The Huffington Post's Blog
Enough with the negative campaigning, y'all. This campaign is starting to hurt my feelings. For real. I keep hearing about "small town America," and "Ivy League elitism," and "Joe Six-pack" and The (dastardly) New York Times . Yesterday I heard McCain deride Obama as a "Chicago politician."
This is beginning to get really personal. Not just about Obama, but about me. John McCain and Sarah Palin do not like me, and they want me to know it. And they are rallying other Americans to say, essentially, "yeah, bite us!"
Sarah Palin said her heels are on and the gloves are off. Now she's punching me. Ow. Stop it, sister! You told Katie Couric you are a feminist, like I am. We're not so different: we both love lipstick, and I backcomb the hair on the crown of my head too.
Yesterday Palin mentioned reading the New York Times in front of a crowd in Clearwater, Florida. The crowd, who, when assembled, were dressed in aggregate like an American flag, booed when Palin mentioned The Gray Lady. Now, I read the Times . I also check out Drudge, read the New York Post , and US Weekly , the last of which I think a lot of lipsticked hockey six-pack moms do. But now I feel bad, because my fellow Americans heckle my choice of reading material. If the governor would tell me what I should read, that would be great; but she herself refuses to make a specific recommendation since she reads "um, all of 'em, any of them that have been in front of me over all of these years."
When Guiliani spoke at the RNC, he dismissed Obama as a man with "an Ivy League education." The McCain campaign has repeatedly mentioned Obama's Ivy League education and his elitism in the same breath, as if they go together and as if either of them is wrong. (I won't go into the defense of the elite here, as this topic has been covered by many who want their president to be "elite," ie "the choice or best of anything.") This makes me feel like unpatriotic, because I went to an Ivy League school. Wait--I went to Northwestern University first, though! Oh, crap, that's right there near Chicago, which is a city and where "Chicago politicians" do their deeds.
Does Sarah Palin loathe me because I'm not Jo-sephine Six-pack? I don't like beer. I've tried to like it, really, especially when wearing my cowboy boots (which, I confess, I bought in Edinburgh; but I get loads of American compliments on them), but doggone it, I just don't. Am I an elitist because I like wine? But I swear, I lack "mouthfeel" and can't identify the wine's "finish" of cherry, spice oak, and tobacco--I really don't know anything about wine except that two glasses get me drunk and three get in me in bed.
I also suck, because I live in New York City. I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, though--does that count for anything? But it wasn't a small town, and we lived near a country club. Damn. I'm still a bad American.
When I hear folks (because "folks" is the gosh darn appropriate term for the Real Americans at these rallies) boo because they hear the words "New York Times " or "Ivy League", it makes me hate them a little. Because I feel like they're hating me first. I've absorbed enough Oprah to know that's no excuse, but still. Maybe those folks think they're just hating Obama or liberals or East Coasters or people from Chicago, and not specifically me . I'm not a proxy for Obama, but I am someone who is different from them--I've made different life choices, many of them difficult, and I've ended up here (for now): in a big city, reading the Times , not liking beer and living down my education. But many people I love live in small towns; frankly, many of the people I love most live in Florida; many people I love and who shaped me drink beer and vote Republican and never read the Times. But I don't boo them.
John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to want small town Joe Six-pack to boo in my direction. Now, you can, as a candidate, campaign by taking down the other guy/gal. But is it a good strategy to take down half the country and to encourage your supporters to jump into your pool of disdain?
So, you know, McCain and Palin may win on November 4th. And then they will be the President and Vice President of the United States of America. That's all of the states--with all of the cities and all different kinds of people in them. But I think they kind of hate me and everyone who lives near me or went to college with me or likes wine. I am hurt; but I'm more than that: I'm scared. I don't think they want to represent me or my best interests. They are telling me they will not be my president and vice president. Not because I didn't vote for them, but because they keep telling me they're not like me...and they don't like me.
Alaska governor Sarah Palin went on the attack today, claiming that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had longstanding ties to The Weather Channel.
"What does it say about our opponent that he thinks this nation's weather is so imperfect that he needs to be allied with The Weather Channel?" she asked a crowd in Tampa, Florida. "There's a fine line between hating America's weather and hating America herself."
Gov. Palin said that she learned about Sen. Obama's ties to The Weather Channel last week "when I was trying hard to read The New York Times."
"They said that Sen. Obama was hanging out with weathermen," she said. "Do we really want to elect someone who has been palling around with meteorologists?"
Gov. Palin's latest attacks came on the heels of a new poll showing that the only demographic group that still support her are morons, sometimes referred to by political insiders as "no-information voters."
"It may sound like she's spouting idiocy, but there's a method to her madness," said Tracy Klugian, a Republican strategist. "She's speaking to her base."
Elsewhere, Sen. John McCain's practice session for the second presidential debate was cut short when his pants burst into flame.
An animated piece from 1999. Wrong cast of characters, but still as timely as today's headlines.
by Daniel Chun
Three weeks ago, I met with a therapist for the first time in my life. I'm a very happy guy -- great family, great job, great girlfriend, tons of Facebook friends -- no problems that a glass of scotch couldn't fix. But ever since the beginning of September, I've gone 100% batshit crazy. Why? Because come next year, John McCain and Sarah Palin might be running this country. I can't concentrate at work. I can't hold a normal conversation about anything besides politics. At night, I'm afraid to go to sleep because I know that Sarah Palin is waiting for me in Dreamland, like Freddy Krueger but dumber and more evil
I was hoping the therapist would listen to me lay out this situation, nod sagely, and hand me a bucket full of pills with a creepy name like "Uplift" or "Happiness 4000." But what he told me, surprisingly, was "Get more involved."
"Haven't you been listening, you dumb shit?" I thought as I smiled and asked him to elaborate. But what he said made sense: by getting more involved, I'd spend more time talking with like-minded, highly capable people. I'd feel like I was helping Obama directly. And I'd have less time to be furious at Steve Schmidt.
So I got more involved. I made phone calls to voters in my hometown in Pennsylvania. I donated. I signed up to canvass in Nevada. I set up a fundraising page on Obama's website with two friends. We set an ambitious goal of $10,000. After two weeks of bugging and pleading with our friends, family, co-workers, and bosses, we had raised $26,000.
But as satisfying as all those things are, I'm still crazy. And the more I think about it, the more I think that everyone should be crazy. Consider all the meaningless shit that we become obsessed about -- ex-girlfriends, neighbors' dogs, celebrities' vaginas -- and now think about this: a 72-year old liar with anger problems might become the most powerful person in the world. And if he dies, he'd be replaced by a babbling, evolution-doubting, Supreme-Court-case-not-knowing woman whose knowledge about the world comes from a 3-week cram session. This deserves one month of your obsession.
Think about how proud you would be to have Barack Obama as your President. How proud you'd be that you're an American. If John McCain wins after what we've been through these last eight years, we'd be telling the entire world that we're perfectly content with being hated and ridiculed. We'd be Pam Anderson who dumps Tommy Lee, complains about wanting to find a nice guy, and starts dating Kid Rock.
The contrast between Obama and McCain could not be greater. This is like choosing between an orgasm and a punch in the throat. The fact this is a close race is a terrifying outrage, and every single person should be doing everything they can about it. Stop clicking refresh on Mark Halperin's The Page . Go knock on some doors. Make some phone calls. Make a donation. Recruit your friends. You only have to do it for a month. This shit makes a difference, and with the country in such a bad way, the stakes could not be higher. If you aren't going crazy, there's something wrong with you.
by Bob Cesca
Mike Judge, the creator of King of the Hill and Beavis & Butthead , once told a story on Letterman about how, one day, his Joe Six-pack next-door neighbor was inexplicably removing the back windshield from a 1978 Chevy Nova. So Judge walked out to the parking lot of his apartment building and asked the neighbor, "What are you doing?" And the neighbor gleefully answered, "Huh-huh-huh! Huh-huh! Now it's like a truck!"
In the freakishly hamfisted world of Sarah Palin, Mike Judge's neighbor is qualified to be vice president of the United States.
Yesterday, Palin said the following to talk radio wingnut Hugh Hewitt:
"Oh, I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that a normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it."
There's so much awfulness in this quote, it's difficult to know where to begin. Out of sorts? Ticked off? Oh you betcha.
For the last eight dark years we've had a president who continues to be framed as a Joe Six-pack type. And it's been a disaster. No-one, at this point, is disputing the toxicity of the Bush presidency.
Here's the difference, though, between President Bush's Joe Six-pack persona and Sarah Palin's. For better or worse, George Bush -- and I can't believe I'm writing this -- had attained a respectable level of schooling while also coming from a family deeply rooted in American politics. In other words, be it the fake Crawford "ranch" and his cowboy drag, George W. Bush is mostly pretending. He's "Joe Six-pack" insofar as he's running away from his silver-spooned, cheerleading, Skull & Bones background. That doesn't mean he's any less ignorant. He's still a disconnected, incompetent nothing. But at least he possesses something resembling the heft required of the office. And it's worth noting for the sake of context that he initially ran for president as the "guy you want to have a beer with" in 1999 and 2000 -- a time of relative peace and prosperity. Bored Americans figured, Whatever. Might as well .
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is, by all indications, a bonafide hooplehead -- so dangerously out of her depth and so delusional -- perhaps blinded by ambition -- that she is in total denial about the real-world ramifications of her ineptitude. Instead, she's excusing her embarrassing television interviews and farcical candidacy as an historical breakthrough for "normal Joe Six-pack Americans."
Of course this is great news for the 27 percent who think Bushie is still doing a heckuva job. And I guess it's good news for anyone who wants to be president but doesn't want to go through all of that hard work and fancy book-learnin' to get there. But if there's one thing the history of this decade has taught us, it's that for the foreseeable future we should vigorously ignore the 27-percent-Bushies at all hazards -- or at least we shouldn't be encouraging them, as the McCain-Palin ticket appears to be doing.
Normal Joe Six-pack Americans, she says.
We learned the other night that Sarah Palin reads every periodical in existence . "All of 'em," she said. So she must know that we're engaged in two wars, while a third war is heating up with nuclear Pakistan, and a fourth with a potentially nuclear Iran. We're drowning in one of the worst financial meltdowns since the Great Depression. We have an energy crisis. A climate crisis. A Medicare crisis. A healthcare crisis. Crumbling infrastructure. Increasingly frequent natural disasters. And what about that guy who apparently rears his head over Alaska all the time like that weird Sunshine baby on the Teletubbies -- President Bush calls him Pooty Poot. What about him?
Compound all of this with the fact that Senator McCain is 72-years-old and then ask anyone who will listen: Do we really want a "normal Joe Six-pack American" sitting in the Oval Office in January tasked with managing these problems?
No wonder everyone is ticked off. And Senator McCain, knowing all of this (as well as the average heights of Koreans apparently ), acquiesced to the far-right by selecting Sarah Palin anyway, just prior to launching a general election campaign centered on the ridiculously incongruous theme of "Country First."
If John McCain was really interested in putting country first, he would ask Sarah Palin to step off.
Palin herself appears to be, as I said, too ambitious to voluntarily step off, so it really comes down to McCain. What'll it be, Senator? For the good of the country as well as its increasingly buffoonish reputation, you have to do this. Of course you won't, but it's worth a shot. Just putting country first here. By the way, I bet with this economic meltdown, Mitt's looking awfully good about now, eh?
In a greater sense, Sarah Palin, in her ungainly scramble to justify her total lack of quality, is inadvertently revealing a startling lack of patriotism. The vice presidency is chiefly about being ready and able to take over the office of the presidency. Subsequently, the presidency is a position of enormous historical and national importance, requiring the very best America has to offer -- especially now. Idealistically, it's a position of merit and a title of great honor. Not necessarily the grandiose, kingly role envisioned by founders like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, but heretofore an office of significant prestige. So by suggesting that just any "normal Joe Six-pack American" can do it not only insults and diminishes the office, but it also insults and diminishes Sarah Palin.
Of course Sarah Palin probably doesn't realize that in suggesting that just any ignorant hoople can be vice president, she's not only suggesting that she herself is an ignorant hoople but, most importantly, that she can be easily replaced by any ignorant hoople plucked by the mullet out of any random monster truck rally. In other words, it's a frivolous position open to anyone who can read a teleprompter without choking on his or her own tongue.
I mean, is she seriously advocating for equal job opportunities for Joe Six-pack? It's about time, she seems to have said, that normal Joe Six-pack Americans were in control of our most important and most complicated jobs. Joe Six-pack presidents. Joe Six-pack astronauts. Joe Six-pack police detectives. Joe Six-pack surgeons.
Imagine being wheeled into surgery for a triple bypass and just before they push the anesthesia, you see Sarah Palin walk into the operating theater with a hatchet. A nurse offers her some sterile gloves and she blurts out, "Thanks, but no thanks! Oh I love doin' amputations!"
Scary. But it's about time, right?
The presidency, as we've learned the hard way, matters. An incompetent chief executive, no matter how he or she has been packaged, tends to breed disaster. There was a time when we could rest assured knowing that, even if the president wasn't all there, he was surrounded by competent people who could grab the wheel if he blacked out. But those who are supporting the Republican ticket based on superficial appeal need to ask themselves: since when has the word "competent" been used to describe the current batch of operatives surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin? These are the same handlers who camp up with the laughable "Alaska is right next to Russia" line. Put it another way, the man who first coined that line was Steve Doocy .
In the real world -- a world in which America needs serious people making our most serious decisions -- Alaska's proximity to Russia has less to do with national security experience than a '78 Nova without its back windshield has to do with a truck. It's just not . Likewise, Joe Six-pack, while qualified for many decent jobs (governor of Alaska, too, I guess), is simply not qualified for our highest national office. Sorry, Joe! And sorry, Sarah. You're just not up for this, regardless of what you've tricked yourself into believing.
by Jason Linkins
Tomorrow night's debate may be the most hotly anticipated meeting of potential vice presidents ever, sure to be watched by millions and garner eye-popping ratings. This is largely because it could be one of the greatest catastrophes ever broadcast. Certainly Democratic Veep contender Joe Biden brings a long history of turning extemporaneous speaking into something of a seat-of-the-pants, daredevil event. But the main attraction is, obviously, GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Her recent interviews with Katie Couric, the essential Frost/Nixon of our looming lurch into fiscal insolvency and overall idiocracy, have set the stage for what most people expect to be one long, messy field-dressing of the English language by John McCain's soul-mate.
The conventional wisdom is that the bar is set so low, as long as Palin manages to escape the evening without setting fire to Gwen Ifill, her performance can be spun as a historic win. But seeing as some of the harshest anti-Palin rhetoric yet comes from conservatives, I don't believe this hopeful plan is going to work. There have been two schools of thought on how to prevent a complete disaster. One says, Palin needs to be in hardcore debate prep with the McCain insiders in an attempt to turn Eliza Doolittle into a seasoned speaker of neo-con gibberish. The other school preaches, "Let Palin be Palin," a hands-off approach that will rely on the candidate's own homespun sense and sensibility to carry the day.
Neither tactic is likely to work. There is just not enough time on the clock to bring about the former transformation, and we've seen what the latter, laissez-faire approach yields -- fodder for Saturday Night Live cold opens. There is, however a third way. It's a way that will work. It's a way that will win.
To understand the third way strategy, one must first examine how Sarah Palin got to this point. Months before McCain made his choice, Palin was on the radar of very few people, most notably Bill Kristol. At the time, people, in general, liked Palin very much, because why not? There was nothing to not like! And Kristol's endorsement probably earned her some measure of fatalist sympathy. When she arrived on the scene, it was at the Republican National Convention, and she came equipped with a fantastic speech that struck just the right balance of red-meat conservatism and quotes from noted anti-Semites. It was a great first impression.
But the whole process of getting to know Sarah Palin exposed Palin's greatest flaw: she's precisely the sort of person who should never be subjected to a "getting to know" process. Over time, her recycled speech wore poorly and her attempts at moving on to new rhetorical pastures have been disastrous. Her overall favorable rating dipped precipitously. And even in Alaska, her once impressive 80 percent approval rating fell to a more quotidian 60 percent. That's bad, considering that in Alaska, just knowing how to make fire spots you forty approval points, right off the bat.
And now the debate looms, and if Palin isn't careful, she's going to run the risk that America might get to know her even better .
What's to be done? Well, when all else fails, its best to keep things basic. Focus on the task at hand. Embrace the simplicity of the debate rules. And in those debate rules, Sarah Palin will find her salvation. For while those rules govern the topic of conversation, and the length that each participant may speak, nowhere is it written that Sarah Palin actually has to say anything . So that's how she wins. By saying nothing. By standing there, stock still, with a look of determination screwed to that lovely face, and not uttering a blessed word, for ninety minutes.
My opinion on this matter is well-informed from my previous career as a public speaking teacher. Which is to say, I taught two semesters of Introduction to Public Speaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. As a grad student. Mainly for rent money and access to the faculty dining lounge. And, look, yes: many of my charges were otherwise bright undergraduates from foreign countries who believed "Introduction to Public Speaking" meant that I was going to literally teach them English. Those students, obviously, made a profound and terrible mistake. But as far as Palin is concerned, I am an ideal authority, because I was a salt-of-the-earth public speaking teacher, not some elitist, like Cicero.
One of the things I worked hard at teaching my students, so as to overcome their fear of speaking in public, was that it was okay to lose their train of thought while speaking extemporaneously. What wasn't acceptable was making pointless utterances while finding their way back. Repeated "uhms" and "ers" tend to undermine the credibility of a speaker, because they make commonplace lapses in thought audible. However, in an ironic and beautiful twist to public speaking technique, it turns out that simply taking a silent pause on those occasions of uncertainty not only manages to prevent an audience from forming a negative impression, it's actually a net gain for the speaker. Say "uhm" four or five times, and the interest of the audience wanes. But when a speaker fixes their gaze on the middle distance and says absolutely nothing, people become transfixed! They lean forward in their chairs. The atmosphere becomes charged with importance. And often, the next words out of the speaker's mouth end up more freighted and memorable than if the speaker managed to keep his or her thoughts on track in the first place.
Seeing as every single one of Palin's off-the-cuff orations has amounted to a "pointless utterance" -- one long, annoying "Uhhhmmm" -- it stands to reason that her best bet is silences of epic length. Naturally, some of you reading this are likely to be skeptical. You're probably thinking about some of those blank stares and uncomfortable pauses that Palin has already offered in interviews. But the problem with those pauses wasn't that they were too long. Rather, it's that they weren't long enough . The art of the long pause has a sort of "uncanny valley." Pause briefly, and people fixate on the speaker, wondering what might come next. Pause a little longer, and the audience starts to worry, wondering if the speaker is daft. But if you pause for an even longer period of time, people start to imagine that something amazing and special is unfolding before their eyes, and they start to think, "Hey. Maybe this speaker is BRILLIANT!"
Let's face it: a steadfast, mute, Sarah Palin is just the sort of dignified presence the erratic McCain campaign needs at this point. But more to the point, by saying nothing at the debate, Palin can reverse all of the negatives that have come from our growing familiarity with her. Back when we knew nothing about Palin, we liked her! It's only when she started adding to the body of work entitled, "Things We Know About Sarah Palin" that everything started to go in the crapper. Tomorrow night's debate represents a great opportunity to offset that. By not responding to every question, Palin will be adding a voluminous amount of material to "That Which We Don't Know About Sarah Palin." And the more we don't know about Sarah Palin, the better off she'll be.
Besides, if Palin comes to the debate Thursday night and doesn't say anything, at the very least, McCain is going to win the news cycle. And in the end, isn't that what's most important to the McCain camp?
And man, if you think Joe Biden is worried about debating Palin now -- with all of her confounding ovaries!- - just you watch when she shows up and says nothing! What on earth will Biden do then? Any attempt to even voice a sentence -- even say hello! -- is going to look like the Iron Chauvinist Fist of the Patronizing Patriarchy Patrol. When you think about it, faced with a silent and resolute Palin, the best strategy for Biden would be to shut his mouth too! Imagine that: a vice-presidential debate in which neither participant says a single word!
I don't know about you, but I would very much like to liveblog this!
