Tuesday was a great night. So much so that my computer basically said I’m done with you when I woke up Wednesday morning. Something about a hal.dll file being corrupted.
Anyway, once Jesse Jackson started crying and then Oprah, the floodgates opened. For real.  It was like the great flood when he promised his two daughters a new puppy.
Damn you Obama for going the new puppy route! And forcing me to hide my man tears in front of so many people.
The truth is though, the stories that fascinate me the most about politics are not the end results, it is not Wil.I.Am appearing R2D2 holograph style on CNN, or the long protracted ballot recounts or whether John McCain blinks too much.
No, rather what interests me are the long form stories, the anecdotes, the setbacks, the frustrations, the triumphs and the chess-like gambits that are revealed afterward. It’s the stories of Obama not wanting to run for President because he was worried about the effects on his daughters and wife or how an honorable man like John McCain ended so off course until he redeemed himself with a gracious concession speech.
Many times journalists get embedded with a campaign, but they’re under embargo to write anything until after the election. And it is when the election is over that the good stuff comes out. You can see it now with Sarah Palin. MORE »
Seriously? Does he even know what he’s saying? As David Sedaris would say, “I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?’
“To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
“I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?”
Unless of course, you’re John McCain and the whole thing seems confusing. It’s almost like the cogs in his brain need a wee bit of WD-40 or maybe just slather them with grease because those things are starting to get gummed up.
By James Furbush | September 7th, 2008 | 3:24 pm PDT
One of the things I wanted to do after the conventions is creat word clouds of the major speeches to see what words or phrases were used prominently during the Democratic and Republican concentions. Now that both parties conventions have concluded, I got caught up in MusicFest Northwest and Wired Magazine beat me to the punch. Still, it’s interesting to see what Wordle can do with any given amount of text.
Just looking through their gallery you notice that both Barack Obama and John McCain’s names were mentioned quite a bit; Republicans loved to mention country and America, though POW was notably absent. As for Democrats they seemed like like future, hope, and promise; surprisingly change was not prominent. Again, neith of these facts are that surprising, given the campaigns they’ve built. But it’s interesting nonetheless.
Barack Obama
John McCain
Wordle is an online application created by IBM’s senior software engineer Jonathan Feinberg. Using text entered by its users, it creates visually appealing “word clouds” that show you the frequency at which words occur within that text. The more often a word occurs, the bigger it appears in the cloud.
Wired has word clouds for all the major speeches including Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, and others.
By James Furbush | September 7th, 2008 | 1:34 pm PDT
Completely inappropriate, but from a laughs standpoint it hits the mark. In a very juvenile way. Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, or maybe it’s that John McCain really does seem to be checking out his VP running mate. Kudos to secretsauce.tv for putting this together.
By James Furbush | September 1st, 2008 | 10:24 am PDT
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her husband Todd have addressed those pesky rumors that four-month old son Trig Palin might actually be their daughters. In announcing that daughter Bristol is pregnant, there leaves no discussion about whether or not Sarah Palin was trying to cover something up. In discussing these matters so quickly, Palin and hence McCain, have deflated a potential landmind.
Curiously, it wasn’t Obama and the Democrats raising these issues, they couldn’t even if they wanted to simply because of the campaign they have constructed. You can’t very well attack the character of a female Vice Presidential candidate when your campaign is based on changing the usual politics. So, Obama largely stayed above the shit river because the last thing he can afford to do is turn this election into a debate over cultural values/issues and Palin tackles the rumors head on and ends up looking the better for it.
Everybody wins. Except for the media who now have nothing worth investigating otherwise looking vindictive or leftist or worse beating up on a female. And also Palin’s 16-year-old daughter Bristol. She might have needed something more than abstinence only education. After all, it’s no secret that teenagers will continue to bang have sex no matter how many times you tell them no. Doesn’t matter if you come from the poorest of families or the richest, come from neglected parents or the most overprotected. Kids will sexual experiment and truly the only way to prevent pregnancies during teenage years is to ah, use birth control of some sort. The whole pull out method is probably not the best solution to avoiding pregnancy.
In the meantime, McCain may actually want to take a page from Obama and focus on the issues at hand instead of harping about how popular Obama is. Things like energy security, the economy, foreign policy, etc. Things voters actually care about.
Full statement from Sarah Palin:
“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.
“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.”
Sometimes all we have in this world is comedy sketches. It’s the only time people can speak the truth and get away with it and not have to justify themselves or pretend to be biases. Look at John Stewart. An ongoing subplot for 2008’s general election will be media coverage of the two candidates.
Will it be even? Probably not. Journalists love spending time with John McCain on his straight talk express and they love raking Barack Obama over the coals. I’m not saying it has anything to do with race, well, shit, yes I am.
For a good two months we had to listen to Obama justify his relationship with his pastor Rev. Wright, while McCain’s pastor “problems” were largely ignored and swept under the rug. But the media is loathsome to do stuff like this. Bring up 15 or 20 year old events and report them as if they were relevant to today.
So in that tradition, we’ve got John McCain calling his wife Cindy a c*nt 16 years ago. Relevant to this election? Absolutely not. Perfect fodder to lampoon the media and drive home the point that John McCain used the worst word possible (though not to British soccer football fans) once? Absolutely.
After the jump, because of ah, seedy language. MORE »
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Tuesday was a great night. So much so that my computer basically said I’m done with you when I woke up Wednesday morning. Something about a hal.dll file being corrupted.
