC and DNC talent scouts better hightail it to the YFZ Ranch, because those ladies are really qualified.

Let's face it, there are good mommies and there bad mommies. If we're going to include motherhood as experience, then we need to make sure we're electing a competent, reputable, good mommy.

We need transparency. To that end I propose the following measures so that voters can evaluate Caroline Kennedy's performance as mother:

• Report cards for Kennedy's three children for the last ten years.
• Footage of the family eating dinner: how are the kids' table manners? how do they talk to each other?
  
• Bedroom inspections: have the kids been taught to clean up after themselves?
• Sit-down interviews with each of the kids for their candid thoughts on their mother's child-rearing.

This vetting is hardly failsafe: the kids, after all, have a father. And who's to say which parent is responsible for the Kennedy-Schlossberg kids' best qualities? But some vetting is better than none at all.

What do you think? Is being a mother a qualification for higher office? What other mommy vetting measures would you add to the list above?

And what about the guy who had the baby last year? Is he extra qualified?

Readers of this blog know of the torment I survived (barely) in creating a Sarah Palin tiara for a Princess Diaries-themed literacy fundraiser. I journeyed to a place in myself that I didn't know existed:



So many times I wanted to quit. But my better angels prevailed. Thank you all for sticking by me during this wilderness period. (Special thanks to you, Meg Cabot.)

The tiara is one of 29 to be auctioned off through the end of January -- all for a very good cause (to teach girls to read or something). These are charitable efforts, so really all the tiaras are special. They're all made with love, heart and good intentions.

That's why I don't want to point out the flaws in the others. (It's clear which one will fall apart as soon as you get it home.) Also, while most of them are pretty, some are obviously more imaginative than others.

Then there's the safety issue: Julianne Moore's tiara is perfect ...

... if you want to die a death like Isadora Duncan's.

And I do like Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece's tiara. It's pretty cool. But buttons? That's it?

The 11th book in the Princess Diaries series? Princess at the Dollar Store. (For the record, I purchased my antlers from The Antler Shack and they didn't come cheap.)

Bobby Brown's tiara is pretty amazing:

Who knew that Whitney Houston's ex had so much crafting talent?

Look, I'm not interested in trash-talking the other tiaras. But I do think that the highest bids should go the most original, carefully crafted one:

And yes, the two babies represent Trig and Tripp.

To see all the tiaras up for auction, click here.

The most gripping performance at last night's star-studded Kennedy Center Honors was turned in by someone who never audibly uttered a word. (And no, I'm not talking about President Bush who was his typical checked-out, slumped-over self during the show.)

I'm talking, of course, about honoree Barbra Streisand, high priestess of the American Song, who throughout the evening rendered invaluable and infallible verdicts on the gala's performances. To watch her reactions was to witness Trial by Streisand. (On this Supreme Court, there is only one Justice.)

We must remember that Streisand is not, as her pedestrian intro defined her (an intro read off of note cards by Queen Latifah) simply a singer/actress/director. She is more than a skills set, more than a "multi-talented performer." Yes, she has a miraculous singing instrument. But at her core she is a master interpreter: She connects completely with her material, which is why you can't stop watching her when she sings softly or when she belts.

She is, in other words, everything that American Idol is not. And last night she stood in stoic defiance: the one true singer never to be confused with the false idol of American Idol!

Let's get down to brass tacks: During the tribute to her, she was unimpressed. It started off with Idina Menzel, Tony-winner for Wicked. Let me be clear: Idina Menzel is a tremendous singer and a terrific actress, but she tried to out-belt Barbra which is:

a. impossible
b. misses the point

My friend Connie's marriage (we'll call her husband Carl) is over. It's not a shocker to any of her friends.

It's not that Carl is a terrible person or that the couple was always fighting. It's just that every step forward in the relationship seemed so belabored, every decision the end result of a protracted negotiation:

• Before they were married, the move from Phoenix to her hometown of Milwaukee (for her job) was made unenthusiastically by him.
  

• The decision on which church to be married in was an unsatisfying compromise: she wanted the Catholic church she grew up with; he wanted a Methodist church. (Although he was no longer a practicing Methodist, he was, I suspect, feeling overpowered and wanted to assert himself.) They went with the Methodist church.

• The decision to get married at all was made after months of couples counseling.

But the detail which struck me as most telling (or at least most dramatic in a Lifetime Movie kind of way) involved the limo ride after the church ceremony two years ago. As related by Connie:

"After the wedding we walked out of the church, everyone threw confetti, the weather was beautiful, and we got right into the car to go to the hotel for the reception. To save money, we rented a town car and Carl's high school friend Bart offered to be the chauffeur. I remember Bart was wearing a uniform which was really funny and sweet. He held the door open for me. There was champagne inside.

"The ride was only about fifteen minutes. But here's what was really weird: Carl immediately leaned forward to talk to Bart. The whole time Bart was driving, Carl was leaning forward. I kept saying, 'Honey, we're married. We're supposed to be holding hands right now.' It's not like Carl hadn't seen Bart in 10 years or something. Bart was at the rehearsal dinner the night before. I think Bart thought it was strange, too.

"I laughed it off and poured the champagne myself. But I've thought about that a lot over the last two years."

What do you think? Is the behavior of a bride or groom during the ritual of a wedding a prognosis or predictor for the marriage itself?

Or are weddings such strange events that they bear no relation to the outcome of the marriage?

Say this for Blago: he's got moxie. How could he even fit behind the podium at today's press conference with those cojones?!

Say this, too: he's a civil rights leader!

From the moment he patiently explained to us that Illinois would not be shortchanged in the Senate (unlike those sissy Minnesotans), he forged ahead with galling - and perversely thrilling - swagger. His holiday greetings were jocular. His sober remarks about his appointee's "unquestioned integrity" were delivered totally unironically. Even his hair had extra volume. (Sorry, but the 'do is kind of growing on me.) Not a hint of shame.

But it was the racial jujitsu, with the appointment of black state Rep. Roland Burris to the vacant senate seat, that had my head spinning. This guy's good. (Okay, I was kind of hoping he'd appoint Oprah or Caroline Kennedy. But the Burris choice is otherwise unbeatable.)

The entrance of black Rep. Bobby Rush sealed the brilliance of Blago's move. Suddenly this was a watershed moment in America's racial saga -- Blago's appointment of Burris an important step forward. The Nation of Islam hails Governor Louis Blagojekhan.

I used to think that former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's overnight morph to a gay civil rights leader, to avoid ethics charges, was impressive. But McGreevey was already gay. Blago really had to stretch for this role -- and may have bagged an Oscar (or at least an NAACP image award).

Is Tom Wolfe writing this all down?!

Now come on, admit it, aren't you a little bit impressed?

Read the full transcript for Caroline Kennedy's interview with the New York Times (it's worth the time) and you hear a woman who is, yes, totally unprepared to answer the most basic questions on why she should be handed a Senate seat. The two Times' reporters spend the first forty percent of their time trying to drill down and understand why - and how badly - she wants it. Totally fair.

What's odd is that she apparently didn't think she'd be asked these questions. Feeling trapped, her responses are bristling and sometimes haughty. (She told NY1's Dominic Carter she's had to work "twice as hard" to get what she wants. She mocked the Times' reporters and asked if they worked for a "women's magazine.") A woman who's worth $100 million should avoid haughty.

Say this for Sarah Palin: when she was way out at sea in her interviews, she never acted offended -- as if asking her questions was a violation of protocol.

Even a simple question, like her favorite places in New York (a very sensitive issue for upstaters) is answered limply, at best:

Reporter: Last question and then we'll let you go. What's your favorite place to visit in New York State aside from New York City and Long Island?

CK: What's my favorite place to visit? Um, you know, there's lots of beautiful places in New York and I have friends, you know, I've been to the Catskills, I've been up to the Adirondacks. I like to go to historical sites. So I loved visiting the battlefield at Saratoga.

Is unpreparedness to answer obvious questions a recessive Kennedy gene? John and Bobby didn't suffer from this. But Teddy famously did, when asked why he wanted to be president in 1979:



Ouch. I guess you can't fake fire in the belly.

Caroline's best answer came in the NY1 interview, when asked if she was as unqualified as J. Lo for the Senate seat:

I admire the journey that J-Lo has traveled. I've been to a school in the Bronx pretty near the house that she grew up in, and so I actually have a lot of admiration for her, and she looks pretty good, but in terms of public policy and how we've spent our adult lives, I don't think there's really that much that we have in common.

J. Lo indeed has come far, amassing a fortune that barely edges out Caroline's. (Both are in the $100 million club.) She is a towering success, not only as a singer, actress and dancer, but also as a producer and merchandiser. She is the most influential Hispanic entertainer in America according to People en Español's list of "100 Most Influential Hispanics." (For the record, I much prefer her sister, former radio personality Lynda. Where Jennifer is hard and sometimes vulgar, Lynda is sassy and always surprising.)

Who do you think would make a better senator: Caroline or J. Lo? (J. Lo used to be known as a monster, but she was American Idol Season Six's most popular mentor.)

Here is a piece I did for CBS News Sunday Morning. More after the video...



Do you agree that Jennifer Aniston is more likely to find love with a non-celebrity? (Why do so many stars only date each other?!)

And do you think that Bernard Madoff can be redeemed? If so, what would Madoff have to do to be forgiven? (Returning the money is not an option since it's impossible -- plus it's a boring answer.)

I don't have anything to add biographically on Eartha Kitt that hasn't been recounted in all the obits and appreciations that have been written over the last few days.

The only question seems to be regarding the infamous Eartha-Lady Bird Johnson confrontation at a 1968 White House luncheon: Was Eartha asked for her opinion about why so many young people seemed disaffected? Or did Eartha offer an unsolicited commentary? Either way we know her career suffered mightily for violating decorum. Of course, in retrospect, most people agree that she showed extraordinary courage.

I did have the thrill of watching Eartha perform at the Cafe Carlyle about seven years ago with my parents and one of my brothers. (The Carlyle is a great New York institution: a cabaret space that takes you back to the '50s, when cabaret was still widely respected entertainment.) I'd been there before to see Bobby Short and Betty Buckley.

I can't say that I was an Eartha fanatic going into it. I only had one Eartha Kitt album -- a casette tape of greatest hits that I took with me to Tokyo in 1991, when I lived there for three months studying Kabuki. I used to jog through the streets clutching my walkman. (If I clamped it to my jogging shorts, it would end up pulling my shorts down.)

The song I loved: I Want to Be Evil. It starts with Eartha in kittenish mode (I would finish stretching and start up a light jog) before she kicks it into wildcat overdrive (at which point I was racing through the streets like a panther).



It's odd to me that all the obits are fixated on Santa Baby and ignore I Want to Be Evil.

Anyway at the Carlyle she sang all of her big hits, including I Want to Be Evil. By now she was in her mid-70s, but her voice was no worse for the wear. She sounded as good as she did on my casette, no kidding. And she managed to both play the diva and fully engage with individual audience members -- a tricky balance.

And she looked great. (A reliable source tells me she wore three pairs of pantyhose to sculpt her legs into their shapely shape.) My father, more a fan of big band singers like Jo Stafford than vampy chanteuses like Kitt, was wholly seduced.

What was most remarkable: you forgot she was well past the age most of us retire. This is no small feat.

I saw Liza Minnelli the other night at the Palace and while I love her, part of the appeal of her performance is sentimental. If you walked in off the street without a clue who she was, you might not be wowed. That's because her voice isn't what it was. Yes, she's an original, an icon, one of the greats. (Liza factoid: She was a major influence on Freddie Mercury!) But Liza doesn't have her top notes anymore and she doesn't dance like she used to. In other words, while the light is still there, she's no longer at the top of her game. (Mind you, she still has more talent in her pinkie than many of today's divas have in their whole bodies.)

You didn't need to know who Eartha was to go gaga the night I saw her. (Same goes for the still-brilliant-at-80 Barbara Cook.) Eartha went out on, yes, a high note.

***

Does anyone else remember Candleshoe, the 1977 Disney film starring Jodie Foster, David Niven and Helen Hayes? It was on TCM the other day. Fantastic.

I'd forgotten what an amazing child star Foster was. She's more Our Gang than Hannah Montana - and thank goodness. There was nothing whitewashed or plastic-y about her. And her scenes with the great Helen Hayes are totally believable. (Can you imagine a family film today giving a role to someone of Hayes' stature, not to mention age?)

Strangely the only thing I remembered from the movie was my jealousy of Bobby, the boy who kept sliding across the polished wood floors of Candleshoe. I craved wood floors so that I could slide across them in my socks. I would have happily spent hours Pledging them! If only...



Does anyone else remember Candleshoe? Did you have wood floors that you could slide across?

"It's like my parents care more about their grandkitty than me!" huffed Justin.

I'd been concentrating on my lats, slowly returning the pull-down weight to the start position. But when my personal trainer Justin mentioned his parents' "grandkitty," I lost focus and just let go of the bar.

"Grandkitty?"

"My cat Miss Georgia," he said matter-of-factly. "She's my parents' grandkitty. And man, they went all out this year. Individually wrapped furry mice and a wind-up gerbil!"

While my regular personal trainer Isaac is singing his way through Europe for the holidays, I've been working out with Justin Popovics, who happens to be one of the top pageant contestant swimsuit competition trainers in the country. Last year he trained Miss Florida, Miss New York and Miss Arizona, all for the Miss USA competition (not to be confused with the Miss America system). Never mind the inter-state conflict of interest.

He also trained Mrs. Oregon, who after birthing four kids, is still smoking hot, thanks to Justin. (Interestingly he's never trained a Miss Georgia.)

As for me, regardless of what you're into, check out my new back muscles and I guarantee you you'll be drooling!

Anyway, he's convinced that his cat knows it's Christmas. And last year ended up less than merry:

"Miss Geogia was sleeping on her Moroccan daybed on Christmas Eve," he recounted slowly. "So I very quietly tacked her stocking to the wall - you know, with a little push-pin. Green, of course. I had already stuffed it with a few toys. But," he confessed, "I'd forgotten the bell-wand."

I was doing reverse flies now. To work my new rhomboids.

"Bell Wand?" I exhaled, imagining a walnut in the middle of my back, held in place by my muscles. (It's all about visualization.)

"You know, the long dangling wand with a tinker on the end."

"Sounds whimsical," I said, releasing the weights, but not the walnut.

"Right, but as I was slipping the bell-wand into the stocking, it rang. Miss Georgia turned and looked right at me." Justin seemed genuinely upset at himself. "I tried to pretend it was the phone or a tea kettle or an alarm. But she knew."

"What happened?" I felt for Justin, remembering the extraordinary lengths my father and mother went to make sure we didn't find the presents before Christmas morning: waking up in the middle of the night, driving to my grandmother's apartment to pick them up, then setting them under the tree pre-dawn. It's amazing to me that I never caught them doing elves' work. (I have been very very lucky.)

But at least human sleep patterns are somewhat predictable. Cats are far trickier.

Justin seemed anguished now: "She ran over and started swiping at the stocking. I tried to keep it away. I swear I tried. But there was no point ... I just let her dig through it." He fell silent, eyes downcast.

"So what? Miss Georgia opened her presents on Christmas Eve!" I was in full spin mode. "Hey, don't be so hard on yourself."

"In my apartment, we open our presents on Christmas morning," he said sharply. He didn't want forgiveness. "That's why this year each individual present is wrapped."

"So Miss Georgia knows the presents are in the stocking?"

"Right."

"But since they're wrapped, they remain a surprise."

"Exactly. She's not going to be able to unwrap them without my help. And that won't happen until Christmas morning." Justin was resolved to right last year's wrong.

I only had one more question:

"Do you think that Miss Georgia actually knows it's Christmas?"

Justin just stared at me.

***

What do you think? Do cats know it's Christmas? What about dogs? Or dolphins? (They're the really smart ones, right? Or are porpoises smarter?)

And do you think Justin is insane? (Even if he is, trust me: he's a great trainer.)

***

And now, back by popular demand: Our Cat Lady of the Month!

Has anyone else been following this year's War on Christmas?

War on Christmas is cable news' annual holiday offering -- an hours-long drama that plays out every December, mostly on Fox News. It's a pretty simple story, which is part of its appeal: a school or town council does something anti-Christmas -- removing a tree or nativity scene, banning the singing of religious hymns -- and traditionalists are up in arms. Of course it's seasonal. (Spring will bring another installment of Missing Blond Chick in the Caribbean.)

But what began as a cheap and hackneyed time-filler for exhausted producers and anchors (really, why don't they just rerun the same episodes from last year and let O'Reilly have another week's vacation?) has become a television holiday classic. What would December TV be without A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, the Yule Log and War on Christmas?

That's not to say I'm a fan. My biggest problems with War on Christmas:

1. The casting: What ever happened to the great anti-Christmas villains like Madalyn Murray O'Hair? She was Margaret Hamilton-level scary. The best Fox News can come up with is some mousy librarian from Vermont who wants to scrap a creche and install a Kwanzaa display.
2. The whole story is less than compelling when we are fighting two actual wars right now.

No, for the most part I don't buy the premise of War on Christmas. And yet ... (here's why this site is called 180) ...

... it does rankle me when friends wish me "Happy Holidays!" They know I celebrate Christmas.

And here's the thing: my Jewish friends, without any exception I can think of, wish me "Merry Christmas"! (Not surprising when you remember that White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin and that one of the best recordings of Ave Maria is on Barbra Streisand's insanely addictive Christmas album.) And I wish them Happy Hanukkah.

It's my nervous politically correct gentile friends chirping "Happy Holidays!" like greeters at Target. What are they apologizing for? The Inquisition? (Guilt over The Inquisition is so sophomore year college.)

I reject "Happy Holidays" for the same reason I dislike nose-jobs: they're homogenizing. They make the world blander, more generic. (Readers of this blog know how sexy I find noses. The bigger, the better!)

Besides Christmas is a federal holiday. That's because it's not only a religious holiday; it's a national holiday. So get over yourselves and wish me Merry Christmas.

Since 1966 the hours-long television broadcast of the Yule Log has been an institution -- first in New York, where it debuted on WPIX-11, then nationally after the Tribune Company brought the log national.

Now there are a forest of Yule Logs from coast to coast. But the WPIX Yule Log, with its soundtrack of Nat King Cole, Percy Faith and the Boston Pops, is the classic version.

Now the Tribune Company has shot a new Yule Log, with a different soundtrack, and log purists are enflamed! Watch, then weigh in...


Which log do you prefer? The new or the old?

If you think that Caroline Kennedy is a member of the elite who hasn't had to claw her to the top, then you should back her for New York's open Senate seat. She's going to fit right in.

That's because the Senate is an elite institution, not just in reputation and character, but at its very core.

More polished, more deliberative than that mob of rabble-rousing yahoos known as the House, the Senate has long prided itself on its more "collegial" tone. The longer six-year term is meant to insulate the "elite wisdom" of its members from the brutish impulses of the stinking foul masses. In the 1950s the upper chamber came to be known as "the most exclusive gentlemen's club in the world," a label likely bestowed by one of its own members.

And it is certainly clubbier than the House. I still remember Strom Thurmond's crazy old man hugging of Hillary Clinton after her Senate swearing in. (In the House, Hillary would have been physically assaulted.)

Caroline Kennedy will more than get along. Please, the woman's friends with Al Sharpton and Rupert Murdoch. (Why do you think the New York Post was so quick to endorse her?)

If you still object to the idea of an "appointment" (of Caroline or anyone else), consider:

The Senate is by its very composition anti-democratic. Each state, regardless of size, has two members. Why? The specious (and lazy) explanation that this is meant to "protect" small states is perpetuated by small states and paranoid culture warriors. (Protect them from what? Is New York otherwise going to invade Rhode Island? Is California planning on raping South Dakota? Is Texas going to harvest the organs of Arkansas' children?) As it is New Yorkers and Californians get far less benefit from each dollar they put into the federal tax kitty than most small-staters do. Isn't that "protection" enough?

No, the setup of the Senate has nothing to do with fairness. It is instead a legacy of - you guessed it - slavery. The less populated Southern slave states wanted to mitigate their disadvantage in the proportionately constituted House. So in the upper chamber, South Carolina would have equal weight with Pennsylvania.

And of course those two senators helped close the gap proportionally in our cockamamie Electoral College. (I'm happy to report that with the National Popular Vote Project, the Electoral College is headed for the dustbin of history! The ingenious interstate compact has already been passed in NJ, Illinois, Hawaii and Maryland. Read all about it here.)

So really the Senate has less to do with democracy or fairness than you may think.

For New Yorkers the advantage of Caroline in the Senate is a no-brainer. This is a woman who raised tens of millions for NYC's public schools -- hardly a glamorous endeavor. (She may be a member of the elite, but she's no elitist.) If she can squeeze that from private donors, think of the pork she can haul back from Washington. (For the record, some of that money would have been far better spent on the school's underfunded and way overperforming inner-city Catholic schools.)

And she's obviously smart: the lady's written seven books, including an incredibly boring tome on constitutional law.

Plus she doesn't shout. And she sits on the board of the American Ballet Theater. So she'll class up the joint. (Be honest: do we really want some upstate House rep with bad clothes and nasty breath sitting in the Senate when we can have the daughter of Jackie O?)

So why blackball Caroline? Seems to me she's met all the membership requirements.

***

Correction: My producer Will Hines points out that California, if given enough to drink, probably would rape South Dakota.