QUIEN ES MAS SCHMALTZY? Andrew Sullivan -- who is daily reminding disappointed readers that he is, in fact, still a conservative with his attacks on diversity (something liberals prefer to think of as egalitarianism in action) and praise for attacks on the left -- today mocks this treacly Maya Angelou video for Hillary Clinton. And, indeed, it is pretty darn cloying -- the music! ugh! -- as well as a reminder that Ms. Angelou owes the Clintons for making her the nation's Poet Laureate in 1993. Still, for pure schmaltz nothing can top Mitt Romney's website, which is truly an endless font of campaign cheese. Take, for example, his recently posted narrative about meeting his wife, Ann Romney:
We met in elementary school - we did. I was a Cub Scout, and she was riding a horse bareback over some railroad tracks. What do Cub Scouts do when they see a little girl on a horse? We picked up stones and threw them.That makes him sound so clean-cut I'm suprised he doesn't squeak when he walks.The time I really noticed her, however, was when she was a sophomore. She was just about to turn 16, and we went to Cindy White's house for a party. She came there with someone else. I saw her across the room and said, "Wow, has she changed!" I went over and talked to her and told her date that I lived closer to her home than her date did and I'd give her a ride home if it was OK. And I did. I asked her to go on my first date on March 21st of 1965 - we went to the Sound of Music that was just coming out. We saw that movie and I don't know what it was in terms of the magic that love is.
Clearly, she was beautiful then. But there was something else that happened very quickly ... I didn't want to be anywhere else but with Ann. I wanted to be with her all the time and couldn't imagine being anywhere else besides being with her. And so, at the senior prom, as we danced a little bit, we went outside of the school and I turned to her and said, "Ann, would you marry me?" And she said, "Yes."
--Garance Franke-Ruta
