Saturday, May 29, 2004
Grasping at Crap
I'm watching Chris Matthews (aka Chris the Screamer, thank you Bartcop) right now as they desperately try to find a way to trash John Kerry. They're going through his biography and tossing up Things That Are Supposed to Make You Not Vote for Him. One panelist refers to a book his father wrote that is full of long pretentious sentences and comes across as cold -- as if to say that Kerry must have been unloved as a child, blah blah blah. Of course, this came about five sentences after someone decried Kerry for having not actually grown up in Boston, but having been shipped off to boarding schools in childhood. Or, in other words, his father's personality wouldn't really seem to pertain. They also tried to spin the "living in eleven cities on two continents" thing as a negative, but I'd much rather have a president who grew up seeing the world than one who'd never made it outside of continental North America prior to being installed in office.
They also tried to make hay out of Kerry's grandfather killing himself -- conveniently forgetting to bring up that W's grandfather did business with Nazis during WW II. And I almost spit coffee out my nose when they tried to trash Kerry's desire to please an audience. This is something that applies to every politician on the planet; in fact, it's a prerequisite for election to anything. And, again, they ignore the sins W has committed in the name of the same thing -- namely, lying his ass off during the campaign and giving us promises that have turned out to be as empty as Saddam's WMD caches.
Oh, wait. W did keep one promise -- to be a uniter, not a divider. Yep. He's managed to unite the world against the US, hasn't he?
Another ridiculous bit on Matthews's show involved intercutting Gore's anti-admin speech this week with Dean's infamous screaming tirade. I think Matthews was trying to say that Gore had turned into Dean, but gosh, in comparison he sure seemed calm. The whole thing came across as a bunch of tittering frat boys trying to, say, mock Dame Edna for wearing a dress and bad glasses when they don't understand that that's the whole joke in the first place.
And a word on the Dean "Yearrrrrgh!" speech, something that was covered briefly on one of the evening news shows but never given the media play it should have gotten. The soundtrack we've heard was recorded from the mic Dean was speaking into. A mic designed to filter out background noise. Another video of that same speech recorded from a mic and camera out amongst the screaming crowd tells a very different story. Dean could barely be heard over the crowd, and could probably barely hear himself. In this "as it really was" version, he doesn't come across as a screaming lunatic. He comes across as a man trying to speak over a hyped-up, excited crowd of supporters. His famous "Yearrrrrrgh!" is barely audible on this version of the tape.
But hey, it's a typical Republican tactic. Let's selectively pick details to make the other side look bad. If we can't find any details, we'll make 'em up.
Luckily, the Democrats don't have to make anything up to make the other side look bad. Lately, they've been doing a fine job of that all by themselves.
They also tried to make hay out of Kerry's grandfather killing himself -- conveniently forgetting to bring up that W's grandfather did business with Nazis during WW II. And I almost spit coffee out my nose when they tried to trash Kerry's desire to please an audience. This is something that applies to every politician on the planet; in fact, it's a prerequisite for election to anything. And, again, they ignore the sins W has committed in the name of the same thing -- namely, lying his ass off during the campaign and giving us promises that have turned out to be as empty as Saddam's WMD caches.
Oh, wait. W did keep one promise -- to be a uniter, not a divider. Yep. He's managed to unite the world against the US, hasn't he?
Another ridiculous bit on Matthews's show involved intercutting Gore's anti-admin speech this week with Dean's infamous screaming tirade. I think Matthews was trying to say that Gore had turned into Dean, but gosh, in comparison he sure seemed calm. The whole thing came across as a bunch of tittering frat boys trying to, say, mock Dame Edna for wearing a dress and bad glasses when they don't understand that that's the whole joke in the first place.
And a word on the Dean "Yearrrrrgh!" speech, something that was covered briefly on one of the evening news shows but never given the media play it should have gotten. The soundtrack we've heard was recorded from the mic Dean was speaking into. A mic designed to filter out background noise. Another video of that same speech recorded from a mic and camera out amongst the screaming crowd tells a very different story. Dean could barely be heard over the crowd, and could probably barely hear himself. In this "as it really was" version, he doesn't come across as a screaming lunatic. He comes across as a man trying to speak over a hyped-up, excited crowd of supporters. His famous "Yearrrrrrgh!" is barely audible on this version of the tape.
But hey, it's a typical Republican tactic. Let's selectively pick details to make the other side look bad. If we can't find any details, we'll make 'em up.
Luckily, the Democrats don't have to make anything up to make the other side look bad. Lately, they've been doing a fine job of that all by themselves.
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