Loving that a Jewish comedian won the Presidency of Ukraine by a landslide,

[JudyM]

especially since my paternal grandparents both emigrated to the US to escape antisemitism and pogroms there. And we forever lost contact with my paternal grandmother’s side of the family in the Holocaust.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/zelensky-win-makes-ukraine-1st-country-outside-israel-with-jewish-pm-president/

https://m.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Jewish-comedian-wins-election-in-Ukraine-587509

[still_one]

1. and history of Ukraine and antisemitism makes this even more amazing

[hlthe2b]

2. Can he take on Putin effectively?

[JudyM]

3. Hope so. He had a massive win, that's got to help.

[MosheFeingold]

4. That's kind of my concern

Jessie Ventura, Reagan, Al Franken, Sonny Bono, and Trump are my knowledge about entertainers who become politicians.

Pretty thin list when Sonny Bono (who I actually knew when he was in Congress -- yes, a Republican, but a really great guy) turned out to the best of the bunch.

He knows how to work a crowd, but govern?

I also worry that if he sucks, it will reflect badly on the Jewish people in the Ukraine, which has a tradition (!) of acting poorly towards its Jewish citizens.

[hlthe2b]

5. Al Franken was an exceptional Senator. NONE of the others on your list even approach that level.

Bono was better than expected, as Republican Congressmen go, but hardly exceptional.

[MosheFeingold]

6. That's hardly the point

The point is there is not a lot of overlap between "entertainer" and "leader", and the results have been (generally) disappointing.

We have to agree to disagree about Sen. Franken.

[hlthe2b]

7. You think Sonny Bono was better than Al Franken? Really? You do know this is Democratic

Underground, right?

[MosheFeingold]

8. Not politically, no

But Bono (who, if you remember died, what, 20 years ago?) was from a markedly different time in politics.

You know, when politicians got stuff done together. I used to work as a staffer in Congress. He was a very nice, polite, guy, who listened to things, and really wanted to help. Sure, he would be wrong about certain hot button issues, but that's not really much of what Congress does. It's things like deciding where a highway should go. If it should be 6 lanes or 4.

90% of the stuff Congress should do was (and still should be) non-partisan. He would dig into the most boring crap, understand it, and come up with fair solutions, accepted by Republicans and Democrats alike. If you recall, Nancy Pelosi openly wept at his funeral; they had been friends for probably 10 years. Cher all but threw herself in the grave.

I like Fraken's politics, in contrast. But he was a boorish asshole, very unfriendly. (Of course, he was a Senator, and they are generally dicks, so perhaps it's an unfair comparison.)

Different time, hard to make comparisons.

[hlthe2b]

10. I met him twice in Boulder, CO. A nicer politico, I could not imagine...

I've heard that from those who worked with him, likewise.

[MosheFeingold]

9. And to point when the worm turned

It was the Clinton Impeachment.

Things have been total crap since then.