Mr. Fertitta's publicist—one of Mr. Fertitta's publicists?—reached out to The Observer to let us know that Mr. Fertitta has been enjoying an awesome week. Unlike some billionaires, Mr. Fertitta does not just buy a $19.5 million condo and throw in the towel. No way. He also opened a Last Vegas restaurant with his business partner Eva Longoria (quite an improvement over the overweight middle-aged men who usually fill out the business partner category) and hosted a lavish Gulf-coast Mardi Gras party featuring a performance by Kool & the Gang.  And there are pictures!

Mr. Fertitta's latest restaurant—SHe by Mortons at Crystals at CityCenter (got that?) "merges fine dining with a theatrical nightlife experience," according to the website and "fills the void in the Las Vegas market for the guest who expecting a heightened VIP experience."

What does this all mean? Basically, there will be oysters, his and her-sized steak cuts and Shescake (their term, not ours) followed by an "impressive" LED video wall, 32-foot rain curtain and Funktion One sound system.

How can you top that? The question would have bedeviled us for months, but such dilemmas do not flummox the likes of Mr. Fertitta. The answer, of course, is by throwing a Mardi Gras gala for your closest 1,450 friends "including friend, Mark Kelly"—you know, the astronaut, wife of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords—that features not only a performance by Kool & The Gang, but an aerial strip tease.

The Observer, despite feeling initially depressed by the realization that this week we have merely gone to work, cooked a stir-fry and made it halfway through the most recent issue of New York magazine, found the news of Mr. Fertitta's immeasurably better week uplifting. Mr. Fertitta's dreams may not be our dreams per se, but they are our dreams of how a Texas billionaire should live, dreams that we worried might have died forever in these times when carefully curated tasting menus supplant gender-based cuts of steak and billionaires live in modest Palo Alto homes rather than 164-foot yachts, condos in Galveston and Colorado, country manses in Houston and pied-a-terres in Manhattan. Keep living the dream, Mr. Fertitta.

kvelsey@observer

Hirsch and McConaughey in Killer Joe.

Director William Friedkin has always been attracted to lurid movie material. From the gruesome, overcooked The Exorcist to the vile and unhinged Cruising, he craves plots about deeply conflicted characters who are hopelessly alienated, disconnected from both the society that surrounds them and even their own lives. One craves another well-crafted action nail-biter like his Oscar-winning The French Connection, but at 76, his view of the world just gets darker than ever. Small wonder, then, that he has found his literary soulmate in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, whose twisted, controversial and fascinating work has found its way to the screen through Mr. Friedkin’s jaundiced camera twice—first in the repellant schizophrenic thriller Bug, and now in the toxic trailer-trash thriller Killer Joe. When this sick, ludicrous cocktail of sex, violence and mayhem was first unveiled a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, one wag aptly described it as “the ghost of Tennessee Williams meets the spirit of Quentin Tarantino.” For shock value, cut to Gina Gershon, crawling across a filthy kitchen floor covered in blood to perform fellatio at gunpoint on a Colonel Sanders drumstick, and you have a high-water mark in tastelessness that gives depravity a bad name.

The inbred lowlifes in this B-movie black comedy are members of the Smith family, a clan of troglodytes in a seedy Texas trailer park replete with vicious barking dogs on chains, who swing into ruthless high gear from the very first scene, when penny-ante drug dealer Chris Smith (a game turn by Emile Hirsch, who has grown from the appealing, open-faced kid in The Emperor’s Club into a scabby, hirsute roughneck) arrives in a torrential rainstorm and is greeted at the screen door by his father’s new wife Sharla with a female full-frontal. Following a drug deal that went sour when his own mother stole the cocaine and kicked him out of her house, Chris is broke, desperate and not exactly lit by all four burners on the stove, on the lam from the good ole boys on motorcycles who want money or murder. But Chris has a plan: his mother’s $50,000 life insurance policy. If his mentally challenged, beer-swilling father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), who works as a grease monkey at Bob’s Muffler Shop, and his sluttish stepmom Sharla, a former stripper who works in a pizza parlor, will help, they can knock off Chris’s drunken mom (and Ansel’s ex-wife), pay off the debt, split the profits, and have enough dough left over to improve their lifestyle—maybe get out of the trailer and move up in the world, to a tract house with aluminum siding near a 7-Eleven.

To make sure the job goes off without a hitch, Chris has even hired a contract hitman who never fails—a psychotic cop in a Stetson hat and skin-tight jeans called Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who moonlights as an assassin. The first problem: they can’t pay his $25,000 fee until they collect the life insurance, so Killer Joe agrees to take Chris’s nubile, thumb-sucking, baby doll sister Dottie (Juno Temple) as a retainer for his services. Chris and his dad are reluctant to pimp out their nubile Lolita for a killer’s bounty, but their survival instincts outweigh all feelings of morality and guilt. Besides, her daddy says, “It might just do her some good.” Second problem: What they don’t know is that Dottie’s mom (who is talked about but never seen) has made her the secret recipient of the insurance policy, and Dottie has her own ideas about what to do with the money. Nor does she completely mind the idea of losing her virginity to the swaggering, seductive and studly Joe and keeping the money herself. As the plot turns brutal, the psychopaths turn greedy—especially Ansel’s wife and partner-in-crime, Sharla (Ms. Gershon, shedding more than just her underwear and baring all)—lying, ruthlessly cheating each other and facing the ultimate consequences, in a curdled, rampaging splatterfest finale that sprays blood all over the walls and leaves almost the entire cast on the floor with their guts hanging out. Because the characters are all equally loathsome and stupid, you are never sure if the hilarity is intentional, but I guarantee you the antics of this dysfunctional chicken-fried family will make you gasp and laugh at the same time. Oddly enough, it’s the juxtaposition of comedy and horror that keeps Tracy Letts’ screenplay balanced between entertainment and nausea and highlights the highs and lows of Mr. Friedkin’s fast-paced, pulp fiction, film-noir direction. They can both thank the fearless cast for their passionate willingness to do anything—and everything—for maximum effect. Kicked and beaten by a man’s fists to human hamburger, Ms. Gershon is both amusing and appalling as she pushes the degradation of women beyond the boundaries of political correctness. Even Mr. McConaughey, a terrible actor with no craft or range who whistles through his teeth like a tea kettle until you climb the wall, seems more natural than usual, staggering around in his birthday suit, with his whining Texas accent used to good advantage. He even manages to give Killer Joe a mix of kink and tenderness, finding unexpected down-home joy in something as simple as a home-cooked tuna casserole. Ms. Temple’s thumb-sucking Dottie has erotic moments, but nothing Carroll Baker in a nightie didn’t think of first in Baby Doll. Mr. Friedkin imparts an ugly Texas landscape of convenience stores, pizza joints, auto repair shops and cheap motels to show the downfall of decaying blue-collar America with harrowing effect.

In the final analysis, the atmosphere overwhelms the logic. There is no subtext to the carnage; we hold out no hope that these clueless wretches will learn or grow or stretch beyond the depth of a mug of Lone Star draft. The narrative ideas come from better movies as varied as Double Indemnity, Tobacco Road and Fargo. I confess I found the uncompromising trashiness perversely riveting, until the ending, which pours on the gore like barbecue sauce. It sends you home reeling, but wondering what the point of it was, and why so many worthwhile people bothered to do it in the first place.

rreed@observer.com

KILLER JOES

Running Time 103 minutes

Written by Tracy Letts

Directed by William Friedkin

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple

2/4

Gretchen Morgenson reports on the gossip in the wake of a JP Morgan-sponsored dinner party last month for the bank's moneyed Dallas clientele, where Dimon decided to take some questions. One of them was about the pro-banking regulation views of Paul Volcker and the president of the Federal Reserve of Dallas, Richard W. Fisher.

Mr. Dimon responded that he had just two words to describe them: “infantile” and “nonfactual.” He went on to lambaste Mr. Fisher further, according to the attendee. Some in the room were taken aback by the comments.

Let's be real, here: This isn't so bad. People in Dallas were "taken aback" by Lamar Odom. Of course they're going to be a little shocked when a guy who is constantly under assail for flaunting banking regulation on the whole whips out some "real talk" and bangs it on the dinner table in order to kowtow to his Lone Star State pals. He could've done much worse.

For example:

• "Volker? I barely knew her!"
• "We've got some of our equities guys from the Dallas outpost here with us tonight. (Applause.) I have a message to them from their colleagues in New York, let's see here (opens piece of paper, slowly reads): 'You are a lower-form of life, you pathetic backwater ingrates.' Oh, wait, oh my god. I'm so sorry. I apologize. I read from the wrong piece of paper. That appears to be our official response to the latest wave of derivatives regulation."
• "What's the different between a cattle rancher and Paul Volcker? One stirs up a bunch of dumb animals who, regardless of where they stand at the end of the day, are still milked dry by the tits. The other one is a cattle rancher."
• "Listen, you're all worried about Volcker, I get that. Believe me, I get that. Maybe he does know where the bodies are buried. But if you think he's gonna be a problem around these parts, just remember, your idea of law enforcement are the guys who still have no idea who the fuck shot J.R."
• "Q: Why'd the banking regulator cross the road? A: If you hire him in the middle of it, you won't have to find out."
• "Hear that, everyone? Someone just asked me about the threat that Texas Fed president Richard Fisher presents to their money. Look, I'm from New York. Only in Texas are they naive enough to worry about a guy named Dick Fisher. If I were you, I'd be much more concerned with his deputy, Mark Ed Horsefucker."

We'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip the obese Indian guys at your table on their way to prison. Hey-yo!

At JPMorgan, the Ghost of Dinner Parties Past [NYT]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Quaid.

Nagging question of the day: What heinous sin could the otherwise gifted, versatile and generally underappreciated Dennis Quad have committed to deserve a submental punishment called Beneath the Darkness? This sorry rip-off of every horror flick that turns up on late-night cable programming is a major head-scratcher. Filmed in two Texas highway speed bumps called Smithville and Bastrop, and boasting 61 final thank-you credits and endorsements for everything from the Hula Hoops Diner & Soda Shop to the Wells Fargo Bank of Bastrop, it is, from the picture, very much a community effort. God knows no professional appears to have come within a 500-mile radius. Except, of course, Mr. Quaid, who has a lot of explaining to do.

He plays a cretinous madman named Ely Vaughn. Even in a home movie like this one, there is usually a pinch of suspense to keep you guessing. But there’s no waiting around here. We know Ely is a homicidal wacko headed for an inevitable padded cell from the opening scene, when he jogs up to a neighbor walking his dog on a deserted street late at night, forces him at gunpoint to dig his own grave, then bludgeons him with a shovel and buries him alive. It takes an hour and a half to find out why. Meanwhile, we cut to two years after the murder victim’s disappearance, when a group of high school pranksters are intrigued by the shadowy figures of a pair of ghostlike figures dancing behind the locked windows of the spooky local mortuary where Ely lives. Suspecting a haunted house scenario, the curious teens start snooping around like the doomed kids spying on their neighbors in every curiosity-killed-the-cat thriller from Fright Night to Salem’s Lot and Disturbia. Breaking into the house, one boy watches aghast as the enraged Ely lurches out of the shadows, throws another kid down the stairs and kicks his head in. Of course nobody believes the kid’s story. Ely is not only a former football hero, but a respected and revered pillar of the community in deep mourning over his dead wife. He’s also the town undertaker, with a thorough knowledge of a wide assortment of chemical preservatives, caskets and the kind of embalming fluid that can keep a loved one preserved for years. Slowly but surely the pieces fit and if you don’t giggle “Psycho!” under your breath before the second act, you’ve flunked Creepshow 101.

In an effort to emulate the irritating trends of today’s incoherent filmmakers, Martin Guigui, the director of this fuzzball fiasco, ping-pongs the movie back and forth, from present tense to flashbacks, ignoring the elements of narrative storytelling to reveal only fragments of the preposterous plot. You anticipate every scene before it happens and figure out every secret before it’s revealed. So many people crawl in and out of coffins that it’s hard to tell the living bodies from the maggot fuel. When Travis, the heroic sophomore (played by Tony Oller, the only other cast member besides the star with any real chemistry), opens one burial cask, hoping to find his missing girlfriend inside, Mr. Quaid says, “Travis? You’re a caution.” What an ordeal. The star does his best to bring some sardonic humor to this wake, but it’s painful to watch a seasoned actor searching for a convincing way to say a line like “Travis—you are in no position to be making demands. You’re a burglar! And this is Texas!”

rreed@observer.com

BENEATH THE DARKNESS

Running Time 98 minutes

Written by Bruce Wilkinson

Directed by Martin Guigui

Starring Dennis Quaid, Tony Oller and Aimee Teegarden

1/4

(via mediaite.com)

Now that Glenn Beck is no longer employed by Fox News, he's free to vacate New York, bastion of liberal values and target of God's punitive weather systems.

In April, Glenn Beck first announced would he be leaving New York, though it was unclear where he was headed. After an international speaking tour, the Post reports he's putting down roots in Bosque County, Texas (population 17,204). Mr. Beck will operate GBTV, via Mercury Radio Arts, out of Dallas.

It's safe to say that Mr. Beck never felt at ease in the New York area. He leaves behind a $3.6 million mansion in New Canaan, CT, with a private lake and a 6-foot fence (2 feet taller than local ordinances allowed) and was rarely without his personal security detail or his sidearm.

In 2009, Texas had more deaths by firearm than New York and Connecticut combined.

At the moment, neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain are taking as aggressive a position as Gore is taking. The energy industry doesn't know how to deal with this newest energy crisis. At the heart of the discussion is the impact of our current energy practices on our economic well-being and on national security.

Even a casual examination of the data tells us that our current energy path is not sustainable. Global warming from the use of fossil fuels has already arrived. Fossil fuels damage our environment and require importation from some parts of the world we would like to be less dependent on. While there is lots of fossil fuel left, it is a finite resource that will eventually be depleted. This is the moment to begin to move our economy away from fossil fuels. While some fear the costs of this transfer, I believe it is an opportunity that could strengthen the American economy.

Last Friday, the Texas state government approved a nearly $5 billion dollar project to build electrical transmission lines that would bring wind power generated in the western part of the state to Dallas, Houston and other major Texas towns.

This past Saturday the New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera wrote a piece on the commercialization of the electric car. He posed the central question: Are these cars "costly toys or a new era for drivers"?

Interestingly, the original cars were in fact little more than expensive toys when they were first developed. Then a manufacturing genius named Henry Ford figured out how to mass produce a relatively affordable car called the Model T-and the rest, as they say, is history. Nocera reports that battery technology now allows electric cars to go 200 miles between charges. Most people drive less than 50 miles a day. With gasoline approaching $5 a gallon, and the possibility that we could charge our cars from fossil fuel free power plants, perhaps there is a way to kick our relentless addiction to the internal combustion engine and the oil that fuels it.

Energy is at the heart of the environmental problem. It is also at the center of our suddenly collapsing economy. While oil alone did not cause the war in Iraq, no one can deny the connection between energy and our Mid-East policy. The war in Iraq has caused deficits which weakened our economy. Our need for foreign oil has fueled our trade deficit (excuse the pun). Solve the energy crisis and we no longer need OPEC's oil. Then we can stop sending our soldiers and our dollars to the Mid-East.

Everyone worries that the capital costs of transferring our energy infrastructure from oil, gas and coal to solar, geothermal and wind will simply cost too much. While it will redistribute economic power from old companies to new ones, it will almost certainly ensure that energy will cost less in the future than it does today. Lower cost energy can make our economy more productive and more competitive. Chaper energy allows higher priced labor to compete with lower priced labor.

The factor left out of the cost equation we often see is technological innovation. Our current energy system is getting old in a hurry. We need to stimulate rapid technological change. Computing power provides a useful example of rapid technological change. Think of the laptop you owned three years ago. Your current computer is faster, does more, and is probably no more expensive then that one. The cost of communication and information continues to come down. With investment, focus and ingenuity, we can create a new energy industry that would help our economy, protect our environment and create an incredibly powerful export industry. What do we need to do?

• Invest in university-based basic energy science and engineering
• Provide tax incentives for the private sector to innovate in non-fossil, non-nuclear energy technology
• Re-open the nation to immigration of scientists, experts and skilled workers
• Provide a regulatory environment that encourages sustainable development and environmental protection. In other words, get serious once again about government protecting the environment.

Many of us have been calling for a "moon-shot" type project to develop non-fossil fuel technology. But none of us are Nobel Prize winning former Vice Presidents who received more popular votes for President than anyone else did in the 2000 election. Al Gore once again has demonstrated bold and visionary leadership and deserves our admiration for giving public voice and attention to this critical issue.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Barnes—were wrapping up another back-and-forth session, chewing over the night’s early returns. Mr. Kristol made an observation about the rationality of voters. A producer announced a break.

The team would have a few minutes to stretch its legs. As they backed away from the desk, Mr. O’Reilly approached.

“Throw Juan Williams out of here,” Mr. O’Reilly bellowed with a half-grin.

Mr. Williams and the rest of the Fox politics team chuckled. The longtime NPR contributor gave way to the longtime NPR adversary. A few minutes later, Mr. Reilly was sitting next to Mr. Hume, delivering his five minutes of commentary, before departing for the night.

"NBC News cannot continue to openly root for one presidential candidate, thereby teeing off everybody else in the country, and expect to prosper,” he told his viewers. “Number one, it's corrupt. If they're going to be the Obama network, NBC News should say that we're rooting for Obama."

The Media Mob headed for the elevator. Alexis Glick of the Fox Business Network was waiting in the wings, ready to deliver some commentary on the state of economy. She was dressed in blood red.

Up on the second floor, the Fox News control room was buzzing. There was a much-ignored sign on the door warning no food and drink beyond this point. A man flew by, two slices of pizza precariously stacked on a paper plate.

Marty Ryan, silver-haired control-room warhorse who serves as the network's executive producer of political programming, stood calmly in the heart of the madness, answering questions, giving orders and deciphering the banks of monitors in front of him.

Dotted among the monitors were the faces of correspondents standing at campaign locations across the country—Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont—waiting to be called into action, waiting for some precious airtime.

But just now, they were not playing for the cameras that were trained on them. One reporter was adjusting his seat, another wiped his face with a towel. A blond correspondent ran a brush through her hair. It was like watching a Harry Shearer “Found Object” video, in 10-part harmony. The din of the control room provided the soundtrack—a Robert Altman-like tapestry of densely layered noise.

“Hemmer first.”

“Ninety seconds.”

“Get Brit.”

“Make it tight.”

"Where’s Michael?”

“Is that better?”

“In Ohio.”

“I have him.”

“Sixty seconds.”

Of the hundred or so screens, the Media Mob began fixating on one way down in the corner of the room. The screen was labeled “Future.” It was completely dark.

Time to check in with the prognosticators!

Up on the 14th floor, Fox News had set up their “Decision Desk” in a space adjacent to the dot-com newsroom. There a team of stat hounds hunched over laptops, rifled through bags of mini candies (Tootsie Rolls, Reeses Pieces Peanut Butter Cups) and crunched the numbers as they came in.

Michael Barone, a Fox News contributor and the principal big brain behind the Almanac of American Politics, sat in a nearby fishbowl of an office, looking at numbers and seemingly peering into the future.

At 9:19, a bald-headed fellow, sporting glasses and a goatee, piped up. “Call Rhode Island for Hillary.” Everyone nodded and shifted their gazes to a bank of screens on a nearby wall. Sure enough, seconds later, the announcement appeared that Senator Clinton was the projected winner of Rhode Island. A few minutes later, MSNBC and CNN followed with the projection.

“I think she might get the trifecta,” said the man with the Tootsie Rolls.

The lights in the room flickered. Nearby, Bill Hemmer stood in front of Fox News' latest gadget—a flat, touch-screen monitor capable of displaying voting precincts, delegate counts and all sorts of red and blue bar graphs. The so-called “Bill-Board” got its first test on Super Tuesday. Tonight was its sophomore effort.

Mr. Hemmer, in a sharp navy blue suit, spoke to the camera. Behind him, the Bill-Board displayed the results of an exit poll question: “Is McCain conservative enough?” The Bill-Board gave up the math. Forty-five percent: yes. Forty-six percent: no.

Afterward, Mr. Hemmer came over to say hello. Did the Media Mob want to give the Bill-Board a whirl? The Media Mob did. “Give it a good tap,” said Mr. Hemmer. “O.K., not that hard.”

We began tapping our way through exit poll data, delegate counts, states in play, states out of play, blue states, red states. Another tap: another tool. We began doodling on the screen—à la John Madden—only with our forefinger. We drew a blue smiley face on the state of Texas. Mr. Hemmer seemed only mildly amused.

It was time to keep moving.

Back on the first floor, we entered a brightly lit studio, recently borrowed from the Fox Business Network and renamed “the Strategy Room.” In the center of the studio, a set of stairs descended into a sunken lounge of sorts. The space was round and lined with a padded seating. It was vaguely reminiscent of a 70’s rec room. Dig the red pleather!

Nearby, newly minted Fox News contributor Karl Rove sat at a desk—this one, more or less at sea level—and waited for the end of a break. Throughout the night, the Strategy Room was Web-casting on FoxNews.com.

Kirsten Powers, a Fox News Democratic political pundit, padded into the room and descended into the “Geek Pit.”

“Do you have a doctor of numerology degree like these guys do?” asked Mr. Rove, gesturing at the other political wonks already lounging in the pit. A few minutes later, everyone was deeply immersed in discussing Senator McCain’s possible running mates. “It’s double your trouble with Huckabee,” noted Mr. Rove.

There was another break in the Strategy Room. Mr. Rove, in a playful mood, repeated the studio’s recently coined nickname. “Welcome to the Strategery Room,” said Mr. Rove.

At the desk nearby, Fox News Washington bureau chief Brian Wilson shook his head in amusement. “Now you have me calling it the ‘Strategery Room,’” he said.

The Media Mob wandered back down the hall to check in on Mr. Hume and company. By the time we arrived on set, Mr. McCain was delivering his victory speech. The Fox political anchors were listening intently on their ear pieces and watching on a nearby screen.

“Ask the decision guys if Ohio is going to be called reasonably soon,” Mr. Kristol said to Mr. Hume, off camera.

“They say it’s a ways away,” said Mr. Hume. “Both states are leaning towards Clinton.”

Back on the air, Mr. Kristol posed a larger question.

“Has Obama peaked?” he asked.

The election stretched into the night. There was still no projected winner in Ohio or Texas. “The models get hinky,” said Mr. Hume, off air. “That’s what holds up the projections more so than anything else.”

The Media Mob grew restless and headed back upstairs. At 10:55 p.m. Fox called Ohio for Senator Clinton. Back in the control room, a few minutes later, a producer announced that Mr. Hume needed to take another bathroom break. “Feel free not to track him,” somebody called out.

“Fuck, they just announced Hillary,” somebody yelled.

On one monitor, Ms. Clinton could be seen taking the stage, waving, clapping, waving, clapping. How much more time until the commercial break ended? The moment of suspense came and passed. Mr. Hume got back to his desk; the break ended. As if on cue, Ms. Clinton began her speech.

Nearly two
hours later, at 12:46:30, FNC announced Texas for Clinton. MSNBC and CNN followed a few minutes later.

It was Hillary’s night, the collective apparatus agreed. The race would continue.

In a hallway outside the control room, executives Bill Shine and Joel Cheatwood were talking politics.

"This is what we live for,” said Mr. Shine. “We’re going all the way to Pennsylvania."

She told a crowd of around 3000 at the Burger Center sports facility that they should choose whichever candidate they would prefer to answer such a call.

Clinton also said that there was a big difference between “rhetoric and reality.”

Those isolated moments aside, however, she largely abjured the kind of full-frontal attack she has made on Obama elsewhere in recent days.

Two of the biggest ovations during Clinton’s 27-minute address came for an attack on President Bush and for a glancing allusion to her personal history.

Referring to the high price of gas, Clinton said, “If we had a president who wouldn’t just hold hands with the Saudis but would actually hold them accountable, we might be able to make some progress.”

And as she recalled living in Texas in 1972 while working on George McGovern’s presidential campaign, she said, “Now, granted, I am a little older”, then paused and added, “And I have earned every wrinkle on my face.” The comment elicited loud cheers.

Chelsea Clinton shared the stage with her mother, though she did not speak. Clinton-backing celebrity couple Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen were also in attendance. They signed autographs and posed for photos for some time after the candidate finished speaking, as did Chelsea.

Though there was a significant amount of spare space in the arena, the supporters who turned up were vocal and enthusiastic. One homemade sign looked forward to the election of “Madam President,” while another urged “Hook ‘em, Hill!” – a reference, of course, to the famous slogan of the University of Texas.

Clinton for the most part sought to portray herself as the candidate best able to understand and solve the problems of the general public. This framework seemed to help Clinton connect with the crowd – a trick she is not always able to pull off – and applause greeted even fairly prosaic observations.

“Many people are concerned with just the daily struggles they face,” Clinton said in one such moment. “It may not sound like a really big deal to somebody who’s well-off but, you know, when gas goes up 10 cents a gallon that puts a big strain on the budgets of so many Texans.”

Continuing in the same tone, the former First Lady told the crowd, “I want you to hold me accountable…I want you to say ‘What are you going to do to make it happen?’”

The climax of her speech was based around a refrain about which candidate the public should “hire” to deal with various issues.

Clinton’s practical approach appealed to supporters like Wayne Simoneau, a 54-year-old from Dripping Springs, about 20 miles west of Austin. He defined her appeal in one word: “Experience.”

He added that he wanted “someone who has been around the block” in the White House.

But Simoneau was also impressed by the former First Lady’s stamina:

“She is a 60-year-old woman and she is putting in 18 and 20-hour days,” he said admiringly. “She has the energy of a 20-year old.”

A third possibility—a split decision—will present Clinton the justification to push on if she wishes to, but without any clear way to win.

Let’s say Hillary wins Ohio (as the latest polls suggest she will) and falls just short in Texas (as polls also indicate). For the sake of it, let’s also say she wins Rhode Island, where the lower-income white Catholic voters among whom she has done so well elsewhere predominate, and fails in Vermont, a state rich with the reform-minded progressives who are so taken with Obama. In other words, let’s say Tuesday produces a tie—in states won, total popular votes, and delegates accrued.

For all practical purposes, such a tie would go to Obama, who now leads Hillary by more than 100 delegates. Winning Texas, the second-largest state in the union, would keep Obama’s national momentum going, and to catch him in the delegate race, Hillary would need to win the remaining states by margins of about 30 points. When you’re the front-runner, not losing is just as good as winning.

But Hillary Clinton is unlikely to give up that easily, walking away from what is probably her one and only shot at the presidency. With a win in Ohio, the state that decided the last election and that could decide this one, the temptation to press ahead would probably be irresistible.

Sure, she could reason, catching Obama in the hard delegate count this spring would be out of the question. But if she could roll her Ohio success into a late primary winning streak (starting with Pennsylvania on April 22), maybe she could draw close enough that the 350 or so superdelegates who are still uncommitted would conclude that the primary season hadn’t produced a clear popular verdict for either candidate, thus giving Hillary at least a theoretical chance to win them over and reverse Obama’s pledged-delegate advantage.

The other potential equalizer would be Michigan and Florida. Both states hosted outlaw primaries that Hillary “won” (Obama’s name wasn’t on the Michigan ballot and the candidates refrained from campaigning in Florida, where turnout was substantially lower than in other states). Right now, pushing for these pro-Hillary delegations to be seated at the convention is politically poisonous for her campaign, something they have been slowly recognizing.

But what happens if there’s buyer’s remorse among Democrats who have rallied to Obama? The Democratic convention is still more than five months away, but already Republicans are aiming their attack machine at Obama. What if their broadsides start to dent his armor—if he proves as vulnerable on the “experience” question as Hillary has warned, and if in defending himself he does start making costly rookie mistakes? Maybe then the party would embrace Michigan and Florida as their salvation from handing their nomination to a doomed candidate. Buyer’s remorse could also weaken Obama in the late primary states, giving party leaders even more cover to turn on Obama.

In reality, of course, this isn’t much for Hillary to cling to. Obama has already proven himself adept at responding to her attacks and has only reinforced his supporters’ affection for him in his early skirmishes with John McCain. The notion that he will melt down before the August convention is a doubtful one, judging by the remarkable endurance he has already shown. And many of the uncommitted superdelegates that Hillary would need to help her topple Obama have serious reservations about her own electability. Short of winning the most delegates in this primary season—a highly unlikely proposition by now—the odds of Hillary securing the nomination are slim.

But human nature suggests—and history demonstrates—that candidates in Hillary’s situation will take anything short of complete rejection from the electorate as a license to stay in the race, just in case. History also shows that the consequences of this kind of thinking can be devastating.

In 1980, Ted Kennedy fell desperately behind President Jimmy Carter in the delegate count after an early losing streak in the Democratic primaries, but wins in several big states kept him in the running through the final primary in June, after which Carter led by about 700 delegates.

Kennedy refused to abandon his effort. While Republicans rallied around Ronald Reagan, Kennedy spent the summer months fighting for an “open convention,” in effect urging delegates to junk the rule that bound most of them to the will of primary voters, a procedural change that might theoretically have snatched the nomination from Carter. The bid ultimately failed, but precious months were lost for the Democrats and Carter entered the fall campaign with a deeply fractured party base. He went on to lose 44 states to Reagan. (It also didn’t help that Kennedy snubbed Carter on national television on the convention dais, or that his attacks on the sitting president were recycled into a brutal general election ad by the Reagan forces.)

Four years later, Gary Hart also refused to give up even when the numbers weren’t adding up. Walter Mondale ended the 1984 primaries in early June about 800 delegates ahead of Carter and, after lining up a few dozen super delegates, promptly declared himself over the magic number.

But Hart spent the next six weeks acting like a candidate, pleading with superdelegates to abandon Mondale and to throw the convention open. He was boosted by polls that showed him running far better against Reagan than Mondale. Only when New Jersey officially put him over the top at the mid-July convention could Mondale and his forces finally let loose a sigh of relief and focus squarely on the fall campaign, which Reagan ended up winning in one of the most thorough routs in American history. Hart’s lingering presence in the early summer helped keep the public’s focus on intraparty politics—and not on the Democrats’ case against Reagan.

Kennedy and (especially) Hart have mostly been given passes for their roles in their party’s ’80 and ’84 defeats, mostly because Carter and Mondale were probably doomed no matter what. But 2008 is a different story. The party faithful expect to win this year, and there will be hell to pay for whoever mucks it up.

From the stage, the 73-year-old seemed to denigrate the importance of John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In an interview with The Observer afterward, she suggested that Barack Obama benefits—and Clinton suffers—because Americans view racism more seriously than sexism.

Steinem also told the crowd that one reason to back Clinton was because “she actually enjoys conflict.”

And she claimed that if Clinton’s experience as first lady were taken seriously in relation to her White House bid, people might “finally admit that, say, being a secretary is the best way to learn your boss’s job and take it over.”

Steinem raised McCain’s Vietnam imprisonment as she sought to highlight an alleged gender-based media bias against Clinton.

“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.

McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five and a half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

Steinem’s broader argument was that the media and the political world are too admiring of militarism in all its guises.

“I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting.”

To The Observer, Steinem insisted that “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”

Other Clinton proxies, notably Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson and a New Hampshire campaign chair, Billy Shaheen, have generated controversies with their criticisms of Obama. By contrast, Steinem told me the Illinois senator was “an intelligent, well-intentioned person.” She added: “I would like very much to see him be president for eight years after Hillary has been president for eight years.”

But she also opined that “a majority of Americans want redemption for racism, for our terrible destructive racist past and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive.” Then, using a term for the mass killing of women, she added, “I don’t think as many want redemption for the gynocide.”

“They acknowledge racism—not enough, but somewhat,” Steinem continued. “They would probably be less likely to acknowledge that the most likely way a pregnant woman is to die is murder from her male partner. There are six million female lives lost in the world every year simply because they are female.”

Steinem has been a Clinton supporter for several years—even though, as she reminded me, she protested against Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms outside the White House. Her support for the former first lady has become more high-profile of late. She penned a January op-ed for The New York Times backing Clinton and asserting that “gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.” She was also one of the women’s rights activists who signed a Feb. 15 letter published on the Huffington Post that insisted, “It’s time for feminists to say that Senator Obama has no monopoly on inspiration.”

Yesterday’s event, billed by the Clinton campaign as “One Million for Hillary with Gloria Steinem,” was one of several appearances scheduled for the veteran feminist across Texas as Tuesday’s primary looms. It was held in a downtown music venue and was attended by around 200 people, the vast majority of whom were women. Before Steinem spoke, two Clinton campaign ads focusing on female support were shown, to applause.

In her speech, Steinem argued that there was a major sexist component to the murmurs from some quarters suggesting Clinton should abandon her presidential quest.

There is, she said, “a great deal of pressure at play for her to act like her gender and give in.” Several shouts of “No!” came from the crowd. Steinem went on: “It’s a way of reinforcing the gender roles, right? Men are loved if they win and Hillary is loved if she loses. … But maybe we shouldn’t be so afraid of an open convention that actually decides something. After all, it was an open convention in New York City that gave us Abraham Lincoln.”

Steinem’s speech offered, Letterman-style, 10 reasons why she was supporting Hillary. Most were serious, though one of the more flippant was “We get Bill Clinton as Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Steinem, like any good politician, also made sure to praise her surroundings. True to her own spirit, though, she did so in less decorous terms than any candidate for office would dare.

Other than Austin, she said, “there is no community in the whole world that understands how to include everybody, how to be serious and have a good time at the same time, how to be fan-fucking-tastic” quite so well.

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign sends over the following statement from Howard Wolfson: "Senator Clinton has repeatedly praised Senator McCain's courage and service to our country. These comments certainly do not represent her thinking in any way. Senator Clinton intends to have a respectful debate with Senator McCain on the issues."

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