Thursday, October 2, 2008

Corruption and Greed on Wall Street

That's tonight's catch phrase. Spread the word.

Hmmm. Palin appears to be under the impression that she's running for governor of Alaska and that she's stumping to bring some more oil drillin' back to the peops.

Have we learned nothing from Gore?! Yo, Biden: stop with the sighing.

Oh my god. She just winked. Tina Fey, ladies and gentlemen, let's give her a big round of applause! She had us all going there for a bit, didn't she?

My friend who's been Rip-Van-Winkling through the campaign since the conventions and thus missed the unfolding Palin media debacle just called to report that Palin is an idiot. I'm sending her youtube clips.

7 comments:

Toby said...

I think my favorite pundit response to the debate was, in essence, "Whoopee! She can speak in complete sentences. But she still doesn't have a clue what she's talking about." Alas, a poor performance in the debate could have put the nail in the coffin of the McCain candidacy, but she managed to recapture some of her old flash. I doubt it will win over many new voters, but it will make it easier for voters like my friend Maria, who is a staunch Republican but considered not voting for McCain solely due to the Palin trainwreck, to pull the lever for the GOP. So, I think we'll see that gap between Obama and McCain close in the next few days, but not reverse like it did after the RNC

Laura said...

Yeah, we're living in strange times when being able to recite memorized talking points counts as a good performance. I can't believe that cynical "I'm just simple folk" plays with people. Sigh.

I thought that my friend's view was interesting in light of the fact that she had no background on the really bad, incoherent performances.

I blame Gwen Ifill. She could have pursued some follow up questions, which is where she tends to fall apart (having no idea what she's talking about).

Toby said...

Yes, follow-ups would have been good, but then the Republicans would have jumped on Ifill as being pro-Obama. Another article I read echoes your assessment. Palin has always been good having a first answer, it is the second answer (ie, having more than just a list of talking points to spout) where her troubles begin. And in last night's debate, she was never asked for a second answer.

Toby said...

That said, she managed to give a pretty piss poor answer to the "What branch does the VP belong to" reminiscent of her Couric interviews, but most people have let her slide on that one, despite her hazily stated support of the Darth Cheney interpretation of the Constitution.

Laura said...

We just had the office conclave to discuss events. The feeling seems to be that she's consciously dialing up the folksiness, dropping the 'ings and peppering in the ya knows and you betchas. Cultural signifiers: do they have that Nixonian/Reagan resonance? Seems less likely this year, and she's the strategy taken to cynical extremes. If they buy her, they'll buy anything.

And just as a matter of principle, it makes me nutty that we can talk about her "command" of the issues when really the salient point was that she was able to locate response (b) as generally responsive to question (a) or steer the conversation away entirely when it didn't suit her to answer on topic ("I want to go back to taxes...")

Laura said...

Also, let me just say I pity anyone whose drinking game involved doffing when they heard the word "maverick."

Laura said...

Okay, I'll stop, I swear.

But a good point I saw somewhere was that there were probably a fair number of people who didn't know much about Joe Biden--although he's a known quantity in many respects, regular voters who haven't seen him on the trail are seeing him for the first time. This was a good impression for him to give, I think.