Huckabee, who in recent years has lost 100 pounds, has the roundish, half-deflated physique of an ex-fatty. With his button nose and never-waning smile, he looks slightly unreal, like an oversize Muppet. I was so taken aback by his appearance that I checked his hands to make sure they had the right number of fingers. After the Richards tale, he went on to tell me about the band he plays bass for, and how he has jammed with the likes of Percy Sledge and Grand Funk Railroad, and how he prefers John Entwistle to Flea’s slap-and-pop style of bass-playing. Ten minutes later, driving away from the fund-raiser, I caught myself thinking: Hey, this guy doesn’t seem like a total dickhead. I can almost see him as president. …
Then I woke up and did some homework that changed my mind. But I confess: It took a little while. Huckabee is that good.
Aaah! Can you smell the snakeoil?
Told you it was a good article. The rolling stone is doing a series of interesting profiles on the candidates. Strangely, the Rolling Stone is the only “mainstream” magazine that is consitently and unabashedly very close my politics on several issues.
taibbi’s always a good read, and like luam, l think rolling stone’s been doing some very good political reporting for quite a while.
Make no mistake, Huckabee can win this thing…[but]…/Charm only goes so far if you’re full-bore nuts…
hello mike, dr. dobson calling.
the perfect frc candidate…scary shit, snake oil or not.
lTMF’sA
Agreed..I usually buy Rollingstone for the political articles. Vanity Fair which looks like a glossy upscale beautiful people magazine has some of the best political articles around also.
And yeah, Huckabee is one crazy religious loony tune…who’s being endorsed by that celebrity religious whacko, UpChuck Norris.
I never read Vanity Fair until this year, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the articles in it. I never would have guessed they would be so intelligent from the cover.
Thanks for reminding me that I still need to finish this month’s issue; there’s an article about Bush’s economic surprise that I’ve been wanting to read.
Huckabee scares me, btw.
eh…kinda like buying Playboy for the articles…:{)
there’re avail on line as well: [reg not required]
rolling stone
vanity fair
also rec james wolcott’s blog at vf
also rec others that l try to peruse at least once a week are the new yorker, and the atlantic, and the nation. most of their content is avail w/out subscription.
lTMF’sA
With any luck Taibbi’s question of what’s worse, the Bushie’s who adopted the religious mantra to grease their wheels or Huckabee who is probably a full on zealot will never be witnessed.
Taibbi’s article is an entertaining read, but I think he sorely underestimates how attractive Huckabee is to the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians. He belittles a lot of Huckabee’s religious bent but I think he does this at his own peril.
It is easy to make fun of Huckabee’s creationist views, his views on the “end times” or the “Jesus is the only way to heaven” stuff, but this really, really resonates in that part of the Christian community. It is just the type of thing that makes him stand out. He does not appear to these people as a Bush Christian, who puts his religious faith on and takes it off like a suit jacket when it’s convenient. He is hitting all the right buttons with them. I hear it more around here every day.
He calls Huckabee “full-blown nuts”. And from our liberal perspective he certainly has some of those qualities. But he’s not aiming to appeal to us, he is shooting for that sizable fundamentalist Christian group that has soured on the current administration which has failed to deliver on their core “values” issues; abortion, gays and the so-called societal “war on Christian faith”.
Yes, from a liberal perspective, he is dangerous. He is the one and only candidate for whom the fundies would gladly vote, as long as he continues in the current mode in his campaign. He is easy to ridicule but do not underestimate his appeal to that large block of disgruntled Republican voters.
Lastly, if we are expecting the media to, in the end, bring down Huckabee with the same idiotic treatment they gave Howard Dean, then I’ve got some swamp land in Florida to sell and I’ll give you a real good deal.
It looks like the Neocons might be concerned about his appeal to the fundies as well.