| Chris Bangle: Damned by success
Leftlane news notes today that BMW Group Chief Designer Christopher Bangle has gone from car design pariah to messiah, based on the fleet of BMW look-alike models cropping up on rivals' stands at the Detroit Auto Show this week. Mild-mannered Toyota, which once mimicked Mercedes' staid lines, is now clearly aiming now at high-flying BMW with the more emotional styling of its new IS and LS models. Even rival Mercedes, which lost the global lead in premium car sales to BMW this year, is taking on Bimmer attributes, with models that boast a more muscular, dynamic stance — just look at the new S Class. But is all that flattering imitation going to be good for BMW? Bangle's achievement was to make BMW stand out from the pack. His controversial design turned heads. Even that big heavy 7 Series bumper — "The Bangle Butt" — which didn't look half as big on US roads, got everyone talking about BMW.
Obama emerges as a liberal Reagan who can reunite America
The historical analogies for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama have already stretched credibility. For a while pundits likened him to the effete loser Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic party’s 1950s version of Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell, the greatest prime minister we never had. But Obama doesn’t seem like such an airhead after his gritty, crushing defeat of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. I long thought he’d win but I never thought it would be by eight points, or that he’d push Clinton into third place. So now the favourite analogy is JFK: the young, hopeful rhetorician urging a New Frontier after two terms of conservatism. But that doesn’t work either: JFK won by out-hawking Nixon in 1960, and Obama is a clear antiIraq war candidate. Bobby Kennedy is more apposite: a mix of inner steel and an evolving moral candidacy.
May 2007 Archives
I could give two [bleeps] about them. They're so lame, I can't even believe that's a real job. I can't imagine they even pay taxes." ---Jessica Alba, who just tripled the number of photographers outside her house, on what she thinks of the paparazzi. .
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