Philip Nobile answers Andrew Sullivan. Looks like Andrew may have picked a fight with the wrong guy.

The other night marked my second trip to a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and once again I was greeted with excellent service. The waiter knew me by name even though I’m not a regular (he knew it simply by looking at the clipboard before coming to our table). When I called for reservations, they asked if there’s a special occasion–I told them I needed to get done in under an hour-and-a-half so I could make the basketball game. Two different managers introduced themselves to our table and thanked us for our patronage. (This made me worry that business might be slow.) As for the steak, as some of you know, it is cooked in butter. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But for purists like myself, it can be a little unnerving. Still, my tiny 12-ounce ribeye was just fine. There are other steakhouses whose meats I prefer more, but when it comes to service, I will say Ruth’s Chris was by far superior.

Compare this with my experience at the District Chophouse last year. The Chophouse is owned by Rock Bottom Restaurants in Louisville, Colorado. I had made reservations for a party of 11 at 5:30 on a Saturday. But earlier in the week, I decided to move it back by an hour. I called the Monday before and they said it wasn’t a problem. Come Saturday around 6:30, the entire group walks in and I am told we were late by more than an hour and will have to wait another two hours before a table opens. “But I changed the reservations,” I told them. It wasn’t marked down. A manager comes over and asks me if I got the employee’s name who changed my reservations. “You didn’t get his name?” he asked me, as if it was the common thing to do. When I told him I changed it on Monday, he said “It is unlikely since we’ve been booked for more than a week.” As one of my friends asked him, “Are you calling [me] a liar?” The manager’s reply: “I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying it is unlikely the call was ever made.” (We stormed out and found better service and a better meal at the Capital Grille.)

I don’t care if they’re serving Wagyu at half price at the Chophouse, I’ll take a buttered steak over that any day.

Kos was on the Dean payroll. Here’s the bigger news: However unseemly that is–and it’s plenty unseemly–Kos’s lone fig-leaf disclosure post is still better than Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek, the South Dakota bloggers on Thune’s payroll.

But here’s the big question: Why was the Dean campaign wasting its money on Kos? Presumably Kos would have given them all the fawning coverage in the world anyway, right? Wouldn’t Kos have wanted to do this because it’s something he believes in?

What you have here is another example of Dean, who ran a campaign based in part on promises of fiscal responsibility, being wasteful with his money.

I think I’m in love.

If you go to White House.gov you’ll find the sketches for all of the important inaugural ball dresses. The one pictured here is for young Barbara Bush:

It’s a lovely gown, of course, but the model in the sketch looks eerily like Jessica Rabbit.

As if the new Indian museum on the National Mall isn’t already a joke.

When I visited recently, I was impressed only by the architecture, and the lobby especially, in which you enter a vertiginous central cavern that goes all the way to the building’s ceiling. The “collection,” if you can call it that, is scattered about on floors extending outward in a circular fashion, not unlike the Guggenheim’s setup.

But what they have on display is pathetic. In one window case, there were some everyday crafts by a Canadian tribe (speaking of which, there is absolutely no uniformity or even thoughtfulness behind the museum’s use of terms like tribe, nation, people, etc.), including, on one shelf, a coke can and an ordinary hot beverage thermos. Whether these had been left behind by construction workers or were deemed, somehow, illustrative of Indian culture I cannot say. The signage for the display ignored most of its contents. In fact, the museum’s collection properly speaking receives only a fraction of the attention that is lavished on the subject of living Indians of North and South America. Head-dresses, weapons, totem polls, all the beautiful, intricate ceremonial pieces one associates with this massive indigenous civilization are little in evidence.

It was an example of curating, not by committee, but by a committee of committees. And the committee of committees took as their goal making visitors aware of present-day Indian culture. So, what is essentially a dead culture is treated as if it were vibrant by emphasizing the current activist aspect of the Indian American experience. Funny, French culture, just to take an example, because it is living, can be treated as if it is dead. You can have a show of 17th century French art in which contemporary France is not even mentioned. But Indian culture, because it is a shell of its former greatness, cannot be treated that way. And as a result Indian culture actually seems less great.

Yesterday on CNN, Howard Dean told Bill Hemmer the Democrats lagged behind the Republicans by about 20 years “in terms of organization and in terms of message.” He spoke frankly about the need to catch up and “reach out into the grassroots.” So far so good for a man running for DNC chair. But when Hemmer asks him to elaborate, Dean reveals the true nature of the struggle:

[The Republicans] have a deep infrastructure into the grassroots of all the states. They get involved in lower ballot races, secretary of states races, things like that. Those matter because unfortunately the Republicans believe that it’s more important to make sure the Republicans are in power than it is to let democracy flourish. And they’re, even their election officials now are, as we saw in Ohio, beginning to suppress votes and things like that.

So you see it’s not just happening in the Ukraine.

Because I just can’t get enough:

“I go from having a #1 album and things going great and all of a sudden something like ‘SNL’ happens and boom! You’re faced with how mean people can be and criticizing you and stuff.”

There’s more, about the Orange Bowl and whatnot. Read at your own risk.