The day after last December's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School we wrote that:
"The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will surely spur pollsters to ask Americans again about guns, gun ownership, gun laws and the Second Amendment.
"If recent experience is a good guide, public opinion may not shift too much."
The federal criminal complaint against New York politicians arrested after an FBI sting was a reminder of how often real-life political scandals can read like the imaginings of Hollywood screenwriters. (Think $90,000 in cash in a congressman's freezer.)
Tuesday's allegations from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York will be just another log on the fire of the public's cynicism about politics and its practitioners. And in alleged conversations involving the implicated officials, those politicians sound pretty cynical themselves, according to the FBI.
Take Republican New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran. A one-time New York City cop who recently ran for Congress, he was arrested on charges of accepting bribes.
Among the allegations: that he accepted payment as part of a scheme to help a Democratic state senator — one who wanted to run for mayor of New York as a Republican — obtain the approval of certain GOP officials.
Halloran allegedly delivered this gem to a witness working with the FBI::
"That's politics, that's politics, it's all about how much. Not about whether or will, it's about how much, and that's our politicians in New York, they're all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can't do anything without the f——— money."
Sheryl Sandberg's controversial new book on women and leadership, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, currently tops Amazon's best-seller list in "Business Management and Leadership" alongside Decisive (Chip Heath and Dan Heath), StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath), Give and Take (Adam Grant), The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas Stanley and William Danko) and The Power of Negative Thinking (Bob Knight and Bob Hammel) — all authored by men.
The demographics of this list reflect the broader trend that motivates Sandberg's manifesto: Women are woefully underrepresented in top leadership positions in business, government and beyond. Sandberg advises women to "lean in" to their careers, embracing ambition and resisting the tendency to hold back due to actual and anticipated challenges in negotiating work-life balance.
Sandberg's book has generated a spectrum of responses — some positive, some mixed and some outright hostile. Most common is the complaint that Sandberg seems to put the burden on women to change, rather than challenging the institutional, cultural and psychological factors that present extra challenges for women.
But another common refrain is that Sandberg fails to represent all women. As one of the richest and most powerful women in America, and one with a supportive husband, she has a few resources that most women lack — whether it's household help or another parent who can step in when she needs to miss dinner with the kids. Here are just two representative comments:
Sandberg has already gotten some flak from women who think that her attitude is too elitist and that she is too prone to blame women for failing to get ahead. (Not everyone has Larry Page and Sergey Brin volunteering to baby-sit, and Zuckerberg offering a shoulder to cry on.) Noting that her Facebook page for Lean In looks more like an ego wall with "deep thoughts," critics argue that her unique perch as a mogul with the world's best husband to boot makes her tone-deaf to the problems average women face as they struggle to make ends meet in a rough economy, while taking care of kids, aging parents and housework. (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times)