August 24, 2007

"One reason blogging has been light is that I seem to be going through a period where I have no thoughts that aren't deadweight Conventional Wisdom."

Says Mickey Kaus, articulating a standard I agree with and then sneakily stating the opinion anyway.
I think Barack Obama's recent misstatements have revealed a potentially alarming lack of experience!
I'm getting tired of talking about Obama. He was on "The Daily Show," you know. Did you watch? I read this morning that he was on, and I actually took the trouble -- as I was making coffee -- to activate the Explorer 8000 -- here in Brooklyn, I don't have a TiVo, I have an Explorer 8000 -- and play last night's "Daily Show." But it turns out he wasn't on. He was on Wednesday night. I couldn't be bothered. If I don't even hear about it until Friday, how could he have done anything interesting on Wednesday?

Maybe we weren't meant to think about politics in August....

6 comments:

Ron said...

I'll bet the first 7,999 Explorers 'fell off a truck' somewhere in the greater metropolitan area...

Roger Sweeny said...

Maybe we weren't meant to think about politics in August....

We weren't meant to think about the 2008 election in 2007.

It may provide steady employment for the consultants and fund-raisers and their media symbionts but it's not good for the rest of us.

What will be absoulutely awful is if the nominees are picked before most people start paying attention. (This may well happen as so many states push their primary date earlier and earlier--to get ahead of other states who in turn push their date earlier and earlier.) That would not be good for democracy.

SuperDave said...

Fourteen months till an election does not justify the amount of coverage that we are seeing. Think of what we saw fourteen months ago and even with all the changes that have taken place (new congress, surge, rise and fall of the global warming movement....), the news, by and large, has remained constant.

Could it be that we are in one of those "wait and see" moments where we just have to let things play out?

If it is possible to wax nostalgically about the future, all the folks longing for a new reality have a long fourteen month period ahead of them.

Trooper York said...

I thought an Explorer was a truck....how can a truck fall off the back of a truck...that's way too existential for so early in the morning.

Mortimer Brezny said...

He was very good on the Daily Show. And the other day he shot a basketball. I was amazed. No, but really. I bet Hillary sucks at basketball. And unlike Huckabee, she cannot play the bass. It is nice that some of the candidates are actually cool.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTUwNzA0NmEzYzA4ZjY4ZjU2MTdlZDMzZDE4NDljOTE=

XWL said...

If he thought it would help his chances of winning the nomination, I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart would have fellated him right there in front of the studio audience (and neither of them are gay, that's just how much he's into Obama).

Comedy Central has the video up (Part I, Part II) if you want to watch yourself.

I disagree with Kaus on a key point. I think Sen. Obama is fatally flawed as a serious national candidate when it comes to winning the general election, but just as with Ned Lamont in Connecticut, when it comes to the primary voters in the Democratic Party, many would rather vote for 'heat' and for someone they view as 'progressive' than for someone that might actually be good at the office they hope to elect them (or stand a chance in the general election).

Hillary is polling well and the primaries are still a long way off, but I don't think the gaffes he's made are gaffes that damage him in the Dem primaries as much as the political commentariat (that conventional wisdom that Kaus finds himself agreeing with) are thinking.