Colin brought an interesting story to my attention. Governor Palin is not really up on the Bill of Rights. Article 1 of the Bill of Rights mentions the right to free speech:
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Simple enough. Glenn Greenwald of salon.com wasn't too impressed with Ms. Palin's interpretation of Article 1. Not to worry. We have these down-home smart folk in our country:
That is free speech too. O.K. I don't like it, but I'm not ready to say it should be illegal. And illegal is what Article 1 is all about.
Last night our class had a brief discussion concerning voter suppression and the YouTube/ PBS effort to encourage voters to videotape the polling places next Tuesday. Some in our group seemed not to be aware of the need for video evidence of subversive voter suppression tactics like those used in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004. This videothevote.org video offers a few examples of voter suppression in 2006:
Andrew Burman's voter suppression article found on Salon.com gives a state by state breakdown of what has happened this year in some of the most hotly contested states. The article focuses on the voter suppression attempts made by state or local Republican officials. Ohio, the state where the most alleged voter suppression occurred in 2004, was again the focus of attention this year for suppression attempts based on voter verification. The idea being that the poll workers would be forced to turn away voters who do not conform to new and complicated registration guidelines. Long lines of voters would form as a result, and as Sarai points out, some people might give up and not vote at all.
People being turned away at the polls is an easy thing to document with a video camera. I expect the broadcast networks will probably follow the lead of PBS to some degree and have cameras ready in Florida and Ohio "hot spots." I just hope that the obvious and historic connection between voter suppression efforts and Republican officials doesn't dissuade the networks from covering the polling places for fear of seeming biased.
This clip goes right to the heart of what we will be discussing this week:
Here is the statement made by Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman, that prompted the discussion in this video clip:
"This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain, who apparently decided to close out his campaign with the same false, desperate attacks that have failed for months. In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all. Americans know that the real choice in this election is between four more years of Bush-McCain policies that redistribute billions to billionaires and big corporations and Barack Obama's plan to help the middle class by giving tax relief to 95% of workers and companies that create new jobs here in America. That's the change we need, and no amount of eleventh-hour distractions from the McCain campaign will change that," said Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
The discussion between Bill Burton and Fox's Megyn Kelly is focused solely on whether or not Fox News is biased against Obama in their reporting on the prospect that Obama may be a socialist because of something he said concerning graduated tax rates during a speech back in 2001. At the end of the clip Mr. Burton finally asks why Fox has not reported on a speech McCain made in 2001 concerning his disagreement with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The question comes too late in the discussion for Ms. Kelly to respond, however, and the viewer is left with Ms. Kelly concluding that Fox News is fair and balanced.
I find it interesting that Fox felt compelled to respond to the charges made by Mr. Burton by having him come on one of the newscasts to defend his statement. Fox could have simply released their own statement saying that they stand by their reporting and make every effort to insure the accuracy and fairness of the information they present to the public.
I know this video doesn't fit into our focus on advertisements this week, but I thought I'd share it just the same in case some folks haven't seen it yet.
Remember the N.R.A.? In previous elections the N.R.A. got a great deal more press coverage than this time around. I thought I'd check in on our friends with guns and see who they were endorsing for president. Let's watch this fun loving video and see if we can tell who they think should be our next president:
Well...I'm not too surprised. But is this video accurate? FactCheck.org says, "not so much." Good thing I checked--I was just about to initiate my cooling off period at Cabela's.
This video is interesting because it attempts to persuade people to vote for Obama by relying on the popularity of three television giants from the past. Anyone born between 1920 and 1970 will recognize some or all of the T.V. stars in the video. Do I care who Fonzi thinks I should vote for? Yes I do. And who can deny that Andy Griffith is one of the most beloved and respected television actors of all time? Sheriff Andy Tate would never give bad advice.
Johnson is the first president I have any memory of. He was a stern looking, serious man with serious issues to deal with. During the run for reelection in 1964 the Johnson campaign produced an ad that has stuck in my mind for almost my whole life. I don't remember when I first saw it. It must have been replayed in the years after the 64 airing to be so clearly printed in my memory. Just the same, it has imagery that spoke very clearly to my young mind, imprinting in me the often re-enforced fear in the sixties that we could be annihilated by "atomic" bombs. We had the bomb drills in school and the air raid siren tests every once in a while. Kids back then talked about the possibility of Russia dropping "atomic" bombs on the U.S. And, growing up in East Hartford with Pratt and Whitney only a mile from our house, we were sure that if an "atomic" war broke out we would be annihilated.
This video was too powerful to use in a presidential campaign and was rightly pulled after airing only once. Once, it turns out, was more than enough. The power of the imagery prompted the networks to find reason to show it again and again as news. So how can a short, simple video have the power to stick so permanently in the mind of a two year old?
Johnson says, "we must either love each other, or we must die." Good Lord! He didn't say that we might die or that we may die. Love or death were the choices he gave us. We could choose Johnson (love) or Goldwater (death). How's that for whittling the issues down to a clear choice?
The current presidential campaign has suffered no similar clear choice. Neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain has had the gall to inform the voters that their vote could result in nuclear Armageddon. The only mushroom cloud I could find in a current ad came from the McCain campaign. The message is much more subtle.
Th ad asserts that by 2013 the "nuclear terror threat" will be "reduced" if McCain is elected. If Obama wins, it is logical to assume, the "nuclear terror threat" will not be reduced. Big deal. People have no idea what the "nuclear terror threat is"--no image of death. We can imagine a terrorist with a small nuclear device killing a large number of people somewhere within the U.S., but there is no imagery to go with the idea. The ad has the explosion but not the little girl innocently plucking pedals from a flower in a sunny meadow--the image of love. Without the image of the innocent victim the ad lacks the power to convey fear of the consequence of the wrong vote.
I don't think either Senator Obama or Senator McCain would dare reduce one of their ads to such a drastic level no matter how badly the campaign was going. They wouldn't get away with it as Johnson didn't get away with it back in 64. Or did he? That single airing of the ad on one network was nevertheless eventually played by the other networks as news. The massage got out, the images were displayed and people understood what Johnson was saying. Me or him. Love or death.
Since the focus this week was on humor (and polls), I thought I would look for political articles by some of my favorite authors of humorous stuff. I did the post on Hunter Thompson, so I thought I might look for something by a funny cat from my youth...P.J. O'Rourke. I first read Mr. O'Rourke's work in the National Lampoon magazine of the mid-seventies. After he left the magazine I kinda lost track of him until he emerged, years later, as a Republican. I was confused. I read a few of his articles in Rolling Stone, but it was not the same.
Now I'm ready to forgive him for his heresy. I'll buy one of his books as soon as I can find one in the bookstore. Until then, I'll have to get my fix from what I can find on the Internet. I found this article humorous.
This video clip is a good example of O'Rourke's legendary wit:
The guy asking the questions looks familiar...
I had hoped to find an O'Rourke article on the current campaign but was unsuccessful. Any ideas?
Part of me worries that Sarah Palin's appearance on SNL tonight will help her in the polls. After all, as Mike's blog points out, Lorne Michaels may be a McCain supporter. We have all been commenting on the power of humor in this election. Sarah Palin, considering her poor relationship with the media, could really benefit from a strong performance tonight. If she is able to come across as self-deprecating and lighthearted, then she could see a bump in the polls. I hope not. Makes me think of Janet Reno's cameo on SNL--funny, but not enough for me to forgive her for Ruby Ridge and Waco. Sometimes funny is not enough.
This story concerning media coverage of the election seems germane to our focus. As does this satirical look at blogging. And another satirical blog looks even more like ours!
I didn't think The Onion could get any better:
This is the kind of stuff that helps restore my faith in our country. People who follow this election, especially those who follow it as closely as our group has, need the relief of humor and satirical perspective offered by fine media outlets like The Onion to help us keep our sanity.
Sen. Obama has a lead in the polls going into tonight's debate. Even so, I am still nervous. I know its irrational, but I still have the fear that we could see another Dukakis disintegration. Not likely, I know, but I remember being optimistic and confident as the poll analyst for Dukakis for President Connecticut headquarters in Hartford. Yes, I was there twice a week clipping the poll results out of a pile of newspapers and putting them in a report on the direction of the campaign in Connecticut. I was the whole poll analysis apparatus for the campaign in the state of Connecticut--one person, no training, no experience, no budget, no expectations. When I started, Dukakis had a solid lead in the polls and was at least a lock to take Connecticut. That would change.
Without going to far into the reasons for Dukakis' drop in the polls and eventual crushing defeat in the election, I will say that not one of us in the campaign headquarters foresaw the ruthless attacks launched by the Bush Sr. campaign. There was no Internet then, no Daily Show and no Fox network. Bush's people had to work with the ads and media manipulation to get their hard message across. Interestingly, the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was Bush Sr.'s campaign manager and the mastermind behind the truth-stretching and the out and out lies told to the voting public. Mr. Ailes was and is a master of the creation of memes and the manipulation of codes. I watched the evening news, I watched the ads and I watched the polls steadily drop. There was a clear cause and effect relationship between how Dukakis was portrayed in the ads and the media and his poll numbers. The last week before the election looked so bad for Dukakis that I would go into the headquarters, read the polls, and not do my report. No one wanted to see it. Dukakis lost big.
Now, it must be said that Dukakis did not have as big of a lead as Obama now enjoys at this point in the election. Obama has the luxury of an expanded media with almost instant fact-checking capability. On the other hand, we should never underestimate the depths to which a republican presidential campaign will go. Polls can change quickly. Election night 1988 I sat in a folding chair next to Barbara Kennelly and Andrew Young and watched the returns come in. There was no party that night.
Let me start this week of posts off with a small tribute to the greatest political journalist of all time--Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter had a way of getting inside a story, especially during a presidential campaign, that compounded the truth. He reported through his own eyes and his own mind. Hunter told the story he wanted to tell in the way that he wanted to tell it. If he thought Nixon was evil, he would tell you Nixon was evil. But, you may ask, is that legitimate journalism?
I found this nearly perfect example of Hunter's style reprinted from Rolling Stone magazine on The Atlantic website. This particular paragraph holds his justification and legitimization for his style of reporting:
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
Hunter used humor and satire in his political writing because it was necessary in order to deal with the hypocrisy and dishonesty that he saw. As Courtney asserted in her post, humor in journalism has its place and that place is legitimate. I urge anyone who reads this to select the link above from The Atlantic and read the entire essay by Thompson. It is beyond belief.
Fox News has a reputation of being biased in favor of the republicans. As the following video shows, Fox is not willing to report on Ms. Palin getting booed at a hockey game.
Not surprised? Neither was I. But we must keep in mind that Fox News presents itself as a legitimate news source. They might defend their edited video as proof that they are "fair and balanced." After all, don't all news editors decide what story gets presented to the public and which does not? Not this time--this is a simple case of Pappa Murdoch protecting a young, pretty republican woman. If this had been a male republican candidate Fox would have reported on the crowd's negative response and chalked it up to the crowd being made up of rich East coast Liberals. But because Ms. Palin is a woman, the video of her getting booed is too unsavory to display.
This is an interesting blog. Careful--the annoying audio may turn you into a Palin convert! Apparently, this "Mom 4 Sarah Palin" has a bounty of free time. "Hang on, kids--Mommy's busy psycho-blogging for Sarah."
Here we see some Palin supporters expressing their shallow yet heartfelt support for the Governor from the soon-to-be very dark, very cold State of Alaska:
I'm not quite sure what to make of the blog or the video. My search was focused on the question of what women who support Sarah Palin find so alluring about her. I found the blog mentioned in a CNN web video linked to a Yahoo story about Governor Palin. The video was found in a search on the CNN website for Sarah Palin supporters.
It is little wonder John McCain's campaign is attempting to get the voters to focus on Sen. Obama's friendship with the fiendish William Ayers. The markets have fallen so fast and so far that people are now wondering if the economy is sliding toward a possible worldwide depression. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the world markets continue to fall despite the best efforts of the U. S. government as well as the governments of most of the nations of the world. As of today we have seen market value losses in the last week unseen since 1929. Watch as this sweaty, disheveled editor tries to explain what has happened so far:
Mr. Callaway seems to have had a tough day.
So...hey! Never mind that economy stuff. Have you heard that Obama is friends with some guy who blew up the Pentagon in, like, the sixties or something? Booo!
With the way the economy is going, Joe-six-pack might have to switch from Bud to Piels.
I must confess to only a passing knowledge of modern feminism. I believe that the ERA should be passed, that women should be paid as much as men and that traditional gender roles in marriage are based in ignorance and fear. Because I consider myself progressive on feminist issues I was shocked at my own ignorance and shallowness while reading the excellent Camille Paglia article recommended us by Colin.
The following paragraph, in particular, made me feel petty and dim-witted:
It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.
My assessment of Ms. Palin's performance at the Republican National Convention was colored not only by my childish hatred of anything Republican, but also by my inability to consider the woman as a person, just like me, who had found herself in a strange and frightening situation being watched and judged by millions of people. How would I have performed in that situation? I can barely sputter out my opinions and observations in class without nervously pitching face forward onto the table before me. I, who came from a family of five boys and no girls, who knows next to nothing of what it means to grow up in America as a woman, did not even know that it was possible to look past my mindless hatred of Republicans to see a person who has overcome more than I will ever be able to comprehend to stand before the country with confidence and strength and offer herself as a viable candidate for vice president of the United States.
So now I am left to reconsider all my previously held views on the candidacy of Governor Palin. I may still believe her to be misguided in her political beliefs and inexperienced in national affairs, but at least I can now admit that she has a great deal of courage and determination. Sarah Palin is a feminist.
Linda Bergthold's article immediately following tonight's debate raised an interesting question regarding the reaction time of men vs. women while trying to pay attention to a presidential debate. The gist of her argument, I think, is that men are slower to react to stimuli than women. Okay. So the men watching the debate while hooked to a CNN reaction measuring device reacted more slowly and more mildly to McCain's "tough rhetoric" than did the women. But was it necessary for Ms. Bergthold to conclude from that that "guys are trainable" and should "just listen to the ladies?" I realize that her article is a lighthearted look at the CNN instant reaction focus group, but I don't think it is necessary to depict men as slow and in need of training.
When Governor Palin was announced as Sen. McCain's choice for Vice President there was the assumption that she was chosen because she is a woman and would help the campaign garner more women voters. This is a cynical assumption, of course, based on the idea that Sen. Clinton nearly took the Democratic Party nomination because she had a large following of women. That Sen. Clinton also had a huge following of male voters did not seem to be a concern.
But has the McCain strategy to attract more women to his ticket succeeded? Where, on the eve of an important Presidential debate, do women voters stand? I have found little from the media on the role of women voters in the last few days. A quick look at a pre-Palin/Biden debate Gallup poll sheds some light on where women voters stood before having a prime time look at Ms. Palin:
It is hard to tell from this poll if Governor Palin, simply by being a woman, had been able (before her debate performance) to attract women voters to her ticket. What is interesting is the concentration of middle income, child-free 35-54 year old women who do not go to church very often making up the bulk of the undecideds. It will also be interesting to see in Governor Palin is able to somehow use gender to attract more independent women voters. If Ms. Palin does decide to target this group, and if she is successful, then I would expect the media to more thoroughly cover the effect Ms. Palin's gender has had on this campaign.
Governor Palin has recently attempted to resurrect the Obama-Ayers connection as part of the campaign's latest desperate attempt to shift voter attention away from the economy. If, like me, curious voters seek to refresh their memory concerning the Weather Underground and Mr. Ayers role in it they can easily find all they need here.
The weakness of this latest attempt to smear Sen. Obama is so obvious that even one of the usually lock-step partisan websites cast doubt on the strategy:
While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, there is no evidence that they ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts.
However telling this criticism of one of their own may be, at this point in the campaign the ads and speeches will conform more to the polls than to what is written on partisan websites. If this type of attack works, even slightly, then we can expect to see many more like it.
Before the debate last Thursday there was a pity Sarah Palin meme beginning to spread across the land. It caught hold in me after watching Ms. Palin struggle during the Katie Couric interviews, and I saw signs of it in many of the articles I read on the web. Then I read Rebecca Traister's meme smashing article at salon.com. This paragraph in particular began to eat the meme I was hosting:
But just because I'm human, just because I can feel, just because I did say this weekend that I "almost feel sorry for her" doesn't mean, when I consider the situation rationally, that I do. Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics.
After reading this article and the watching the debate last Thursday I no longer feel bad for Sarah Palin. The pity Sarah meme is gone from me; what is left, however, is the question of why I would have ever felt bad for her in the first place. Would I have felt bad for a male candidate for Vice President who did not seem to have the ability to answer simple questions during an interview?
Senator McCain had to be happy with the way his vice presidential choice performed in the debates last night. Ms. Palin, though coming across as a high school student debating a senator as a goof, at least was able to appear to most people to not have recently suffered a traumatic brain injury--she stood at the podium, her eyes were open, she spoke and she appeared to be in good spirits. Beyond that, I'm not sure she said anything of substance. I don't know...she somehow seemed to have an almost strobe-like effect on me. After watching the debate I felt dizzy, nauseous and disoriented. But at least I didn't start talking like the Penguin from the early Batman shows.
This post started out as a comment on Cheyenne's most recent post about McCain's age and potential longevity. It made me wonder if there was any way that the McCain campaign could make the age factor work for their candidate. Are there, for instance, any cool people who are about the same age as John McCain who could be used as examples of cool old people? The answer is, yes and no.
McCain, at 72, is the same age as John Madden. Robert Redford is only a year younger at 71 and he is still pretty cool despite his stubborn lack of a face lift. How about Jack Nicholson also at 71? Isn't he still pretty cool? I think so. Jane Fonda is a very young 70 and I have no doubt that she would make a decent president. Gene Wilder is 75. Who wouldn't vote for Willie Wonka? Glen Campbell is 72 and has consumed more drugs and alcohol than most living people and he's still alive. He's not really that cool though. Not too many potential youth votes from a reference to the singer of, "Lineman For the County." Wink Martindale is 73. I'm not sure even I know who he is.
What I concluded while going through the sad website referenced above is that maybe John McCain is a bit too old to be president. McCain is not a "young" 72 the way that Jane Fonda is a "young" 70. Some people start to really lose it in their early 70's. Some people, when they have been beaten nearly to death every so often for seven or eight years, never make it to 70. The poor man is lucky to be alive never mind having a happy life as a U.S. Senator from the beautiful state of Arizona. Maybe he should have left it at that.
