The Casual Vacancy, Harry Potter author J.K Rowling’s first “adult” novel, must have been inspired by Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.” And, despite the setting in a small, West England town, it is a fitting accompaniment to an American politics grown rotten. It is certainly no escape, though it does lessen the pain.

Rowling’s book isn’t a political novel as much as it is a contemporary take on a traditional English-countryside yarn. Still, it describes with painful detail the pettiness and prejudice that floats like a smelly fog through the streets of Pagford, a town coping badly with the unexpected death of a leading citizen and one of the few empathetic souls within its limits.

Given the absence of perspectives from America’s elites, NBC is taking extraordinary steps to rectify this problem by hiring Chelsea Clinton to be a corespondent, despite the fact that she has no professional experience as a journalist or TV producer.

1. Being old may not disqualify John McCain from being president, but is there a reason he won’t release his medical records? And while we’re at it, Sugar Momma Cindy has certainly benefitted from the tax cuts McCain was once against, but now supports. Why won’t she release her tax returns so people can know how much his switcheroo meant to her?