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They're so completely busted, I'm telling you. "Elvis, ha ha ha!" Dude. If there's an explanation for it, what is it? You can't laugh it off as hysterically funny crazy talk when you have already been caught doing it on another occasion.
They don't know for sure that there really was anything in the picture? Really? Because that's the story they used first -- or, no, wait, that was the story that the photos were doctored. And then it became clear that it showed on television. So then they had to admit that the photos weren't doctored. So now it's that maybe the photos aren't doctored, but they don't show anything?
If there was nothing in his coat, why don't they just say, "There was nothing in his coat"?
I'll tell you why. Because he had a receiver on, and all these guys are trying to do is make it three more weeks without anybody proving it. And if they say, "There was nothing in his coat," then it's going to be obvious that they're lying, because there was,and you can see it in the pictures and in the video. So they claim they don't know if there was, sort of, maybe, but if there was, it definitely wasn't a receiver.
Right.
I usually don't watch debates, because I can't, because I become enraged. But I watched the one tonight for some reason. Favorite moments:
Uh . . . I'm never wrong. Okay, the fact that Bush refused to name one thing he had done wrong in four years as president? Hilarious. Kerry missed a huge opportunity to kick him in the ass for that. That's ridiculous. Should have declined to do the whole Iraq thing in the same terms as last time, and instead just said, "This is how you get into unending messes that drag on forever that you can't fix -- it's when you refuse to admit you've ever been wrong about anything. Being principled is a virtue; being obstinate is not." Kerry dropped the ball, I thought, in falling for Bush's insistence on just rearguing Iraq. Also, Bush totally insulted the woman who asked the question. "You're REALLY bitching about Iraq!" No. She's trying to figure out whether you have the sense to learn from anything you've ever done wrong, and . . . she's not going to like the answer.
Kerry can't remember the words "spinal cord injury." Sad. Ironic. Funny. Wickedly amusing. I'm going to hell.
Bush uses the word, "internets." Dude. Seriously. It's like having a president who doesn't know what a "Mexico" is. Good freaking holy mother of Mozilla. He can't know the word "internet"? I'm not asking him to stop pronouncing "nuclear" like Dan Quayle did, I'm just asking him to know the word INTERNET.
Bush bravely comes out against the Dred Scott decision. Boy. I guess those people who were afraid he was weak on civil rights will feel a lot better now.
Bush calls Kerry "Kennedy." Good one.
Bush accidentally makes Kerry's point for him. Kerry was like, "They consider GW himself to be a small business because he got $84 from a timber company." And Bush was snorting, all, "I own a timber company?" NO, idiot. That's Kerry's point. You DON'T. But you're counting yourself as if you do. Get it? You're clueless AND you're using an unfair definition of a small business! Get . . . it . . . now? I just don't think Bush understood what Kerry was saying, even.
"Are too! Are too!" So Bush goes after Kerry for not signing the partial-birth abortion ban. And Kerry says, "I didn't sign it because it didn't include an exception for the life and health of the mother." And Bush yells back, "You can't hide! You didn't sign it!" Dude. Calm down. He just explained why he didn't sign it. If you want to win the point, go back to why he should have signed the bill even without the exception in it. I would have thought that his preparers would have set him up with something to say besides, "Didn't sign it! Didn't sign it!"
"OGBYNs." I know, John. Women are really confusing with all their girl parts, but please . . . get that one right, okay?
Again with Poland. After it becomes a joke on The Daily Show, you really have to watch out for that.
"I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons." Yep. He was really hoping that there would be a lot of anthrax and smallpox and nukes over there. Wouldn't you have felt better knowing there were large stores of that stuff in Iraq that might have been handed around for years to whomever had ten bucks and a Budweiser?
All in all, an entertaining debate. I can't judge, because I genuinely think Bush is so goofy that I can't even take him seriously. He never has any idea what he's talking about, and as I said, I can't have a serious discussion with anyone who could have a four-year term as president and have not one single identifiable regret. Good Lord. Name someone you appointed to an obscure commission or something. Say you wouldn't have flipped off the entire world. Say you would have served something else at one of the state dinners. You can't just refuse to answer that question. Like I said, that could have been an absolute home run for Kerry, and he let him up off the mat, which frustrates me.
Hee! He really said OGBYNs? That is hysterical. And so inexcusable, in fact, that when I tried to type it incorrectly, my fingers would not let me. They typed OBGYNs, because they know that instinctively!!
And I'm guessing Bush doesn't watch The Daily Show? But did he seriously mention Poland again?
(I'm at work tonight so I only got to hear bits and pieces; that and Omar's hysterical recap -- and now you -- are all I have to go by.)
After the internets thing my husband and I just looked at each other like "Did he really just say that?" And then at every mention of the internet thereafter my husband said "Internet - Which one?" So that's gonna be around for awhile - so thanks for that Shrub.
Also, I'm sure it's a coincidence but I put my 2 yr old daughter to bed last night after the debate and as is her custom, she talked herself to sleep. This is what I heard on the monitor "did not - did too - did not"
Spazmo, that link laid me out like a conk to the noggin with a clue-by-four. The Q and A is fabbleous. There's also a photo up now that begs the question: "Got wood?"
Oh yes, I am so blogging this.
I thought the timber company thing was just a clever rhetorical device, too, but it turns out that Kerry is actually a rippin' quickdraw with the obscure facts from Bush's tax info. In 2001, Bush claimed $84 of income from his part interest ownership in a LSTF LLC, a limited-liability company organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales."
See more at http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx@docID=275.html
Yeah, no, I got it about the timber company. I knew it was a real thing. That was Kerry's point. Bush has a timber company that gives him $84, and under his small business definition, that makes him a small business owner. But he's not. That was Kerry's point.
Ah, my apologies...that was a totally lame misread of that line in your original post.
If I were going to toss Bush one, small bone of benefit of the doubt, I'd say he has brilliant campaign people. Seriously, given the spin about how "well" Bush did, I can't help but think they took a huge gamble in the first debate (fueled by his then-lead in polls) and prepped him to do poorly. All he had to do here was not suck, and the 50th percentile claps their hands to say how he knocked it out of the park.
Eek, the Dred Scott reference apparently was not a random bizarre reference, it was a coded promise to right-to-lifers to try to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, according to Salon. The idea, I guess, is that the supporters get it and that everyone who isn't a die-hard supporter will just think, "huh, weird." Creepy.
*Thank you* for noticing the Kennedy thing—I was sitting there smacking my boyfriend, all "did you HEAR that?" and he just mumbled and went back to sleep. Sigh. And I haven't seen it called out anywhere else. I was desperate for Kerry to begin his reply with "Well, to begin with my name is John KERRY..."
I was thrilled to see this entry - my husband and I spent the entire time watching the debate theorizing on what you would say if you were to do a debate recap.
I have my absentee ballot, so I'm off to get it notarized tomorrow and sent off to the States. (Don't get excited; with such a large contingent of Canadians pro-Kerry, the vote counters will probably throw it in the trash without reading it.)
My favorite new song begins: "Here's 3 words to cheer you up / here's 3 words to cheer you up / here's 3 words to cheer you uuuuuuuup: Former President Bush!"
ok, so I got dragged into this... since no one here actually is voting for a "red" state, and I'l recovered from a long weekend in Hot-lanta.
Bush totally gaffed on the "internets" thing, that's O-fer-2 for the cyber-speak for the incumbents.
Kerry is beyond wrong for the partial birth action thing... and I haven't found the statistics on how many D & X procedures are done to save the mom's life, so I'll reserve the full-strength "hammer of reason" untill I have that info cleared up. Keryr just divided his camp somewhat, and it lends some evidence to his "I'll ride the fence for votes" claims by the GOP.
As for the "what mistakes have you made".... that's a setup line the GOP posse has seen coming: Anything he says is fodder and sound-bite material for Begala/Carville's machine. Do you think George Soros and the Big Fat White Man wouldn't have a new mockumentory film in a week after a Bush answer of :"well, Iraq could have gone better after we disposed of Saddam's killing machine.."
the "Kennedy" thing is actually funny, since I think the Last Kennedy (you know the one... he doesn't drive so good after a few cocktails) was prob tickled to hear his name in the debate....
I laughed the same amount as when Kerry got caught up on "spinal-cord" injuries
Coded Promise ? well aren't we conspiricy theorists...
I think it's a message that we don't want another Bader-Ginsburg (ex-ACLU head pimp) sitting on the bench legislating like the 9th circuit.
I don't think another Scalia or Rehquist will be accepted with the Senate as evenly populated as it is...
I also own a "wood company" (it's the Y-chromosome...) WTF was that about.... "hey, Bush has more money than you think!!" he might as well have said that Bush made money mowing lawns in the summer, since most of the viewing public did not get the importance and connection with the statement
I wonder if the next debate will address him and the lil'French wife's finances next... THAT could get touchy
ok, there.. a little chlorine in the pool here... I'm sure I'll get blasted for being an ingoramus, but I'm not going to be able to debate with Linda in-person at the HS reunion so I have to have my fun here for all y'all to enjoy!!
PB
Dude. The Dred Scott thing is a coded reference to Roe. That's not tin-foil-hat stuff; that's fact. There's absolutely NO REASON he would bring up that case otherwise. If he just wanted to make general reference to legislating from the bench, there were other ways. This was about signaling on Roe. It doesn't make him evil, particularly if you don't like Roe to begin with, but people ought to understand it for what it was.
As for refusal to admit to any mistakes, I absolutely disagree that any admission of having ever done anything wrong would have looked worse than what he did, which was avoid the question and act like an arrogant nimrod.
If Kerry's wrong to want an exception for saving the mother's life in a bill to outlaw D&X, then that's what Bush should have said; that's my point. It's not an answer to just say, "Didn't sign it."
And . . . Ted Kennedy jokes? About drunk driving? Man, y'all are scratching the bottom of the barrel looking for material. The Dead Sea Scrolls aren't as old as that shit. At least get some new material.
And "lil French wife" is just plain beneath you.
Somone pass the bactine... I just got scraped hard...
:)
yeah, I see your point on the Roe allusion, and yes, bush kind of "Nyah Nyah-ed" on the voting issue for the abortion bill. He missed the "higher road" approach there for sure
I guess this answer to the question could have been handled by saying " I'm like everyone else out there, I do what is best, but may not always get the best out of what I do..." and then fight spin with spin... but I know his GOP handlers (yes, Bush and Kerry have handlers like they are a side show at the petting zoo) did not want him to provide a foothold here for the next Live with Larry King episode, or Katie Couric's morning sound bite...
Why ask him the question ? if everyone knows that he's made mistakes (every president and person has).... why on a national stage do you want a self-depricating dissertation ? It looks a little like a set-up.
If you've got a suggestion for the Prez's answer that is Begala-proof and doesn't sound like Hannity ... I'd like it better than Bush's answer for sure. :)
I had to toss in a partisan jab at Kennedy, and THK as well... it wouldn't be politics as usual without it.
(dead sea scrolls... that's nice.... I figured I get something dropped on me from the screenplay of 8-mile and the club-battle scenes... so I think I got off easy) Mad-props on the dissin' skillz!! :)
I'll raise a new one then, and I alluded to it talking about THK.... is how the Kerrys make that much money and still have an effective tax rate that is less than half of mine. They aren't going to be taxed at all if "the rich" get taxed more, but that's how both Kerry's talk and act. ("We don't need a tax cut Mr. President...")
He is so "I'm like the common man" in his words, but dude is as uptown as they get... I'm more blue-collar than this guy, and I'm a white guy from suburban Delaware with private school, private college, that played lacrosse and drove a Volvo.
I just don't believe him when he says he's got machinists and farmers and waitstaff's best interests in mind.... if the entire election came down to that (which it isn't for me) then I just can't believe his jibber-jabber coming from the richest guy a presidential race has ever seen.
plus I want Kerry to come out and say "Yes, I am going to raise taxes on the supervisors at your jobs, but I promise it won't hurt you at all"
Bush's tax program is not equitable either, but I don't like the prospect of what is "proposed to occur" in tax land.
IN General, Bush needs to quit the veiled "shout-outs" in his answers, and Kerry, well he can just keep on doing what he's doing I guess... I'm not sold that he has very many new ideas, other than tax adjustments and using the Jedi-mind trick on the EU to come send troops.
OK, I have to throw my two cents in here:
First, I hate to disillusion anyone, but ALL the questions asked in these things are set-ups. The person asking always roughly knows the answer, and is throwing their favorite candidate a bone (or trying to screw the opponent)
Second, while the poor almost tearful-looking girl who asked about abortion (set-up for Bush!) was certainly heartfelt in her question, there is nothing I can't stand more than people asking for guarantees that their taxes won't be used for anything they don't like. HELLO? Every one of us pays for MANY things we disagree with, both on a secular and non-secular basis and why this particular group seems to assume they should be above this is beyond me. This is definitely my pet peeve as far as debate questions go, and I've heard it before at the local and national level.
So there are my two cents about the debate, which I also watched in spite of my usual boycott tendencies. We'll see about tomorrow...
Amen, sister. (Literally.)
I agree about the money-for-things-you-don't-like thing. I can think of a lot of people who are morally opposed to having their money spent by John Ashcroft to harass librarians, but I don't remember anyone offering me the option of a checkbox where I get to say, "Please don't spend my tax dollars for that." And I think there's a lot of money being spent on a war right now, too, right? Yeah, I'm almost certain of it.
Wing and I were talking the other day about the way the Democrats have completely forgotten everything they ever learned when Clinton was elected, particularly the need to get out with substantially more talons showing than they have recently. (We were wishing and wishing and WISHING that they would call out some of the totally ridiculous lies that were told at the Republican convention, for instance, and they've obviously elected not to.)
I commented that the only person to run a successful Democratic presidential campaign in recent memory was James Carville, and you know why? Because he was an unapologetic asshole who had no sentimental attachment to the idea of taking the high road, which is what gets the Democrats killed every damn time. If they had anybody who was willing to get out there and absolutely flat-out lie with the total lack of remorse shown by, say, Cheney or Zell Miller, they would stand a far greater chance of winning. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's a fact.
So who did they get now? A guy from the Dukakis campaign. Brilliant.
Because we know how well that worked out.
I hope you're enjoying Karl Rove, because I increasingly believe he's going to reign until January, 2009.
I thought Zell Miller WAS a Democrat!?
(Sorry. I could not resist that.)
I'm so frustrated by the Democrats right now that I can't even compose my thoughts. They just seem so inert. High road, low road - at this point I would just like to see Kerry take A road. To me the case against Bush is so crystal clear I just don't understand why Kerry can't seem to make it - he shouldn't even need to lie - Bush has provided plenty of "truth" for Kerry to work with.
Seriously - I'm Canadian(!) and I'm losing sleep over this election.
Also - no kidding - like 10 minutes ago I read an old interview with Paul Begala in which he said it was Zell Miller who recommended he and Carville to Bill Clinton. hmm...
I'm Canadian too, and find myself constantly baffled by the polls showing Bush either in a dead heat or taking the lead.
"How can this be?" I wonder.
The military and intelligence establishments are critical of him, the gay-bashing social conservatives are dissatisfied, and the fiscal conservatives are tearing their hair out over the deficit.
I don't blame the Dems. I think they are doing what they can. It's the media who are failing to report these rebuttals.
They want to give the impression of a close race so that they can control the outcome, just like they did in 2000.
It's all part of Rupert Murdoch's grand design.
Come to think of it, I've never met a dude named Rupert I could trust...
I want to cry right now.
They need to hire the guy who ran the last two SC democratic governor campaigns. Sure he lost the last one, but the fact that it was even close between an incumbent who screwed up badly and a challenger whom everybody loved is a testament to this guy's talent.
He is the Democratic Karl Rove, and his name is Kevin Geddings. There is nothing he will not do to get his man elected, including running ads that not only insult the other candidate but the people who vote for him, and the children of the people who vote for him. He will hijack web sites, create mountains out of molehills, you name it. Last I heard he was running a PR firm.
I don't like the guy, but the Kerry campaign could certainly use some help in the nasty department.
ok, so the proKerry camp needs some color from the other side here... I think if you check Algore's last few rants you'll find plenty of venom... add a sprinkle of the Rev. Al Sharpton in it, and man.....that's one spicy-ah-meatball!!
Bush has left himself open.. clearly.
the media's darling (with Due respect to our Canadian friends) is still Kerry... since none of the papers really seem to state that the majority of soft money advertising is on his side... only the more conservative writings at Foxnews, Drudgereport, and Newsmax.
p.s. anyone get a glimpse of AlFranken going postal in a radio interview ?
as for taking the high road... Dems need to take a stand, and realy on its merits rather than bobbing and weaving around the issues... there are points to be made and votes to win, although I personally think 90% of the people out there know which way they are going to vote.
Zell Miller (and this is coming from a Repub. voter here) was a pawn... of course he was!! he got to deliver all the fire and brimstone evilness to counter the evilness tossed at bush during the Boston convention. And since it came from a Democrat mouth.... Kerry can't cry "Partisan Rhetoric!!"
so then Bush got to play the "good cop" routine
James Carville is a bully, and he's only as good as long as he can out-scream a rival... I've seen him toss out a CLEARLY rediculous statement, then defend it with un-ending jibber-jabber.... but that's his effective tool (I respectfully dis-like his skillz)
I would LOVE to see Carville and Cheney or Miller go head to head in a debate.... someone's head would explode, and then we'd know who won
Bush's campaign warchest is the largest in history. Kerry's needs all the help he can get, whether it be soft money, hard money or slightly runny money.
And Zell Miller was no pawn. He knew exactly what he was doing up in NYC.
His current book is a toxic faux-folksy jeremiad that excoriates the Democratic Party, and reveals the author to be nothing but a bitter old pro-segregationist Dixiecrat.
I don't see how that remotely compares to Barak Obama's keynote address (or any other speech) during the convention in Boston.
Now, y'all have to be nicer to Paul than you would the rest of the Republicans, because we go back to . . . what, first grade? Heh. I have seen him at about . . . what, eight years old? . . . being carried around while wearing a turban and biting a giant papier mache turkey leg. (Okay, it was in a play.)
Also, he was in (I think) the band that was playing on The Strangest Night Of My Entire High School Existence, also known as the Human Concerns Committee Dance At Which One Guy's Family Tried To Sneak In While His Brother Was Doing Yoga On The Back Steps Of The Girls' Gym.
But I digress.
Aside from the media love of Kerry (no), I agree with much of what he said. Well, aside from Zell Miller being a pawn, which . . . no. "Take a stand" is kind of what I mean by getting the claws out. They're being too mushy about everything, and Paul points out, there are points to be made, and they ain't making them.
P.S. The turkey leg thing may have been the most un-PC display to ever take place at a Quaker school.
Heh. I'm a little baffled...was that a Thanksgiving pageant or a production of Gunga Din?
ooooow... I got outed as a closet drama-king with a thing for large poultry. What Linda DIDN'T mention is that she had a starring role in reading the lines onto the tape that was played while us kiddies acted out the parts... it was the highlight of the 1st-4th grade part of school.
It was VERY un-PC (that was back when there was no PC and Carter was getting his a$$ handed to him over Iran), and I technically had a harem of women bringing me into the stage area...
Not bad for me either since I had a pimp hat that was 2.5 feet tall on my 3 foot body...
As for Zell being a pawn, I should have used the term "Insulated Republican Mouth Piece", and I concede greatness to Spazmo for using words I didn't know on the GRE exam, nor do I know them now... but I'm impressed with jeremiad
(We engineers don't like to write in complete sentences anyway, but I know excoriate)
Zell took pot-shots as a lame duck Senator that is pissed at his party. Don't talk Dixiecrat as long as the Good Ol' Boy Democrat Sen. Byrd from West Virginny is still running the show on the Sen. Intelligence Committee (oops, he USED to, but since then, our boy Shelby has screwed that up with leaking too much info to the press)
As for Soft money... Soros and moveon PAC has billions ready to pour in, making Bush's war chest (which is big... insert your own "big chest/nice rack" joke here) not so impressive. Add to that the historical fiction that is Michael Moore's movie... lots of cash for the Dems there.
I won't go into the Bruce Springsteen concert to be... but I digress.
Obama's speech was fine, that's how it SHOULD be. McCain's speech was ok, Guiliani was getting a little intense, and the Arnold was not the brightest bulb, but he had an inspiring speech (if you can't get by his girlie-man comment, I feel bad for you...)
I got over Kerry's speech and toy-soldier salute... and I knew Gore's rant-from-hell was coming, and I'll even concede the French Lady's speech (I got lost alot there...) and her thanking the crowd with "Merci..Merci"... but don't say that Boston was not as acrimonious (sp?) as New York. Both were pretty hateful.
p.s. I don't like the French, so don't ask me to be nice to them... love the fries and kissing and Le Tour... but no mas!
Actually, someone else had the same idea: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/politics/campaign/06kerry.html
Honestly, I'm just confused by the whole damn thing. Everyone is talking ad naseum about how "the youth" have to vote, and how young women in particularly need to vote as this crazy monolith, and I can't cross UMN's bridge between the banks without tripping over someone trying to get me to register, and all for what? I will vote, and I will hold my nose and vote for Kerry, but this election finds me even more frustrated than the last one in that the entire business just seems ridiculous. The Dems a) appear entirely ineffective, and b) represent my concerns marginally better than the Republicans.
Sorry for the rant, I just had to get that off my chest, and if I try it in my department, I'm either fed the "VOTE NADER!!!!" spiel hardcore, or I practically have the to fight off people wanting to personally mail my absentee ballot to Palm Beach County for me...
But yeah, Kerry? Frustrating.
Yeah... they don't have the GET OUT AND VOTE push around here much...
youth, women, hispanics, activist burn-outs, illegal aliens, convicts, dead people, Palm Beach County FL... get 'em all out to vote!
thanks MTV, we get it, really we do...
It does gets old.... let the 18% of us who can think make the decision, the rest of you eat pot-pies and syndicated Dawson's Creek
(wow , I'm also a closet cynic!!)
I say Vote Nader.... or write in for Fred Thompson.
Either way, my electoral votes are about a lock for Bush as they get. Dems get nothing and like it in Alabama... except for Rep. Bud Cramer...
he rulez
Paul, if you have any more stories about Linda as a schoolkid I would pay good money to hear them!
Ok, it's Canadian money, so be warned, but still...
In the spirit of the World cup of hockey (aka Canada Cup), I'll have to show solidarity by NOT telling "old-school" stories about Linda and me.
Go USA!! (at least they beat the Russians)
actually I'm sure she has better ones to tell about me than I do about her... and can describe them much better too.
With all of this election talk, I'm waiting for Linda to detail how she and I went head-to-head in an 8th grade election.... She creamed me in the debate portion
Some of our best times were when we were in Calculus class... nothing is easy in school when your mom is the math teacher. (Linda's mom, not mine)
Somehow they sent our whole math class out on a camping and survival safari in the woods for 3 days while in 7th or 8th grade.... nothing beats a bunch of smart kids doing Outward Bound and orienteering and eating with a spoon you carved from some stank-ass piece of wood, led by a mad Welshman with coke-bottle glasses.
We should have all gotten disentary
All props to Linda's mom though... She was better than my college math professor, and her course was harder too, from the exact same book!
And her dad was very nice to me, since I sat outside of his office waiting for Quaker discipline alot in middle school.
my confession is that my highest math grade was a C in college...
not bad for an engineer eh ?
Oh, my God, that's true. I ran for something once. In retrospect, I can't believe that.
And yes, we were both in my Mom's math class for two years. Which, while it was occasionally embarrassing, really doesn't hold a candle to the fact that my father taught sex ed. (Oh, yes. Really. THAT, I am still traumatized by.) But yes, my parents are both nice. And were nice then.
Wow, that eighth grade camping thing had almost escaped my memory, but that's right, too. And there was orienteering, that's true, although I totally don't remember doing that. I know I did.
We also did an ecology-of-the-beach trip in seventh grade where we poked around in the wet sand and whatnot. That one, I only remember because one of my friends and I had a formative experience watching the science teacher cross the little quad area wrapped in a towel. That is literally the only thing I remember about that trip.
There really are some pretty highly dorky stories about me, which I keep meaning to get around to telling one of these days. You really can't appreciate my history in dorkitude until you know (1) The Carnation Story; (2) The Orange Peel Story; and (3) The Dumping My Dinner In My Lap Story. (That last one, I told in the first F&D journal entry ever, I think.)
But I digress. From politics.
Jenny, I've learned during the past two elections that the primaries are probably your best and only chance to vote for someone you really believe in. But turnout for the primaries is pretty dismal, and typically the major parties are able to push through the candidate they think ought to get the nomination, for whatever reason.
Primaries... now THAT's politics with the volume set to "deep-fry"
what ever happened to Dean... and why did Clarke melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West. did the Clintons REALLY pour water on him ?
I agree that the primaries are where you can get the most bang for your vote. I think we can all handle the intra-party mud-slinging better than the actual election race lying.... I'm still not sure why. Is it because the stakes are higher ?
I know that an Orange Peel story exists, but I forgot how it goes.... and I had been trying to block out that class Linda's dad taught.... nothing will beat having read aloud in class from the sex ed book and trying NOT to laugh (it was futile).
I'm laughing right now just THINKING about it
I guess there was a lot of rancorous politics going on with the local school board, because our sex-ed class was very conservative.
The only remotely sexual thing we were shown was a short cartoon featuring canoodling bunny rabbits.
Rabbits. Probably not the best choice of animal if you're trying to discourage teen pregnancy.
Oh, goodness. Only at Oberlin could you have such a thing as the Committee on Privilege and Oppression that's actually called the Committee on Privilege and Oppression. Something makes me think some of those twenty-year-olds, most of whom have never had jobs, may have bitten off more than they can chew, off solving privilege and oppression and everything.
Look, it's not that I don't appreciate the idealism, but really, I have always found efforts like that to be completely self-defeating, because how do you know if you're making progress? When there's no more privilege and oppression? Yeah. I'll see you in a thousand years; we'll see how you're doing.
Don't misunderstand me; I love Oberlin. It's alive and vibrant, but it's often alive and vibrant with silliness alongside a lot of other very good things. When you're eighteen or nineteen, idealism often comes with weird kinds of cluelessness, which is part of what enables you to be idealistic. I don't hold it against them. I was the same way, to some degree. But the Committee on Privilege and Oppression? Take a deep breath, folks.
And then I love that they're perceived as "hostile, preachy, and guilt-inducing." Because that does sound familiar.
I'm fond of Oberlin students, too, but this is indeed so typically Oberlin. I know among the small Midwestern liberal arts college student crowds (mainly Carleton, in any case, my alma mater) there was very much a "we're liberals, sure, but not in that loopy, out-of-touch-with-reality Oberlin way" sort of bizaare pride. Do the Oberlin students still "protest" at every commencement by refusing to walk under the arch commemorating former missionaries? My dad thought that was the funniest thing when we watched that during my sister's graduation.
Oh, man. That really brought back memories of my time at Berkeley. "Safe space"! They actually said "safe space"! And "I guess I would change [COPAO] by taking a lot of time and talking to people about what they think about it.” Priceless. In fact, it was so good, it almost read like a parody.
Finally, you know what's wrong with my life now, ten years removed from college? Not enough shrill and strident. Bring back the shrill and strident!
Dude, they say "safe space" ALL THE TIME. (I still read the Review most weeks.) It's a term that, as far as I can tell, means maintaining the ability to exclude anyone who might take issue with anything you have to say. It's sad, because these are smart, passionate kids, and the best thing they could learn is how to function in a world where there's a lot of disagreement, and what they tend to do instead is become more and more insulated.
And yes, I'm sure they still "protest" about the arch. At my commencement, one guy scaled it with rock-climbing equipment and went over that way. It was actually kinda hip, though I just walked under. I actually think the dead missionaries were probably good people. And although the Chinese who were killed are equally important, they didn't actually attend Oberlin, so unless you're going to memorialize everyone who's ever died, it's going to involve some picking and choosing.
Ah, yes, shrill and strident.
And remember, I went there, as did most of my friends. I love it the way you love a weird family member, sort of. You're like, "God love him, he's such a totally awesome nut case."
I attended a viewing of one of the Democratic debates at Oberlin after being invited to come on the NE Ohio for Dean e-mail list. I hadn't hung out at Oberlin in about 5-6 years and it was nice to know that certain things hadn't changed. Such as the high level of suspicion I was viewed with despite the open invitation to "outsiders".
"Safe space" = maintaining the ability to exclude anyone who might take issue with anything you have to say. Exactly. Because defending your views to someone who isn't already a member of the choir is like hard and stuff. That's why I only ever talk to people who already think just like me. And I remembered another one - "Respect your sisters!" Someone should make a talking doll. *Pulls string* "This is a safe space!" *pull* "Respect your sisters!" *pull* "That's a generalization!"
This is one of the benefits of having gone to a good old patriarchal Ivy; you could roll your eyes at a lot of that stuff and not feel so exposed.
I have nothing particularly enlightening to say, except that there are more and more stories like this, and I think there are going to be more. Of these three drawings, there is only one that is even arguably violent, and that one certainly doesn't seem to me to rise to the level of a threat.
So we know now that you can't draw a picture of someone harming the president, I guess. Can you write a book where someone harms the president? How about poetry? Does the Secret Service have a screenplay division?
Sigh.
I saw the article about this on CNN.com yesterday. I was so outraged I e-mailed it around. What really bothers me is not so much the Secret Service (although following the Justice Scalia U.S. Marshall incident of two weeks ago it does seem that what I was taught in Civil Liberties I in law school in 1990 is going by the wayside), it's the teacher who turned the kid in. Really, shouldn't the school have been impressed that a teenager actually was interested in what was going on in the world? I guess not. Perhaps it will become a West Wing "ripped from the headlines" plot.
This type of thing is very alarming to me as well. It bothers me that the first thing the school did was to call the cops. Come on. It's a drawing. I recently showed my sister (who is an Education major) some pictures that I drew when I was a kid and she told me that these days if they see a kid with pictures like mine, they are to report it immediately and the kid will probably be counseled. I was never unbalanced. I never had problems. I maintained an A average and graduated Salutatorian. Sometimes a picture is just a picture.
Tony Sertich is a good guy, and I'm tickled and pleased that he offered this amendment during the stadium debate. Remember what I said about the team as a community asset? See? See?
Well said, Mr Sertich.
I have grown very tired of the polls showing what people fear will happen. We get these all the time -- how many people fear a terrorist attack of this sort or that sort. And it baffles me, because although I understand that everyone has those fears to varying degrees, I don't know that it's necessarily very newsworthy. And often, it's not presented as if the poll demonstrates how afraid we are -- it's presented as if the poll demonstrates how likely something is to occur, which it doesn't. You ask me whether I am afraid there will be a terrorist attack at the Olympics, I'm going to tell you I have no idea. And neither do the rest of the people they asked.
I don't know. I suppose measuring the country's mental state from time to time might be useful, but at some point, it's like panic porn, where we just lie around reveling in our own insecurity. For what the general discomfort level might mean to the political climate, I guess it's worth knowing. But at this level of specificity -- the "Do you believe a major city will be attacked in the next 18 months" questions that are often part of these surveys -- it seems somewhat less than useful.
In fact, the only thing it's useful for is getting people more worked up. ("Well, if that many people are worried, I should be to.") Not to mention that people only hear half of what's out there, if that, and they will quickly bend that to "I saw a poll that said there's a 75% chance there will be an attack at the Olympics." It will only get crazier as the Olympics approach -- the most disorganized Olympics in history, if reports are to be believed.
I waited a long time to see Bowling For Columbine, even after Netflix sent it to me. I have intensely ambivalent feelings about Michael Moore, as I guess a lot of people do, but I finally fired it up this morning and took a deep breath. If there's one thing I've always found the need for when processing Moore's stuff, it's a good pair of hip boots.
I'm conflicted about Moore and about his work, because it's hard to deny that the guy is making a lot of noise about things that probably ought to have more noise made about them. Besides, there are enough fiery conservative jackasses that a fiery liberal jackass is almost necessary just for the sake of fairness. To the degree that he is content to be a provocateur, I suppose, I think Moore is a success. But ultimately, while I find his manipulation of images compelling, I find his arguments hollow and this particular film unfocused and frustrating.
Bowling For Columbine is essentially a two-hour gripe session about all manner of societal evils that Moore sees lurking in the United States of the early twenty-first century. Racism, excessive media-driven fear, cowboy-inspired foreign policy, economic inequality, ineffective welfare programs, rich people running wild . . . it's all here.
Where Moore loses me is in trying to organize all of these ills around the theme of gun violence, and specifically around the Columbine shooting and a shooting of a six-year-old girl by a six-year-old boy in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. While Moore at times behaves as if he understands that the questions he's asking are complicated, he also betrays the same tendency toward demonization of his enemies that so offends him when he sees it in others.
Is it silly to blame Marilyn Manson for Columbine? Of course. But it strains credibility equally to blame the nearby Lockheed Martin plant, especially given that it didn't make weapons at the time of the incident anyway, and certainly not the "weapons of mass destruction" that he mentions when he talks to the Lockheed Martin representative. Of course Columbine didn't happen because of Marilyn Manson. But it didn't really happen because of Charlton Heston, either. A large part of the later-uncovered Columbine plot involved bombs, not guns. And it's become more and more clear that Eric Harris, in particular, was a flat-out psychopath. When Matt Stone of South Park fame sits there trying to explain that it's all about conformity, man, and these kids would have been fine if somebody had told them that high school wasn't really that important and their teachers hadn't pushed them so hard to make it into accelerated math, he comes off as just as much of a simple-minded sociological dilettante as any of the "gun nuts" who believe that it's your responsibility as an American to sleep with an assault rifle by your bed.
It's foolishness -- it's madness -- to try to measure a society by its freak occurrences. Public policy decisions are never more capricious and short-sighted than when they are aimed at responding to a specific event driven by a host of factors, many of which are secrets that die with the principals or wind up buried deep inside their psyches.
Furthermore, endeavoring to explain the shooting of the six-year-old girl offers Moore an opportunity to rail against more things in which he rightly sees foolishness, but he sometimes seems to miss the broader implications of his own argument. He plaintively laments the fact that the boy with the gun went unsupervised by his mother on the morning of the shooting because she was on a bus going to the low-wage job that the widely-criticized welfare reforms of the Clinton years forced her to take. But if it was her absence that caused him to go wrong -- if it was her unavailability that made him kill at the age of six -- then it matters very little whether she was making $8.50 an hour or $80,000 a year. What if she had been a high-powered attorney, out of the house at 6:00 in the morning because she commuted from Connecticut into Manhattan? She would be just as absent. If you start to blame the welfare system for forcing mothers to work and thus depriving their children of adequate parenting, what are you saying about mothers who choose to work? The dumbest aspect of the current welfare-to-work initiatives, it seems to me, is the fetishistic concentration on getting people into paid work -- any paid work, whatever paid work, no matter how little it pays. Dumped into jobs at Burger King that don't make enough to pay for day care and never will, welfare recipients are truly sentenced to cyclical poverty that will likely be passed to their children. It would be smarter to allow them to get the education that might actually allow for a decent wage at some point. But what if the boy's mother had been going to nursing school? What if she were leaving before he went to school because she had a class? If you blame her lack of supervision and involvement for his behavior, then she would be just as absent if she were in school.
In other words, when you see a woman who has been drafted into a foolish program and see a horrible misfortune befall her, it's tempting to blame the program for the misfortune. The causal connection is enticing, because the tragedy is so devastating that if the program could truly be blamed, there would be a powerful incentive to dismantle it.
Similarly, Moore's rage at U.S. foreign policy may be well-founded in many ways (if simplistic in others). Trying to argue that there's some relevance to the fact that Kosovo was bombed on the same day as Columbine, however, is more than an uphill battle. Even a true believer in Moore's message about the folly of unfettered unilateralism might not see what on earth it has to do with a freak occurrence like Columbine.
Moore also harms his message by being by now far too enamored of his own style. What seemed reasonably organic in Roger and Me now seems irritatingly glib and smug. In all honesty, for a populist, Michael Moore can be an insufferable snob. Not in the ivory-tower, academia-driven sense most commonly associated with liberal elitists, but in that sneering, self-satisfied sense that relies on an utter contempt for anything that smacks of consumer culture, corporate hierarchy, or traditional "American" icons. He loves to find himself a hapless bank employee, cop, or KMart salesperson with absolutely no control over any of the things he is upset about, to whom he can pose stupid questions that are impossible to answer. What does he expect an L.A. police officer to say when he demands to know why they don't arrest people who create smog? Was it likely the bank employee's decision to distribute a gun with a new account? Moore seems to think he's the best friend of anyone who's ever had a boss, but in fact, he shows a merciless desire to make people look stupid when they have no choice but to do their jobs.
Similarly, he has a fixation on celebrity-hunting that long ago became boring and has now become unseemly. His original search for Roger was poignant and seemed to come from genuine anger and frustration and a feeling that his little town had been wronged. But when he tries to interrogate Dick Clark on the basis that he must somehow take responsibility for the Flint shooting because his restaurant employed the boy's mother in one of her welfare-to-work jobs, he just looks like an obnoxious blowhard. Moore seems extraordinarily enamored of the irony of her working in a Dick Clark establishment inspired by American Bandstand, as if low wages for restaurant workers -- a phenomenon that precedes welfare-to-work by a century or so -- are a particular insult coming from something that represents Americana. Where would his great joke have been if she had worked at Applebee's?
I am glad Michael Moore is a gadfly. I'm glad that he annoys people who are smug in other directions. But ultimately, this particular movie plays like a jumble of anecdotes in search of a point.
« hide moreI'm anti-gun like it's my job, and after seeing "Bowling for Columbine" all I wanted to do was buy handguns and give them as Easter Basket treats to 6-year-olds.
From his blatant dishonesty in reporting to his "disheveled everyman(don't ask about the Park Avenue apartment)" demeanor, I just find him to be too much of a gasbag to take seriously.
Moore is very interesting. I was first introduced to him through his introduction to the book Rivethead, which was around the time Roger and Me came out. He is a guy who cared a lot at one point, when he was a broke Newspaper Editor for a small paper in Flint, MI, and dealt with Union Auto Workers. I think he's genuine, but just not that talented. I read an article on Salon.com recently that one of the major players in BFC was a little disgruntled because they felt he was "using" them. Could be sour grapes, so take it for what it's worth.
This is the second time I've seen Bush asked what mistakes he's made, and the second time he's refused to answer the question. Last time, he said he was sure he had made some, but doggone if he could remember any. I think you missed a moment, too. At the end of the debate, he was talking about how Kerry wouldn't have gone into Iraq, "and the world would have been better off". This is what happens when you talk in pre-packaged soundbites, Georgie. If they're too similar, you start to get them confused.