Galley Friend X sends in the following observation about Mitt Romney’s ability to make the jobs case against Obama:

Romney is making a big push on jobs.  In his new ad, he takes Obama’s line that economy faces some “bumps in the road,” and he runs with it: a bunch of weary-looking Americans get up off a road and say, “I’m an American, not a bump in the road.”

But this ad has a ready-made response: Where are all the people whose employers were acquired by Romney’s private equity fund, Bain Capital, and who were subsequently laid off by Bain to make the acquired company more profitable?

So Romney’s opponents can go out and show the video from the 2008 speech in which Romney said, “By the way, you know, layoffs happen. … Of course you have layoffs sometimes to try to keep the company alive.”  And they can keep pointing to the Boston Globe’s big 2008 article on how Romney got rich while Bain gutted companies.

I’m not saying that Romney’s wrong to highlight Obama’s dumb “bump in the road” line.  But Romney’s probably the last guy the Republicans want making this argument.  Just like the Obamacare fight: Romney is probably the least-well-positioned Republican in this fight.

Caplan gets the better of the exchange–by a lot. Probably because Chua inexplicably breaks kayfabe. She starts out by saying:

Amy Chua: My book isn’t about success or biology. It’s just a memoir.

Then she pivots to:

AC: My book is a bit of a spoof.

Before finally dropping character altogether:

BC: You had a schedule in the book – one that I remember had “one hour of fun family time”, and that was optional.

AC: That was a joke.

Not quite A Million Little Pieces, but still. It’s like finding out that Stone Cold and the Rock were actually drinking buddies.

I’m not sure which of these is the more perfect sign of the times: the Facebook Bimbot with a friends list that looks like the membership list of SPJ or the Gay Girl in Damascus who was hailed all over the media, but turned out to be a 40-year-old married guy in Georgia.

Former Palin booster John Ziegler has a pretty clear-eyed assessment of the evolution of Sarah Palin, the political commodity:

What Palin and her many supporters apparently refuse to accept is that Palin is the Bo Jackson of modern Republican politics. She was a natural, but that talent has been taken away by circumstances beyond her control.

She once was a moderate conservative with the ability to appeal to Democrats and the charisma to energize Republicans. . . .

But like Jackson, she was cut down by “injury” in the prime of her career. The media-induced knee-capping during the 2008 election and its aftermath was grossly unfair, but it was also comprehensive and complete. Like Jackson after his freak hip injury, she still looked the same and could still plausibly play the game, but the magic was gone. It isn’t her fault and it is a travesty of justice, but to not recognize and accept that would be highly detrimental to the team. Jackson soon realized this; Palin apparently has not yet done so (or, potentially even worse, has, and just doesn’t care as much about the team as her brand).

When I confronted Kathleen Parker on CNN in late 2010 about her having “led” the “assassination” of Sarah Palin, I was very specific. I said that Parker and others killed off “Sarah Palin 1.0” and that what exists today is “Sarah Palin 2.0,” which is a very different program.

The first incarnation was actually rather moderate both politically and in tone, having made her reputation going after Republican corruption. This is how she entered the 2008 race with over an 80 percent approval rating in Alaska but came home with almost no Democratic support and very little love among a Republican Party establishment that feared and resented her. This lack of a political base is by far the most underrated cause of her resignation.

When after the 2008 election all hopes of being the Republican bridge builder (not the kind to “nowhere”) were destroyed by the unfair media coverage, Palin very astutely realized that it was only the conservative base that would rally to her defense and she quickly, I would like to think with some help from me, became their Joan of Arc.

While I like “Sarah Palin 2.0” just fine politically, it was a creation of necessity and it was designed for survival and not to beat Obama.

It’s not just another Finals loss–it’s that LeBron James seems to really be embracing his heel turn now. After losing last night, his post-game remarks sounded like something Ric Flair might have said in his heyday as head of the Four Horsemen:

“All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had to today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that.” . . .

“They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy that not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal,” James said. “But they’ll have to get back to the real world at some point.”

Yikes. As a league matter, I suspect it could be really good for the NBA’s main attraction to be a nationally-reviled jerk. As the McMahon family will tell you, there’s no heat like heel heat.

But that can’t be good for Bron-Bron. You don’t get picked up by McDonald’s or Coca-Cola by insulting the public and telling the little people to get back to their little lives. So much for the global icon dream.

From Galley Friend X:

Romulan -> Dothracki – m4w – 44 (Main Line)

Looking for supermodel to help me translate original Romulan texts into Dothracki.
Must have been under contract by Ford or Elite.
Excellent horsemanship skills a plus.
Serious inquiries only.

Hmmmm. How do you open an NYT piece about X-Men and civil rights in a way that doesn’t make it sound like a paint-by-numbers exercise? That’s hard. I know–open with a reference to the box-office gross!

Last weekend, like seemingly half the country, I took my son to see “X-Men: First Class,” the latest, and best, big-screen incarnation of the popular comic book franchise.

The “seemingly” is the big giveaway as to how off-the-shelf this lede is–the idea being to assert that we’re reading this piece because X-Men: First Class became a runaway hit and not because, well, someone has a pre-conceived hobbyhorse that they want to ride. The problem is, X-Men: First Class didn’t get seen by anything like half the country. In fact, its box-office take was kind of disappointing. If you’re going to lede with a reference to X-Men’s BO take, then you should really be talking about how few people plunked down their $9 to see it. (That is, if you care at all about coherent writing that doesn’t look like pre-fab construction.)

So X-Men opened to $55M. That makes it the smallest opening for the entire X-Men franchise. How does it compare to other openings this season? Not well at all:

Hangover Part II: $103M

Pirates IV: $90M

Thor: $65M

Fast Five: $86M

That makes X-Men: First Class the least-seen of the summer tent-pole movies (on opening weekend) this year. But, you know, we wouldn’t want Ta-Nehisi to pull a muscle trying to figure out a lede for his X-Men piece. No, he has Big Ideas about race and the X-Men that no one else has ever thought of before. Just drop the “seemingly” into the opening graph and let him move on to the important stuff.

Hey, it’s not like he’s going to just quote his family members for half the piece.

If you’re in D.C., my friend Joseph Bottum is holding a reading from his new book, Second Spring, at the Catholic Information Center on K Street. The book is a wonderful undertaking–new lyrics for old folk songs and hymns. The event starts at 6:00 p.m. Any questions, you can email me.