Tag: Politics

Katie Couric is my new BFF, cause this interview of Palin is fire. Des Temps eschews cut+paste blogging, but could. not. resist. Below is the copy from the last :40. To be honest, I’m surprised the RNC powers let CBS air this.

Couric: You’ve said, quote, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

Palin: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie – that, that’s paramount. That’s more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

Couric: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

Palin: He’s also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about – the need to reform government.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you’ve said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I’m just going to ask you one more time – not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

Oh yeah, you do that. And bring me some bars and hot cocoa too. Like ships passing in the night, I wonder if this interview will break Sarah and make Kate.

Since seeing the Fiest/Sesame Street video, I’ve been moseying down a muppety memory lane. One of my faves were the Yip-Yips – cultural anthropologists from Mars, ever curious about our Earthling ways. Loved them, but often watched them whilst hiding behind the sofa, cause they scared me.

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So after watching the above clip, I was reminded of a Gallup phone poll in June that had McCain and Obama in a dead heat. While it claims to source from both mobiles and landlines, I’ll wager that far fewer of the cell set partook.

As a teen I toyed with many surveys that called my parents’ landline, but have never once have had a chance in six years with my 917. And even if Gallup called my mobile, I probably wouldn’t answer their 800/private/unkown number. So while older folks do vote more than us whippersnappers, is it time for pollsters to reconsider what ‘pulse of a nation’ they truly take via telephone?

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Adliterate says hang up

So. From India to Italy, the world is rooting for Obama. What happens if he gets elected? Does Brand America go 180 overnight? Will we witness a trend of happiness amongst fine art, music and film? Will liberals wave flags with pride, reclaiming the symbol from the right? Methinks yes.

I managed to visit the town of Chillicothe, Ohio about eighteen months ago. The visit was part of a solitary three-day road trip that I made on the old post road, route 50, from Cincinnati to Washington, DC. In my dispatch, I focussed more on the relationship between photography and deserted places. I had not, in my short time there, spoken to a soul or had time to dig deeper into the causes behind what struck me as a forlorn, but visually arresting location. During the afternoon stroll I took through the town I found myself looking down the barrel of an idyllic tree-lined street; standing at its dead end I watched as two teen bikers approached. I knew that there would be time for one shot, one shot only.

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On the campaign trail today Hillary — does she need a last name at this point? — showed the first crack in her armor. While some in the media, and even a competitor in the race, seemed eager to brand the event as the candidate’s Muskie moment, the rare glimpse into the personality of a presidential hopeful offered much in just a single crack of the voice, a flushed pause. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has long maintained she is “the most famous person nobody knows,” yet the most instructive moment as to the inner thoughts of a person putting the whole of her being towards the goal governing this nation was parsed by the major media almost exclusively for its strategic value. As cinema, however, a more compelling moment of drama could not have been directed by Orson Welles.
 

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We are a nation, more than ever, that votes with our eyes. And as television has become a part of the election process, our sophistication in analyzing the memes of people who stand before cameras has increased furiously. In Mrs. Clinton today, we were presented with the full case of the reasons behind her efforts, and not a few of the rationalizations she has had to make along the way to buttress them. Witness the contrast between two consecutive clauses:

“We do it, each one of us, because we care about our country,” the justification, heartfelt, “but some of us are right and some of us are wrong,” the candidate, steely, and the unsaid unprovable: I am on the right side.
 

The previous night, the besmirched baseball star Roger Clemens took to 60 minutes to try to rescue a piece of his honor after being accused of steroid use by Major League Baseball’s official investigation of the drug scandal. Before the Rocket made his sit down with Mike Wallace, however, he made sure to address the American people directly via youtube. He followed up today by holding a press conference in which he played a secretly-made recording of a conversation between himself and his accuser and announced a lawsuit against him. The timing and filing of the lawsuit, however, inadvertently contradicted some of the claims Clemens made in the 60 minutes interview.

In this case, we must also vote with our eyes. The plain-spoken effort of someone attempting to save his dignity is clear. The integrity with which he has chosen to pursue that end is clearly in doubt, and our decision, whether it is an honest or dishonest man attempting to save his name, is the one that will ultimately shape discourse on the topic. At this time in our media landscape, the lawsuit itself has become it’s own form of supporting argument in the court of public opinion.

The ready availability of image-making tools has placed a premium on the ability to use them in compelling ways, but also on the need for emotionally compelling subjects. One suspects that the thirteen minutes of the Clemens interview will eventually find its way to the middle of the pack of Mike Wallace interviews, but that Mrs. Clinton’s personal account of reasons that she pursues high office will live on in political lore. For clip of the day, anyway, she gets my vote.

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AP photos cribbed from the Times.