A friend writes, "I was a bit surprised at how pro-Obama last night's post-debate
commentary was. Were they being objective, or has the media already
decided that Obama is going to win and they want to be on his good side?" I had the same impression. It seemed to me that McCain won the debate by speaking in a pithy manner and by using anecdotes effectively: The North Koreans are three inches shorter than South Koreans on average. (Though my wife (who didn't sleep through most of it) says he seemed the ancient warrior, looking backward.)
My reading is that the media are taking sides for a different reason: they are mature liberal babyboomers who are now doing their utmost to avert catastrophe. They dropped the ball on the Iraq war and now they are exercising their elite judgment to try and get Obama elected. It's the conclusion I draw from the transparently-biased Times piece a couple weeks back saying that Sarah Palin's executive style is one of vendettas. They're out to get her. They hate Palin; are angered that McCain would elevate her. I'm gaga for Barack so I don't think there's anything wrong with this. Sometimes elites play an important role. The idea so promoted now on the cable stations that our president should be someone who can relate to ordinary people–as Obama obviously cannot; I bet he forgets names–is a false value. Our president should be really smart and have good cool judgment and talk to Iran and feel tremendous responsibility for ordinary people. As George Bush, who yes I'd really like to drink beer with, did not. The media have had enough. I'm reminded of Peter Kaplan, my editor at the NY Observer, closing the door one day and shaking his head and saying angrily: "How did we let this happen?!" Meaning the Iraq war. Well I didn't let it happen; but he was saying that the elite media had been completely derelict. Not this time 'round.
"I'm gaga for Barack." — Phil W.
* SIGH *
'A' for candor; D-minus for critical appraisal.
Since my pathological aversion to both television and politicians prevents me from watching political events live, I'm going to take the Slimes stenographer's word on the debate:
"Although they offered contrasting diagnoses for the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression, the two candidates seemed to offer largely similar prescriptions. Both expressed general support for the concept underlying Mr. Bush’s proposal, to buy as much as $700 billion in toxic securities …"
http://tinyurl.com/4n8muz
This plunder — the most brazen looting since Genghis Khan sacked Samarkand — is the biggest populist issue in decades. Yet tone-deaf elitist Barry Obama totally doesn't get it. Here is the LA Times on the subject. Read this; it's important:
————
A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said her five offices had doubled staffing to deal with the constantly ringing phones. Through late Thursday, Feinstein's offices had received a total of 39,180 e-mails, calls and letters on the bailout, with the overwhelming majority of constituents against it. The spokesman said the volume was as great as during the immigration debate and at key points during the war in Iraq.
More than 1,000 protesters clogged the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, bearing signs calling the bailout a "class war crime." A quartet dressed in business attire contrasted with the mob, holding up signs asking Congress to "have a heart, save a hedge fund," as other demonstrators jeered and shouted obscenities at them.
http://tinyurl.com/4546k2
————
Has Barry Obama doubled his office staff to field the tidal wave of outraged constituent calls? Does he hear the voters' near-unanimity on the issue?
Or does being on the plutocrats' payroll mean that he does what he has to do, even if it infuriates the alleged Democratic working-class base? Half of them defected to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Even a doddering oaf like McCain may be able to accomplish the same.
Sorry to be so blunt, but Barry is a Harvard-minted Oreo — black on the outside, white on the inside. If I were McCain, I'd be testifyin' at black churches — "We can beat this jive-ass Wall Street errand boy, on behalf of American's working folks. PRAISE THE LORD!"
"The idea so promoted now on the cable stations that our president should be someone who can relate to ordinary people–as Obama obviously cannot; I bet he forgets names–is a false value."
Obama is not as bright as you leftists believe. Smart people cannot spend their adult years living in South Chicago. To the brillaint man, there is nothing more painful than the constant presence of idiots.
" they are mature liberal babyboomers who are now doing their utmost to avert catastrophe. They dropped the ball on the Iraq war and now they are exercising their elite judgment to try and get Obama elected."
If they use their "elite judgement" then we are all f*cked. Let's see what boomers have given the world:
1. a complete change to American demographics without stopping to consider if such change is good or bad for existing citzens
2. a series of programs (Affirmative Action, CRA, etc.) designed solely to prove that blacks are just like whites despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. When these programs fail to work, the elites just double down
3. massive Federal deficits that are going to greatly impede on the upward mobility of future generations
4. environmental catastrophes such as overpopulation and urban sprawl that would have largely been mitigated if not for massive immgration, and all the programs designed to prove that blacks are just like whites
5. an education system that is dysfunctional to the core
6. political correctness even on life or death matters such as HIV education.
Sit down and think about it: what have the Boomers truly given this world other than pain?
I saw the debates.
McCain is an OLD MAN. Cranky, contemptuous, thoughtless.
He's resentful of these "young whipper snappers".
Obama is thoughtful, able to address complexity, has backbone when needed.
McCain won't get 40% come November.
Everything that the audience of that debate heard about Iran was a lie. Neither candidate bothered to set the record straight and neither did the moderator.
The post-debate analysis by the pundits on NPR was even worse. There is no way that an objective listener would say that McCain won. One commentator even said that McCain's emotional side shone through & would certainly win people over. Is he kidding? McCain came off as an angry, stubborn, and slightly unstable man.
Worst of all was the warmongering pundit, Mara Liasson. It appears that she received her talking points from the AEI. Mara Liasson said that both candidates failed to address the "real issue" with regard to Iran. What real issue was that you ask? Take a listen [3:09/18:56]:
"I thought that those discussions, although they went over a lot of well-plowed ground, were not as illuminating as they could have been. The real question about Iran is which is more dangerous, Iran having a nuclear weapon or us using military force to stop that. That is the decision faced by the next President"
If anything this is a false question, not a real one. There is simply no evidence that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon or pose a "real" danger if it does.
No wonder the American people are so clueless. The fourth estate is letting them down.
I personally don't care for Obama or McCain and have been depressed for months that these two candidates are the best our country can do. That said, I thought Obama looked far better than McCain. More reasoned, more thoughtful, less boastful. more able to cite examples to sustain a point.
My guess is the election is over and Obama won big time. The next set of post-debate polls is going to show Obama up by ten points, a lead which he will hold right through to election day.
One thing I regret, from what Obama has said so far I don't think he will do anything to revise government policy of forcing lenders to give nothing-down, no-income- verification loans to people with bad credit, which is what caused the current financial meltdown in the first place.
I also saw the debates.
I agree McCain was cranky, contemptuous, thoughtless only in the sense that what he calls strategy is actually tactics–a sound military man. Too bad that as a Presidential candidate, he doesn't have a clue he would have to make basic decisions about policy, rather than merely implement them. He remains the pilot, never questioning the childish assumptions that got us into the Iraq War, and next up, the war on Iran. Similarly, he'd never imagine questioning the Federal Reserve–which way did he vote when congress killed the Glass-Steagal Act? (Sic) to allow poker with taxpayer dollars?
Neither the old geezer or the young rebel touched the taboos.
UG wrote, "Everything that the audience of that debate heard about Iran was a lie."
I was also struck by this. From both candidates. And not a peep from Lehrer.
I, too, watched the debate and concur 1000% with Richard Witty's assessment of it.
I agree, Alana. I was distressed by it.
Mr. Haygood, you wrote:
Yet tone-deaf elitist Barry Obama totally doesn't get it.
You need to read the following, which I just scarfed off another blog:
link to financialsense.com
Note the graph.
Note what you can do in a downturn.
If you think Paulson doesn't understand this, you're whistling Dixie. That's why it is imperative to put a taxpayer equity situation into this bailout deal, and that Obama does understand.
Obama, within the narrow confines of what is not taboo to discuss, won the event handily. McCain is a crotchety asshole, a hack.
I bemoan how the discussion of Iraq featured not a single word about the suffering the civilians there have had to endure since the invasion.
And this repellent moment: A smiling Jim Lehrer: "Well, it looks like we've solved Iraq, now let's turn to Afghanistan . . ." Laughs by all, as if the baseball pennant race were the topic, not lethal, government-sponsored violence that shatters millions of lives.
No wonder much of the world hates us. We're criminally callous.
"what have the Boomers truly given this world other than pain?"
In 1965 both sides of any major highway were filled with trash, people thought nothing of throwing fast-food wrappers out the window of the car.
People smoked in grocery stores. Unbelievable now, but fact.
Nutrition information was non-existent.
Kids rode in cars unbuckled, with inevitable consequences.
The Viet Nam war was escalating bigtime, overt racial discrimination was a feature of the status quo, not a lower class aberration.
We gave you the end of all that and a lot more.
And the music.
And computers.
The worst things about this time we inherited and have been so far unable to stop. Isolating the generations from each other is probably not going to help get that done. But it will help the beneficiaries, who are neither boomers nor GenX, nor oldsters, nor youngsters.
Witty:
"McCain won't get 40% come November."
You are right, he will get about 60%.
Remember, the America of Phil's blog, of other blogs of note, such as Juan Cole's et al, is very very VERY small.
The America of small towns, of people whose idea of France is gleaned from a Simpson's episode, is relatively LARGE.
There are people voting because of arguments such as "I hate them damn hippie libtards!", as well as "Palin is hot!".
Yes, we are screwed.
Lets who whom the kleptocracy will choose to represent the "new, improved" America to the world, though, it's not like this whole voting shebang matters when there are NO DIFFERENCES in voting patterns between both parties.
American Goy (I hate that name, BTW):
As difficult as it is to do, I think you underestimate the American electorate.
John Sidney McCain III faces an uphill battle to win in November.
Jim,
Barry Obama may be an oreo but the important thing to Black Americans is his ouside color. They see it as a breakthrough.
Moreover, on being asked for his opinion of McCain, my informant stated "He can kiss my ass, the Crackerass Cracker."
I might say to Blact people almost the same as I said to women about Hillary, that if he performs as advertised he could set Black people back 20 years in politics. But they wont listen.
No wonder much of the world hates us. We're criminally callous.
Posted by: Michael Blaine | September 27, 2008 at 05:29 PM
Thank you Michael.
Having looked at the Sunday Times, I see that the Elite Media are breaking for Obama because it is in the interests of the Ruling Class to have us believe that Democrats are different from Republicans. Ergo the System can be saved.
But in fact it cant. The only way to fix the systemic problem is to end the dependence of politics on private donations, and no Supreme Court we will ever see will tolerate that.
I wish Phil could turn his analytical skills away from Israel and back on US.
Having looked at the Sunday Times, I see that the Elite Media are breaking for Obama because it is in the interests of the Ruling Class to have us believe that Democrats are different from Republicans.
Ergo the System can be saved.
But in fact it cant. The only way to fix the systemic problem is to end the dependence of politics on private donations, and no Supreme Court we will ever see will tolerate that.
I wish Phil could turn his analytical skills away from Israel and back on US.
You can say that again!
Paul,
Thank YOU, for the gem of logic below.
"it is in the interests of the Ruling Class to have us believe that Democrats are different from Republicans.
Ergo the System can be saved.
But in fact it cant. The only way to fix the systemic problem is to end the dependence of politics on private donations"
PM
Phil,
Your unabashed admiration for Obama says much more about you: yet another Jew yearning for a Messiah. As Herbert Spencer wrote centuries ago, "Men believe to be true what they prefer to be true." And you are no exception. Martin Luther King and now Collin Powell are wiser and more discerning–as the Tanach would have us Jews be. King spoke of judging a man not by the color of his skin but by the "content of his character." And only a few days ago, Powell said he would not base his vote on either his friendship of 25 years with McCain or Obama's skin color.
And what of Obama's character? Here are a few indications. He chose to shed the name Barry, the name used by his mother and grandmother who raised him, for that of the father who deserted him. He referred in his "race" speech to his grandmother as a "typical white person," and later denied that he injected race into his run for the White House. And what of his gratuitous line in that speech pandering to the Jewish lobby by absolving Israel and blaming Islamic extremism for all of the violence in the Middle East? And what of his choice of Joe Biden as his running mate? Obama stood on one pillar during the primary: his speech opposing the Iraq war. And he pilloried Hillary Clinton for her Senate vote giving Bush the power to go to war. But so did Biden, who not only voted as did Hillary, he made a rousing Senate speech to persuade his colleagues of the president's "judgment." This is the same Biden who told Israeli lawmakers, "I am a Zionist," thereby alienating every Arab in the Middle East.
Nor will Obama's positions on Iran, on Georgia and Russia alter the status quo for the better. Nor will his rhetoric.
McCain seeks redemption. Obama seeks reverence. The irony? He's getting it in all the wrong places.
If Obama's presidency is a bust, will this be as bad for future Black politicians as Hillary would have been for women? Maybe not. Hillarys arrogance plays into men's fear of powerful women, but Obama's subservience to the Ruling Class does not play into the White fear of Blacks. As long as he does not get caught with any White intern under the desk.