DID YOU WATCH THE VP DEBATES? It was ripe with entertainment, though we did not see Biden gaffe it up as the McCain camp was predicting nor did we view a live moose-skinning session as many in Cheney’s Duck Hunting Club were hoping. But we did get to see a Hockey Pit Mom snarl and wink directly into television cameras and we did get to see Joe Biden shed tears, reminding us that if women can wield hunting knives comfortably, so can men display genuine emotion publicly.
“He was in a world of history and policy and yes, fact, and she…was somewhere else.”
DID YOU WATCH THE VP DEBATES? I did, and was on Twitter doing so and I have to quote someone there and say “how did I watch debates before Twitter?” Funny, to read everyone’s realtime responses and reactions to Biden debating Palin.
Here is some of the timeline from Twitter with remarks from friends. Those who have protected updates (like mine are) and whom I couldn’t get permission from in time to post this will be blurred out:
TAKEAWAY thoughts:
Not included in these tweets is everyone’s disgust with both parties’ mushiness on gay rights, although Obama/Biden obviously have a slightly better stance. But come on people. This is 2008. Can we come out of the Bone-Blanch Ages by now? Let’s get civilized.
Also no mention of immigration. Ummm WUT? So this kind of renders it a joke, if not egregiously lacking in substance that matters. But we already knew that?
Biden hit the tone he needed to. Showed his experience, and didn’t give the McPainlan camp any room to claim sexism. Seemed stately, informed, respectful. There were times I wanted him to go after certain answers or statements, but he seemed smart to hang back and not risk looking too aggressive. Gwen ifill seemed blunted, and I’m betting McCain’s trick of preemptively calling her biased did its work. Honestly, Palin did better than I thought she would, though she often came across as a bit awkward and seemed to wholly ignore many questions instead subbing in campaign type statements. She played up the every-mom thing well. But politician? Hmmm. And not following up on Biden’s tagging McPainlan’s health tax as the Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere was like leaving your guard down and getting smacked hard enough to make ya head rock. Not to mention…why was she winking at me all night? Should I call her up?
Pero what did you think?
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I was sitting in an auditorium with LGBT folks and friends, there to hear Suzanne Pharr (Homophobia is a Weapon of Sexism) put it in context. We did play Palin bingo, but we also had a list of things we could check if either mentioned them and how. NEITHER mentioned: poverty, poor people, homelessness, unemployment, immigration, race or racism, human rights, prisons. Palin repeated the words “fear fear fear alarm fear” and ended by saying more or less textually that a vote for Obama means we lose our freedom. Biden did what he had to do, and showed a degree of passion that Obama had to tamp down so as not to scare the bigots too much. Both of them tried to squirm around same-sex marriage, but Biden did say “consitutional” and “civil rights” in connection with same-sex couples. It was great to be in a room with folks and talk about it after–kind of like Twitter, only with snacks after!
sounds like good context to have.
i recall that feary thing she was doing. good ole gangsta GOP always droppin the protection racket on us.
i appreciate your story…we have to find a way to get snacks into twitter.
Democrats will vote for the Democrat. Republicans will vote for the Republican. That’s how it has always been.
John McCain and Joe Biden are politicians. They know their numbers, and they know Washington.
What is different about this election is culture. Where is America going, culturally?
This is where Barack Obama and Sarah Palin come in.
Some say race is a factor against Obama, but I say it is the opposite: Obama has been propelled upwards by his skin color. The positive ‘racism’ (Black-Americans supporting him, White-Americans feeling guilty about the legacy of slavery) far outweighs the few remaining pockets of negative racism (traditional bigotry) that still exist in our country.
Whereas Black-Americans account for 12 percent of America, women number about 51 percent.
This is where America’s reaction to Sarah Palin gets interesting. It is not only sexism at play, but regionalism too. Keep in mind that America’s reaction could be vastly different from the media’s reaction, which tries to intervene in how America thinks and observes for itself.
For the last decade, American women have been trying to become either the fifth ‘Manhattanite’ cast member of ‘Sex and the City’ or a ‘Desperate Housewife’ on Wisteria Lane. The White male executives who created, packaged and marketed these female stereotypes have made plenty of money as women across America spent time and money trying to become ‘Carrie Bradshaw’. But somehow, these wanna-be’s never lived it up as glamorously.
Sarah Palin is all about God, Family, Country and Shot-Guns. She is a completely New American Woman. She was not constructed by a Public Relations agency in either New York City or Los Angeles. She is not a Hollywood creation. Sarah Palin is simply a product of American small-town wholesomeness: happy childhood, hard work, self-discipline and a bright, and almost chirpy, outlook on life.
Sarah is not the high-maintenance, drama-seeking, bulimia-suffering fragile caricature of a working woman as peddled by TV.
Her husband, Todd Palin, is not a neurotic metro-sexual obsessing over the price of organic arugula, or whining about his commitment phobias to his shrink. He is a man’s man, and frankly, a woman’s man: just your regular American guy—wholesome and uncomplicated.
Sarah and Todd are American ‘retro’, but it is retro made cool all over again. They are a brand of Americana that has been tested and true—genuine, confident and mature.
Something happened to the Obama brand on the way to the election. It is as if the fashion gods decided that “Didn’t you know? No one wears Obama after Labour Day.”
Once exotic and different, the Obama brand has been turned into something weird and creepy. “Obama’s Witnesses,” “Obama’s Blue-Shirts,” “The Obama Youth Fraternity League”…Plus, after the initial swooning over him, most people still think that there’s something “off” about Obama; as if he’s hollow, or hiding something.
Today, the Obama brand has become decidedly “uncool”. That’s why people tuned out from watching him debate McCain.
On the other hand, Americans are discovering that they are intrigued by Sarah Palin. The TV pundits may want to spin things their way, but the surest measure of who won the Vice-Presidential Debate is that, at the end, the vast majority of viewers walked away from their TV sets and said to themselves, “I’d like to see more of Sarah Palin—unfiltered and uncut.”
The Obama camp may be celebrating too early. There are still plenty of people out there that haven’t made up their mind, and Obama’s triumphalism may begin to sound like arrogance, and he’s already been accused of that.
This is indeed a culturally interesting time to be an American.
If, when you paste, the paragraphs clump up like this, you would be advised to separate them for easier reading.
By the way, it’s a good hypno-trash piece, but really, face it: these days, McCain having a chance to win the election without martial law being laid down or something is about as great a chance as you convincing me to vote for Nader with this comment.
nezua, does that mean “a flight of fancy” in Arabic?
I studied Arabic for four years. Harder than Korean!
I’m sorry, but I keep looking at the facts, and I keep looking at America: McCain is going to win this. I have no doubt about it.
you make me miss my gasoline-huffing days.
Nezua,
Excellent recap of what went on during the Biden/Palin debate. It was obvious that the McCain camp put Ifill on a tight rope. She could not appear to the public as really tough, which I see her doing often. Her fear of being seen as biased got in her way. She had to walk a tight rope and wouldn’t push Palin back a few paces. How dare that woman, running for VP of my country, refuse to play by the rules of a vp debate. Of course, she doesn’t have to play by the rules because she’s a white, pitbull wearing lipstick. Her physicality has taken her a long way, ’cause it certainly wasn’t her brains. You have no idea how fearful and angry this ignorant woman makes me. Can you imagine her as President of the United States of America? Well, maybe. Remember, the country voted in a B-grade actor and, subsequently, a 12-packer, who bearly spoke his native language, English. We sure had better vote on Nov. 4.
Your recap was pretty good…
SP just wants to bring up the “John McCain is a maverick” line over and over.
But at least Joe Biden stuck his point of “McCain is the same as Bush”.
Vis a Vis Mike’s political analysis: I must have missed something. I thought this was a political race. Mike has explained it as a fashion festoonery designed to rate the coolness quotient.
Todd and Sarah do look nice together but I am at a loss as to what that has to do with anything.
Very careful statistical studies have shown that Obama will win the election if he is alive.
It is now too late for McCain/Palin to change that dynamic. But who knows, in the interim Sarah and Todd, by becoming Supercooled, may begin to approach absolute zero and their mutual electrical conductivity will become inversely proportional and approach MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY, thus propelling the ticket to victory.
I guess it cam be called the Arctic Advantage.
Yet, I’m not seeing McCain as even lukewarm, never mind cool, but unfashionable me, what do I know?
Leave it up to you to post all our tweets and make that the actual post recap. I love it. Secondly, you’re right: immigration wasn’t brought up ONCE! What is that crap? Then again, when from the onset, Palin decides that she’s going to talk about whatever she wants, then I don’t know what to tell ya. This isn’t a debate; it’s a debacle.
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interesting. i have no friend named Michael. oh well.
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I missed it, but from what I hear, this sums it up pretty well.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/3/43222/8057/718/618653
Thanks for the sharing the group’s running commentary, too, though.