There are a multitude of reasons why Caroline Kennedy should not be appointed to New York’s vacant U.S. Senate seat — utter lack of experience being just the first among them — but I have yet to read or hear a single compelling reason why she should. The smart betting is that Kennedy will get the nod, however. That possibility, along with talk that Joe Biden’s son eventually will settle into his father’s Senate seat, has prompted Politico.com to ponder why Democrats are so comfortable with “dynasty politics.” The Bush family has become the contemporary face of political dynasties, of course, but as the article notes, “it’s entirely possible that the Senate will be comprised of nearly a dozen congressional offspring by the end of Obama’s first term as president” — and most of them likely will be Democrats. That’s an odd circumstance for the party of progressivism. It feels so clubby and … well, Republican.

Twenty years ago, in what turned out to be one of the early indicators of a coming era of Islamic-Western confrontation, “The Satanic Verses” was published and its author, Salman Rushdie, subsequently was put under what was essentially a death sentence by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. That same dynamic was repeated many times in the following years, most notably when a Danish newspaper published cartoons that sparked rioting and violence among Muslims, causing their creator to go into hiding a la Rushdie. But as this article from Spiked-online explains, what you think you know about the “Satanic Verses” controversy probably isn’t true. Rather than being a genuine controversy, the author says, it was an issue ginned up by Iran as a gambit to preserve power “at a time when [it] had lost face by pulling out of war with Iraq and when political reformists were gaining the upper hand in Tehran.” Whatever the history of the event, the unfortunate result is that two decades later, Western publishers and media outlets have become reflexively self-censoring, so as to not provoke Muslim anger.

The musical genre known as “murder ballads” doesn’t appeal to me — gives me the willies, actually — but if you’re a fan then you’ll be heartened by the new album from Charlie Louvin, the 81-year-old surviving half of the fabled Louvin Brothers. The album is called “Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs,” and it lives up to the title. Nobody gets out alive. Enjoy.

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