More On Dennis the Menace, Or
How Dennis Can't Get No Respect

Are you sick of how half of the lazy headline writers in America seem to be using this now-tiresome device to try to drum up some interest in reading yet another article about the man who would be prez--Dennis Kucinich--by likening him to a cartoon character? I know I am. But there were two Dennis moments in the national media that caught my interest recently. This piece from the lefty magazine In These Times takes a fresh look at the guy and his movement, if you can call it that. It seemed fresh in part because the magazine had the presence of mind to invite a German journalist (now based in Ohio) to do the interview. And Kucinich proceeds to make a good point, observing: "Everything I said four years ago (about the Iraq war) has become mainstream. I’m not speaking from the margins." He also chafes at being read yet another jab at him about his diminuitive stature and large ego, this time by the Toledo Blade.

But the real surprise came in a New Republic piece (not online) on fellow presidential contender Tom Vilsack. After the dateline--"somewhere along U.S. Route 20, Iowa," it begins this way:

'I think I'm making political history,' Tom Vilsack tells me. It's a frigid January night, and we're in an SUV barrelling down a lonely stretch of highway amid the fallow cornfields of eastern Iowa. With the speedometer nudging 70 miles an hour, we're headed to the tiny city of Independence, where a restaurant is hosting an event for Vilsack's presidential campaign. In a Democratic primary field packed to the gills with candidates whose election would represent a monumental political first--Hillary Clinton would be the first woman elected president, Barack Obama the first African-American, Bill Richardson the first Latino, Dennis Kucinich the first elf...

I'm just glad I wasn't drinking anything hot when I read that, because I would have been wearing it.