It Don't Come Easy
Richard Starkey had that thing about "paying your dues if you want to sing the blues." It still works for me. Personally, hiatus in blogging after intensive stretch last week has me both paying and singing, overwhelmed with material. And of course the debate tonight showed an underdog who has switched into slimy character-assassination mode after a long career on the public dole (or, as he would pretend, "public service" with little in the way of actual dues-paying).
But I have a lot of material to squeeze in here, leaving little room/time for me to go loquacious. It's a mix that extends from reactions to the VP debate to even a bit of preliminary reaction to tonight's "town hall." I did, btw, get a bit of feedback on last post, to the effect that I was too easy on Palin. Fair enough.
Chronology for this post is out the window.
I've got Joan Walsh at Salon up first:
The McCain campaign may be going off a cliff. Sarah Palin hit a new low -- and that's hard for her -- when she smeared Barack Obama with his association with '60s radical Bill Ayers, by claiming that Obama sees America "as imperfect enough to work with a domestic terrorist who tried to kill his own people" -- as though Obama's concerns about American society led him to ally himself with terrorism.
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There seems to be no bottom for the McCain campaign. The candidate himself joined his running mate in the gutter Monday, with a stream-of-consciousness rant against Obama in New Mexico:
[I'm sure I'm not the only one picking up on McSlime projecting his own famous shortcomings onto his opponent. He'll probably be trick-or-treating as a staggering Psych 101 exhibit!]
As War Room reports (with a Mark Ambinder video), a McCain fan yelled back, "Terrorist!" Should that be a surprise?
Republicans aren't even being clever or secretive about their fear and smear campaign strategy. "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a senior McCain strategist told Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News in a Monday report. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
Chances are, they're going to lose anyway. McCain is down an unbelievable 10 points in Virginia (it's the communists, of course). He's in trouble in Florida.
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Faced with that bad news, trust McCain-Palin to hammer away at the Bill Ayers connection, even though Ayers' terrorism was 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. Is Palin saying the Democratic nominee was a member of WeatherKids?
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Obama is fighting back with some old news for McCain: His involvement as one of the "Keating Five" in the savings and loan deregulation scandal of the late 1980s. The campaign released this 13-minute video, "Keating Economics," laying out McCain's role in deflecting government pressure on campaign contributor Charles Keating.
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Fallows shares some ludicity on the VP debate:
Ifill, moderator: Terrible. Yes, she was constrained by the agreed debate rules. But she gave not the slightest sign of chafing against them or looking for ways to follow up the many unanswered questions or self-contradictory answers. This was the big news of the evening. Katie Couric, and for that matter Jim Lehrer, have never looked so good.
Palin: "Beat expectations." In every single answer, she was obviously trying to fit the talking points she had learned to the air time she had to fill, knowing she could do so with impunity from the moderator. But she did it with spunk and without any of the poleaxed moments she had displayed in previous questions. The worst holes in her answers - above all, about the Vice President's role, also either mishearing or ignoring the question about her "Achilles heel" - were concealed in ways they haven't been before.
Biden: No mistakes. This is a bigger deal than it seems, since Biden could easily have seemed bullying, condescending, chauvinistic, or whatever. He didn't. And while he was woolly-sounding in the beginning, he was commanding and authoritative - from his side's perspective - on issues of foreign policy and constitutional balance. And to all appearances sincere in his choking-up near the end when talking about having a child in peril. Overall, don't see how he could have balanced all the conflicting pressures on him much better.
The race: No fundamental change. Which is better news for Obama than McCain.
Update: How was it, considered strictly as a debate? Of course Biden did a far better job -- he answered the questions rather than moving straight to talking points, he drew on a vastly broader range of factual references, he attacked his opponents in ways that were relevant to the subject under discussion. But this is not how the event was being watched or scored.
I admit I was briefly flummoxed by Palin wink when she mentioned dad in the audience. It was far too broad and coarse a gesture for the setting. Others noticed other winks, and took a far dimmer, but probably more accute and perceptive view of this stageplay:
For the record, I hate when male politicians wink too. Someone in the Senate--it might even be Joe Biden (though he certainly didn't do it last night), or maybe Chuck Schumer--does it, and it infuriates me that a politician would diminish his work by incorporating such smarmy body language into his shtick.
But it especially pisses me off that Palin did it.
It may not be fair, but as one of the trailblazers for women in politics, all women will be judged by the manner with which Palin approaches her campaign. And it is equally unfair, but a wink from a woman means something totally different than a wink from a man. From a woman, a wink is flirtatious. At best. To these commenters over at Reddit, it was far more than that.
Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual--but they were simply projecting a common connotation onto Palin's gesture. Whether she intended that sexual connotation or not, she used a gesture that--particularly coming from women--has that connotation.
And so, from being a trailblazer that finally brought the Republican party to the place the Democrats were at in the mid-eighties, Sarah Palin has demeaned that trailblazer role, mobilizing all the tired notions about trampy women who will use sex to get power.
How dare you, Sarah Palin, take the responsibility you've been given and use it to cheapen the work that all female politicians do.
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And the comments on that post are rich with insights also, e.g.:
Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual–
Count me among the slobs. The way I put it was:
She’s a cross between a fucking infomercial, a high school pep rally and an ad for sex talk.
I tried to succinctly put into words how she makes me feel, and this is what I’d say: “How could any self-respecting person want to be talked to this way?”.
Particularly, how could any self-respecting man want this? Middle-aged ones who have schoolteacher fetishes, who want to be spanked with rulers, or put in dog collars and pissed on. That’s what I’d say to any man who liked her verbal chastisement. And women? Did you see the rape kit commericial immediately following the debate? Devastating. I’m surprised our corporate overlords allowed it on tv.
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I think you nailed it, Marcy.
Palin’s mannerisms and folksy comments were programmed, encouraged by her McCain handlers. Does anyone think she went through two weeks of practice without doing those things and then just did them spontaneously last night? If she had done that once in practice, and they didn’t want it to happen, her eye lids would have been bolted open last night and we wouldn’t have heard a single dawgonit.
They wanted her to do this, repeatedly, lay it on thick, so she did.
So the question is: what did the McCain handlers seek to accomplish by having her wink, flirt, aw shucks in front of 50 million viewers when answering questions about serious national issues in a nationally televised debate for the Vice Presidency of the US? It obviously had nothing to do with competence or how they’ll lead the country.
Last night was possibly the McCain campaigns most cynical attempt at dumbing down America, the culmination of the belief that with sufficient distractions — this time in the form of a flirtatious high school cheerleader — you can get voters to forget there’s any connection between the abysmal state of the country and the mental derangement and intellectual incoherence of the Party that brought us to this point.
McCain’s campaign’s new motto is: Let them eat eye candy . . . and masterbate in front of their screens while the country goes down the tubes and they steal yet another election.
Spencer Ackermann might be seen through this post to be on a vendetta-course, but he has a very good point. McSame has done the fake-rehabbing thing before (Keating). Taken with that embrace of the low-life whose gutter tactics took him down, I think we know that scruples and Johnnie Mac are not on speaking terms.
Melissa, Josh and Baratunde have truly excellent posts cataloging the McCain-Palin campaign's descent into outright bigotry and Nixonlandia. Earlier this week I suggested that the progressive counteroffensive should aim to destroy McCain's reputation for all time. After an evening discussing this with friends over beers, I'm wondering about the logistics of such a campaign.
Remember in 2000 when McCain refused to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse? It was a blatant play to the ugliest aspects of American politics, an unsubtly coded attempt to identify himself with white resentment. But what was even more astonishing was what happened after he lost the GOP primary. Here's CNN from April 19, 2000:
This was pretty widely hailed as a triumph of straight talk. McCain admitted such transparent cynicism! What a breath of fresh air! Now, there's another way of looking at this moment. One that a less, frankly, white group of trail reporters might have picked up on: despite finding the flag personally offensive -- because it is a symbol of racial subjugation; and treason in the interest of white supremacy -- McCain didn't mind exploiting it. He didn't mind aggravating the most noxious division in America if it served his ambition.
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Ackermann ever-so-astutely suggests that we cannot afford to allow such an absurd punch of the "Reset" button by this slime-ball ever again. He should be out of our political life, once and for all.
McSlime indeed.
And, as sign-off, here is Josh Marshall of TPM on tonight's debate:
As I said in my initial reaction, I thought this was a victory, though not a big one, on points for Obama. But in the context of the campaign, I think that's a substantial win for Obama. And like the first debate, I suspect this will continue the solidifying, reassuring effect that -- in retrospect -- was the key result of Debate #1.
One thing that occurs to me after taking some time to mull the exchange is this: where were McCain's new fisticuffs? Bill Ayers, Obama as a liar, terrorist, all the sludge we've seen over the last 72 hours? Yes, he was aggressive on policy. But that's what debates are about. But McCain didn't take any of the shenanigans from the campaign trail into this debate. Almost like he was unwilling to say any of it to Obama's face. Or at least that he knew he couldn't get away with it in front of a non-party-line audience.
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I'd be more blunt. Given the low-life slime-ball tactics that both of the GOP candidates seem to have adopted, who was this strange frail creature doddering around in the "Town Hall" setting of McShame's own choosing? If you can't look your opponent in the eye and call him a terrorist-supporter, John, it sure suggests that you are a coward. Of course that is the usual case with bullies who get called on their crap.
But I have a lot of material to squeeze in here, leaving little room/time for me to go loquacious. It's a mix that extends from reactions to the VP debate to even a bit of preliminary reaction to tonight's "town hall." I did, btw, get a bit of feedback on last post, to the effect that I was too easy on Palin. Fair enough.
Chronology for this post is out the window.
I've got Joan Walsh at Salon up first:
The McCain campaign may be going off a cliff. Sarah Palin hit a new low -- and that's hard for her -- when she smeared Barack Obama with his association with '60s radical Bill Ayers, by claiming that Obama sees America "as imperfect enough to work with a domestic terrorist who tried to kill his own people" -- as though Obama's concerns about American society led him to ally himself with terrorism.
-clip-
There seems to be no bottom for the McCain campaign. The candidate himself joined his running mate in the gutter Monday, with a stream-of-consciousness rant against Obama in New Mexico:
My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?
[I'm sure I'm not the only one picking up on McSlime projecting his own famous shortcomings onto his opponent. He'll probably be trick-or-treating as a staggering Psych 101 exhibit!]
As War Room reports (with a Mark Ambinder video), a McCain fan yelled back, "Terrorist!" Should that be a surprise?
Republicans aren't even being clever or secretive about their fear and smear campaign strategy. "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a senior McCain strategist told Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News in a Monday report. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
Chances are, they're going to lose anyway. McCain is down an unbelievable 10 points in Virginia (it's the communists, of course). He's in trouble in Florida.
-clip-
Faced with that bad news, trust McCain-Palin to hammer away at the Bill Ayers connection, even though Ayers' terrorism was 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. Is Palin saying the Democratic nominee was a member of WeatherKids?
-clip-
Obama is fighting back with some old news for McCain: His involvement as one of the "Keating Five" in the savings and loan deregulation scandal of the late 1980s. The campaign released this 13-minute video, "Keating Economics," laying out McCain's role in deflecting government pressure on campaign contributor Charles Keating.
-clip-
Fallows shares some ludicity on the VP debate:
Ifill, moderator: Terrible. Yes, she was constrained by the agreed debate rules. But she gave not the slightest sign of chafing against them or looking for ways to follow up the many unanswered questions or self-contradictory answers. This was the big news of the evening. Katie Couric, and for that matter Jim Lehrer, have never looked so good.
Palin: "Beat expectations." In every single answer, she was obviously trying to fit the talking points she had learned to the air time she had to fill, knowing she could do so with impunity from the moderator. But she did it with spunk and without any of the poleaxed moments she had displayed in previous questions. The worst holes in her answers - above all, about the Vice President's role, also either mishearing or ignoring the question about her "Achilles heel" - were concealed in ways they haven't been before.
Biden: No mistakes. This is a bigger deal than it seems, since Biden could easily have seemed bullying, condescending, chauvinistic, or whatever. He didn't. And while he was woolly-sounding in the beginning, he was commanding and authoritative - from his side's perspective - on issues of foreign policy and constitutional balance. And to all appearances sincere in his choking-up near the end when talking about having a child in peril. Overall, don't see how he could have balanced all the conflicting pressures on him much better.
The race: No fundamental change. Which is better news for Obama than McCain.
Update: How was it, considered strictly as a debate? Of course Biden did a far better job -- he answered the questions rather than moving straight to talking points, he drew on a vastly broader range of factual references, he attacked his opponents in ways that were relevant to the subject under discussion. But this is not how the event was being watched or scored.
I admit I was briefly flummoxed by Palin wink when she mentioned dad in the audience. It was far too broad and coarse a gesture for the setting. Others noticed other winks, and took a far dimmer, but probably more accute and perceptive view of this stageplay:
For the record, I hate when male politicians wink too. Someone in the Senate--it might even be Joe Biden (though he certainly didn't do it last night), or maybe Chuck Schumer--does it, and it infuriates me that a politician would diminish his work by incorporating such smarmy body language into his shtick.
But it especially pisses me off that Palin did it.
It may not be fair, but as one of the trailblazers for women in politics, all women will be judged by the manner with which Palin approaches her campaign. And it is equally unfair, but a wink from a woman means something totally different than a wink from a man. From a woman, a wink is flirtatious. At best. To these commenters over at Reddit, it was far more than that.
I bet she gives awesome head.
She wants to sleep with me!
I believe that wink was aimed at myself. Which is why I immediately proceeded to masturbate.
Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual--but they were simply projecting a common connotation onto Palin's gesture. Whether she intended that sexual connotation or not, she used a gesture that--particularly coming from women--has that connotation.
And so, from being a trailblazer that finally brought the Republican party to the place the Democrats were at in the mid-eighties, Sarah Palin has demeaned that trailblazer role, mobilizing all the tired notions about trampy women who will use sex to get power.
How dare you, Sarah Palin, take the responsibility you've been given and use it to cheapen the work that all female politicians do.
-clip-
And the comments on that post are rich with insights also, e.g.:
Yes, it is disgusting that these slobs immediately made this sexual–
Count me among the slobs. The way I put it was:
She’s a cross between a fucking infomercial, a high school pep rally and an ad for sex talk.
I tried to succinctly put into words how she makes me feel, and this is what I’d say: “How could any self-respecting person want to be talked to this way?”.
Particularly, how could any self-respecting man want this? Middle-aged ones who have schoolteacher fetishes, who want to be spanked with rulers, or put in dog collars and pissed on. That’s what I’d say to any man who liked her verbal chastisement. And women? Did you see the rape kit commericial immediately following the debate? Devastating. I’m surprised our corporate overlords allowed it on tv.
-and-
I think you nailed it, Marcy.
Palin’s mannerisms and folksy comments were programmed, encouraged by her McCain handlers. Does anyone think she went through two weeks of practice without doing those things and then just did them spontaneously last night? If she had done that once in practice, and they didn’t want it to happen, her eye lids would have been bolted open last night and we wouldn’t have heard a single dawgonit.
They wanted her to do this, repeatedly, lay it on thick, so she did.
So the question is: what did the McCain handlers seek to accomplish by having her wink, flirt, aw shucks in front of 50 million viewers when answering questions about serious national issues in a nationally televised debate for the Vice Presidency of the US? It obviously had nothing to do with competence or how they’ll lead the country.
Last night was possibly the McCain campaigns most cynical attempt at dumbing down America, the culmination of the belief that with sufficient distractions — this time in the form of a flirtatious high school cheerleader — you can get voters to forget there’s any connection between the abysmal state of the country and the mental derangement and intellectual incoherence of the Party that brought us to this point.
McCain’s campaign’s new motto is: Let them eat eye candy . . . and masterbate in front of their screens while the country goes down the tubes and they steal yet another election.
Spencer Ackermann might be seen through this post to be on a vendetta-course, but he has a very good point. McSame has done the fake-rehabbing thing before (Keating). Taken with that embrace of the low-life whose gutter tactics took him down, I think we know that scruples and Johnnie Mac are not on speaking terms.
Melissa, Josh and Baratunde have truly excellent posts cataloging the McCain-Palin campaign's descent into outright bigotry and Nixonlandia. Earlier this week I suggested that the progressive counteroffensive should aim to destroy McCain's reputation for all time. After an evening discussing this with friends over beers, I'm wondering about the logistics of such a campaign.
Remember in 2000 when McCain refused to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse? It was a blatant play to the ugliest aspects of American politics, an unsubtly coded attempt to identify himself with white resentment. But what was even more astonishing was what happened after he lost the GOP primary. Here's CNN from April 19, 2000:
Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from atop the South Carolina Statehouse on Wednesday, acknowledging that his refusal to take such a stance during his primary battle for the Palmetto State was a "sacrifice of principle for personal ambition."
This was pretty widely hailed as a triumph of straight talk. McCain admitted such transparent cynicism! What a breath of fresh air! Now, there's another way of looking at this moment. One that a less, frankly, white group of trail reporters might have picked up on: despite finding the flag personally offensive -- because it is a symbol of racial subjugation; and treason in the interest of white supremacy -- McCain didn't mind exploiting it. He didn't mind aggravating the most noxious division in America if it served his ambition.
-clip-
Ackermann ever-so-astutely suggests that we cannot afford to allow such an absurd punch of the "Reset" button by this slime-ball ever again. He should be out of our political life, once and for all.
McSlime indeed.
And, as sign-off, here is Josh Marshall of TPM on tonight's debate:
As I said in my initial reaction, I thought this was a victory, though not a big one, on points for Obama. But in the context of the campaign, I think that's a substantial win for Obama. And like the first debate, I suspect this will continue the solidifying, reassuring effect that -- in retrospect -- was the key result of Debate #1.
One thing that occurs to me after taking some time to mull the exchange is this: where were McCain's new fisticuffs? Bill Ayers, Obama as a liar, terrorist, all the sludge we've seen over the last 72 hours? Yes, he was aggressive on policy. But that's what debates are about. But McCain didn't take any of the shenanigans from the campaign trail into this debate. Almost like he was unwilling to say any of it to Obama's face. Or at least that he knew he couldn't get away with it in front of a non-party-line audience.
-clip-
I'd be more blunt. Given the low-life slime-ball tactics that both of the GOP candidates seem to have adopted, who was this strange frail creature doddering around in the "Town Hall" setting of McShame's own choosing? If you can't look your opponent in the eye and call him a terrorist-supporter, John, it sure suggests that you are a coward. Of course that is the usual case with bullies who get called on their crap.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:56 PM
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