Last night Keith Olbermann said "Grand slam" as soon as Hillary's speech was over. It's pure politics on his part, Fox News is his role model.
I didn't think it was that great a speech, nothing like her absolutely fabulous speech in Unity, N.H., in June, when she endorsed Barack. That was to insiders, of course, this is to General Americans. And so a show is being put on for Average Americans, an ad campaign, and all of us who are nauseated by that, or who don't care, have to appraise it purely as we would an ad. That is the media's function here, to appraise the sloganeering, and never question the terms. They're patronizing Americans. They can't apply their own intelligent take on things and say, Boy is Hillary canned and tinny. And Bill Clinton is the greatest actor of our time, mouthing "I love you" when the cameras are on him. "The bestlooking man money can buy." That was Will Rogers's definition of politician; I read it on a wood plaque on the wall of a diner in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. They would know.
And the media talk down to Americans. Of course, it works. When I worked at the Daily News in Philly, Kitty Capparella, who I adored, told me, Phil you're too Harvard, you have to write at a 7th-grade level. Well sometimes you have to talk up to Americans, to lead them. Barack Obama knows that. I had a dream about him last night. I was in his hotel room. He had gray hair and was studying. God preserve him and allow him to grow into a grayhaired man! Let the haters melt away.
I've been arguing with my wife about whether oil was a motivator for the Iraq War. She says, "Why are you ruling anything out? It's many reasons." I have to post Saif Ammous's analysis of the oil agenda, I'll get to that. But I'd point out that last night Ed Rendell goes on and on about the oil men and the oil companies, and yes I know, they're bad, they're way baaaaadd, while we're good for buying all their oil at higher and higher prices when the supply is vanishing by the day and doing nothing to conserve, but Jimmy Carter isn't even allowed to speak on that stage. He might mention the Middle East, or the human rights violations in Palestine. Wife, what do you make of that censorship?
