I’m a sucker for gravely-voiced financial services pitchmen. I’d buy basically any mutual fund Sam Waterston or Steven Hill told me to.

But have you seen the Ameriprise ad with Tommy Lee Jones? Because it looks like Jones is in a hostage video. His eyes are downcast, looking for a cue card. He mumbles and rushes through his lines. Worst celebrity voice-over ad ever?

I’m not quite sure how to interpret this statement from our new insect overlord:

I’m not going to say outrageous things about the president or about my opponents. It gets headlines and a lot of excitement, and it gets you, by the way, a number of days in the polls to get a nice little bump. But I’m going to talk about the real issues Americans face and talk with respect about people who have differing views. I’m not going to attack them personally. I mean, I know that’s fun, but it’s just not productive.

On the one hand, maybe this is a promise that, as I’ve long suspected, Romney won’t be willing to take after President Obama the way he was, say Rick Perry. Or Newt Gingrich. Or Rick Santorum.

But on the other hand, he’s suggesting that his campaign of the last half year never actually happened. Does he really think so little of the intelligence of voters? (Yeah, yeah, I know. If “the voters” were as smart as Mitt Romney, then they’d be worth $250 million, too.)

Then, on the third hand, it’s just politics and politicians–including Mitt Romney and a bunch of guys both better and worse–will say anything. That’s what they do. But on the fourth hand, most good politicians try not to be so obvious about it.

But hey–lots of Smart Analysts keep telling us that Romney is the best chance to win in November.

You know it would be great if someone was keeping a clip file for recriminations on the off-chance that Romney is the nominee and loses the general election. . .

A sample of why you should be subscribing to the Transom:

Meanwhile, the battle station becomes fully operational. http://vlt.tc/69g  “Powered by its neighborhood teams, the Obama campaign has spoken to some 650,000 voters in Ohio—by telephone, knocking on doors, or with volunteer meetings—the senior official said… “It’s not apples-to-apples,” said Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Mitt Romney, when asked about Obama’s 9-to-1 edge in field offices in Ohio. “Our effort in the state is not comparable to the president’s at this point, given that he has the entire DNC and OFA”—Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America—”infrastructure behind him. Gov. Romney will inherit the party organization when he is the nominee.” Is that… is that the plan? I think we could use a better one.

From Galley Friend C.L.: How to cite a Twitter reference.

What a lousy week.

Bill Kristol has a wonderful little notice on Wilson, with some excellent links for further reading.

If you thought that John Podhoretz’s Commentary was so good these days that it couldn’t get any better–you were wrong! Because the new issue carries a piece by Galley Friend Adam White on the legal theory of Alexander Bickel which is bursting with awesome. Someone should get him to write a book.

And if you’re not already subscribing to Commentary, you’re missing out.

“You mean in Moby Dick?” Andrew asked. “Or at this dinner?”

An instant classic.

There’s nothing wrong with criticizing Andrew Breitbart or rendering a negative judgement on his work and his legacy, as David Frum did yesterday. But Matt Yglesias’ celebration is a wholly different animal.

And I can’t quite understand the non-reaction to it. There used to be a price–professional and social–to be paid when high-profile journalists who are part of big media conglomerates acted this way. A commenter at Daily Kos or Free Republic could behave badly with impunity, but the actual professionals couldn’t because they were afraid they’d get their knuckles rapped by the suits and/or their more respectable friends would disapprove, and maybe even be forced to repudiate them.

It still happens, you know. Compare Yglesias’ tweet, in terms of maliciousness, stupidity, and actual hurtful impact on real people, with CNN anchor Roland Martin’s Super Bowl tweet about a David Beckham ad. You tell me which you think is a worse ethical infraction. CNN suspended Martin almost immediately. But Slate editor David Plotz rushed out to defend Yglesias. Slate isn’t some independent magazine, like Reason, they’re part of the Washington Post Company, a corporation with a $3 billion market capitalization. Surely there’s a grownup somewhere in the company who thinks that employees should be made to uphold some minimum standard of conduct, or else they risk embarrassing the business. They sure do at other companies.

Come to think of it, they even used to do this at the Washington Post Company.