A Leach’s lips can only stay attached to Obama’s seat for so long.
OK we are playing with terms a bit and being a bit politically mischievous in the process.
Powerline has been our rival in disdain for Jim Leach. We give them the first word:
The Age of Leach at the National Endowment for the
Jim Leach underneath the rumpled costume
Humanities now draws to a close. On Tuesday NEH Chairman Jim Leach announced his resignation effective the first week in May . . .
In his capacity as chairman, perhaps most notably, Leach became an Obama mouthpiece, courtier, toady, ninny, relentlessly promulgating the Obama administration line. Surely this is not what Congress had in mind when it created an agency to support the humanities.
Will somebody puuleeze miss Jim Leach!
We do not miss him here. Apparently the arts community does not either. This from the Arts Journal Blog editor Judith H. Dobrzynski:
Let’s catch up on a few personnel changes announced in recent days: The first, and should be biggest, news: Jim Leach resigned yesterday from his job as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The fact that this did not make news says something about his tenure there. I watch for the NEH’s grant announcements — which go to more museums than many people realize — and I think it supports some excellent projects. But Leach, imho, was not very effective as the chief. partly because he chose to embark on a civility tour of the country — making speeches about the need to be civil. I’m all for that, but I don’t think that was his job.
Not quite the Leach look
Alas! Jim Leach is leaving the building. The officious, pretentious fop (see below) is calling it quits from this vital national position. The former 30 year Iowa GOP congressman and one of Obama’s pet gerbils leaves a vital legacy as he departs, hopefully, from the public arena forever. Sadly, though, it must be left to Jim to tell us what that legacy is…no one else really cares. Neh there is a legacy of sorts — his cultivation of the rumpled look, meant to suggest him as a professorial or intellectual personage.
Fop became a pejorative term for a foolish man overly concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England. Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: “coxcomb”, fribble, “popinjay” (meaning “parrot”), fashion-monger, and “ninny”. “Macaroni”was another term, of the 18th century, more specifically concerned with fashion.A modern-day fop may also be a reference to a foolish person who is overly concerned about his clothing and incapable of engaging in intellectual conversations, activities or thoughts.
We wonder if Leach ever made an apology tour to Indian reservations aboriginal enclaves as part of the culture and civility speeches he gave everywhere. Is that not s.o.p. for high profile members of the Obama Administration? Certainly Leach personally has a lot to apologize for with respect to cultural sensitivity. His use of feathered headbands given out at events for years as an electioneering gimmick was incredibly insensitive, dontchaknow.
Oh well, as one insightful commenter noted in response to the Powerline article:
NEH’s gain will be some poor unsuspecting organization’s loss. DLH w/ R Mall
