{ Monthly Archives }

October 2008

Compelled to Post Something

  • Idiocy - John McCain’s “pro-abortion” references in the last debate reminded me of this clip, particularly Will Arnett’s comment around 1:30. It’s a bit of a long time coming, I know, but apparently, much like the current, different levels of brain functions progress at different speeds.
  • Sort - With all indicators pointing toward a relative landslide election for the Democrats next week, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to hope for a narrowing of the partisan divide. Republicans could stop peppering their speech patterns with phrases familiar to the “Jesus saves” home-schoolers, and Democrats could stop, umm, doing whatever might be perceived as a similar failed attempt at discretion. Instead, Amazon sales records show that partisan readers are purchasing fewer overlapping books than ever before.
    Basically, people prefer to engage with other people similar to themselves, and, once ensconced in a collective, we tend to seek the prestige associated with being the most radically similar members of the cohort. Thus, while we’re moving in different political directions, we’re all moving away from the center. Having ceased to even derive from the same source material, we can now proceed to talk past each other unintentionally (as opposed to doing so tactically)The funny thing is that the two main competing ideologies are incompatible on crucial points (states’ rights v. federal standards, for one), and the competing constituencies can’t be broken from each other into separate functional countries. Unlike Yugoslavia, this is not an ethnic issue; unlike Iraq, it’s not a religious beef. Okay, this discussion isn’t actually going anywhere, per se…
  • Noonan - Having just railed against undue partisanship, I will now rail against a conservative pundit simply because her mannerisms bother me.
    I understand that she’s got a book to shill, but Peggy Noonan has recently been passing through the Sunday morning political round tables like crabs at a fraternity house known for shoddy morals, few social connections, and low housekeeping standards. More puzzling than her appearances are the fact that she receives invitations to make them. Unnecessarily haughty, Noonan comes off as someone who might be quite fond of her string of pearls, and the points she so often fails to make tend to be impertinent to the discussion at hand. On behalf of viewers everywhere, I would like to cordially invite Ms. Noonan to return her attention to print media.

2008 10 31

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InfObammercial

  • Slate - This piece will do nothing to inform you or broaden your understanding of why reportage, as an occupation, draws more liberals than conservatives. It is, however, rather well written.
  • Message - So this is it (Part 1, anyway; YouTube should provide links to the other sections.), just like you said it would be. [Damn; non sequitor that it is, that isn't even an accurate reference to the melancholy song from Closer.] Here are a few observations made while viewing:
    • The wood-grain Oval Office set, complete with live trees visible through the window, is slightly reminiscent of the time President David Palmer (24) spent away from the White House during season 2 or 3, but it more surreal than anything. Did none of Barack’s advisor’s think that having the African-American candidate standing in a room full of wood could possibly trigger the fear of miscegenation still held by certain segments of the electorate?
    • The pseudo-documentary clips are engaging despite too closely resembling the useless human interest pieces that NBC ran during the Olympics instead of wrestling. Yes, I’m still bitter about that.
    • Barack, why are you calling Americans “they” rather than “we”? No wonder the McCain campaign keeps painting you as an outsider.
    • Does anyone else keep forgetting whether the Governor of Massachusetts is named Patrick Deval or Deval Patrick?
    • Larry Stewart worked for 30 years on the B & O Railroad. Is this election taking place on a Monopoly board? [Last month, Parker Brothers raised Luxury Tax by 33% and eliminated the alternative minimum Income Tax; that's eerily similar to Barack's plan.]
    • Okay, it’s not that I feel no sympathy for the Stewarts, but they aren’t representative of the rising workforce’s expectations. These people appear to have run a single-income household, and the bread-winner attempted to retire at 62, at which point they allegedly owned their house outright. Life must have been pretty sweet way back when.
    • Biofuels are an economic and environmental red herring; please stop promoting them!
    • Barack claims to be worried about a lot of various American archetypes; no wonder he used to smoke so much.
    • Around minute 13, Shelly, the teacher from New Mexico, is heard (I think) to use the word “drowneding.” Please note that, in a recent discussion about the vulgarization of verb declensions with pledge brother and entrepreneur Doug Jones, I predicted that “drown” would soon fall victim to widespread quasi-literacy. Sometimes, it hurts more to be right.
    • I’m distracted by the failure to normalize image quality within the montages of Barack’s convention speech. The angle from his giant left ear was clearly shot in HD, while the head-on feed is a little grainy, and the establishing shot of the crowd is hardly focused at all. They’ve had about 6 weeks to address this issue, yet little appears to have been done. [How often do you expect to read that sentence in the next 4 years?]
    • Michelle says Barack always has time for his kids. Most likely, that condition will end in 3 months.
    • Clearly, this is, informally, the Barack Obama Mix Tape. If I don’t get some “…unlikely story that is America,” I’m watching the clip on YouTube all the way home from this concert.
    • In case you haven’t been paying attention to the way the Obama campaign has been run, I’d like to inform you that there’s no evidence to support the assertion that Barack will “open the doors of government” by any measurable amount. Think of it as running a tight ship.
    • “…for the young student in Fort Lauderdale to afford her tuition.” Are you serious with that line? Fort Lauderdale is where brain are taken to be pleasured to death.

    Addendum - The Daily Show:

    • One gets the feeling that Barack intended “We didn’t buy on Disney” to be a punchline, but America disagreed.
    • There’s a mention of the dreams held by the four families featured in the informercial. As I recall, the Stewarts just wanted to spend a lot of years hanging around doing nothing in particular. I suppose that’s a dream, of sorts, but it’s not exactly an aspiration.
    • If you watch nothing else, the visual gag around 5:15 (following the question at 4:58) is fairly amusing.

2008 10 30

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Less Than a Week Away

  • Dissonance - I’m all for preventing teen pregnancy, but I knew the world had gone mad when I saw Jenny McCarthy trying to scare kids abstinent in this PSA from the Candie’s Foundation. Mightn’t Candie’s more effectively prevent pregnancy by lowering their hemlines?
  • Palin - Here is a New York Times article discussing Sarah Palin’s outlandish history of Pentecostal worship. [Some of you may be offended by my choice of adjectives. Thus, I offer the following Disclaimer: In no way do I claim to be a reasonable sounding board with regard to comparative religion. The vast majority of it strikes me as potentially dangerous hocus-pocus designed to subjugate the unwashed masses. What I know of Mormonism, for instance, would leave me very concerned, were Mitt Romney still in the Presidential race.] In the name of full disclosure, I should acknowledge that I grifted that link from a recent Slate piece by Christopher Hitchens, who routinely reaches heights of pompous pretension to which mouth-breathers such as myself can only aspire.
  • Validity - There was nothing on TV when I woke up, so I flipped on Dancing with the Stars just to see which flesh had yet to be eliminated. Imagine my surprise when, rather than being greeted by the visage of at least one provocatively-clad young lady, my gaze met with an Irishman doing some kind of Celtic tap dance in a zoot suit. Someone needs to explain to me what heel-clicking has to do with ballroom dance and why people continue to pay perfectly good money to watch this fellow do just that.
  • Schedule - Tonight, at 8 o’clock Eastern time, Barack Obama’s half-hour infomercial will air on 3 of the 4 major networks; apparently the pie man couldn’t be delayed 30 minutes. 3 hours later, Barack is scheduled to be John Stewart’s guest, via satellite, on The Daily Show. Set your DVR accordingly.
    Incidentally, if you don’t have time to watch either of the aforementioned programs, you may encounter Obama-centric commercials in your video games.
  • Identification - McCain’s “Joe the Plumber” ad and the complimentary tactic of identifying rally-goers by their first names and occupations dovetail nicely with the false “real America” v. “anti-America” dichotomy the campaign’s rhetoric often implies. It’s very positive, in its own way, aligning the Republican ticket with simple pride in who you are and what you do. Here’s the thing: Anyone presumptuous enough to call me “Levi the package handler” is apt to get punched in the throat before he or she pauses to breathe.
    Considering that John Stewart spent much of last week satirizing the “real America” concept, I don’t think I’m alone in my aversion to this sales pitch. Setting aside the aspiration-throttling aspect of identifying people by their first names and methods of whoring themselves, I’m struck by the extended implication that “real Americans” prefer their government to be controlled as locally as possible. Personally, I consider myself to be a human being first, an American citizen second, and a resident of (ugh) Georgia as a matter of happenstance. Thus, one might see where a person such as myself might favor the ease of mobility a strong central government might afford. Given that this is, essentially, a nation of immigrants, that idea strikes me as being almost peculiarly American.

2008 10 29

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