What’s the matter, McFly – er, McCain – chicken?
The McCain campaign proposes to postpone Friday’s debate so the senator can attend to national affairs. And if that doesn’t happen, they’ve proposed moving it to the date of the VP debate, which would take place on a “date yet to be determined.” Like November 5, perhaps.
Cover me!
Today’s Moment of Idiocy
I suppose mentioning idiocy and Rush Limbaugh in the same breath is redundant. But today’s claim is asinine:
For the record, Obama’s father was born in Kenya, which is NOT an Arab country. It is African.
"Ruthless Pragmatism"
That’s how a former student of Barack Obama describes a potential Obama presidency. The NY Times examines how Obama’s teaching at the University of Chicago is a glimpse of what might be next January:
Tom Hynes, who took racism and the law in 1996, agrees that Obama’s openness and the seminar discussions he encouraged were highly unusual. “That class was a catalyst to examine biases you might have developed throughout your own life,” said Hynes, who now works in finance. “Obama had a way of getting you to think and talk about issues people generally don’t like to think and talk about.”
Column of the Day
David Brooks explains why experience matters. Governance requires prudence, he says, and prudence requires experience:
The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.
Who then, in this election, has experience? That’s not for me to say; it wouldn’t be prudent.
A novel idea
Voting for the most competent candidate. Making the suggestion is the most competent talking head, Rachel Maddow:
The Playground Campaign
Paul Reiser (“Mad About You”) offers an extended metaphor for this year’s campaign. Here’s one of many witty remarks:
“I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America,” the Senator from Arizona tells us.
Am I just losing my friggin’ mind? Seriously. I keep looking around the room to see if I’m living in some suddenly altered state where everything we know is now called the opposite, and nobody notices. Or can stop it.
“I wish I didn’t have to take your lunch money, but you should’nt of hadda brung it.”
Of Lipstick and Animals
I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear: I’d never put lipstick on an animal.
Now that we’ve cleared that hurdle, let’s look at Obama’s full quote from yesterday’s speech:
“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different.”
With a laugh, he added: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”
And Palin’s from last week:
“The only difference between hockey moms and pit bulls is lipstick!”
Okay, students of rhetoric, what do they have in common? If you answered, the word lipstick, you are correct. If you answered “Obama’s making a sexist comment about Palin,” you couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, you have conveniently ignored the context of Obama’s speech (delivered to an Appalachian audience who would get the joke). Nevermind the fact that he is referring to McCain (who, as you recall, is the person really running against Obama), and not Palin.
Once again, pathos scores political points, and logos takes a holiday. Advantage: Republicans.
Column of the Day: David Brooks
Here’s a good example of analysis and comparison/contrast for you APE Lang/EN 101 students. David Brooks examines the drastic change in the presidential campaign. Both make an argument for change, but as Brooks notes:
“The Obama change is more responsible and specific, but it has all the weirdness of a Brookings Institution report. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The McCain promise of change is comprehensive and vehement, though it’s hard to know how it would actually work in office.”
