My sister is alert, smart, and definitely curious, and she’s been a resident of what is now Kevin’s McCarthy’s 23rd district since she could vote. So why does she and everyone inside the Beltway know what the Los Angeles Times failed to report? Really? Does it seem credible that reporter Phil Willon forgot to include, or failed to find, the most important factor in the minds of the “RedState” blog, the conservatives in Congress, and much of the United States while gearing up for 2016?
The GOP didn’t want to be vulnerable to what they accused Bill Clinton of in 1998 — a heterosexual affair. McCarthy’s was worse, however, since, unlike Monica Lewinsky, Renee Ellmers was Kevin McCarthy’s equal — at least far as being an honorable member of the House of Representatives before he became majority leader.
In writing politics or writing history about politics, nothing is more significant than the silences. Nothing is more telling than the absence of the detail that sent a politician to his political death, or in this case, the death of his Speaker of the House ambitions. I’ll bet Paul Ryan is happy, though — he’s protesting a bit too much about having to give up his important work on the Budget Committee.
Professor Ruth O’Brien, who earned her Ph.D. in political science at UCLA, joined the Graduate Center’s doctoral faculty in 1997 and, in 2004, founded the “Writing Politics” specialization in political science. She also serves as an adjunct affiliated scholar with the Center for American Progress. In her research and books, she focuses on American politics, law, political theory without national borders, globalism, and American/global dichotomy. She edits the award-winning “Public Square” series for Princeton University Press, showcasing public intellectuals such as Jill Lepore, Jeff Madrick, Anne Norton, Martha Nussbaum, and Joan Scott. O’Brien is also launching “Heretical Thought,” an Oxford University Press political-theory series that is global in outlook. Her latest book, Out of Many One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition (2013), with a foreword by journalist Thomas Byrnes Edsall, distinguished professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism, was honored with a 2013 “Author Meets Critic” American Political Science Association convention session. She also wrote Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care (2005), Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (2001), which received an honorable mention from Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry (“Meyers Center”), and Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of the New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935 (1998). “Writing Politics” emanated from two books she contributed to and edited: Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination (2008) and Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act (2004), which earned another honorable mention from the Meyers Center. O’Brien’s controversial blog led Rush Limbaugh to dub her a “professorette.”
