Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Lipstick vogue

Has anybody made an Elvis Costello reference today? It's all mine, baby! Anyway, over at Contentions, John Podhoretz writes about the all-consuming issue of the day and why they can't stop talking about it on the cable news shows:

Because the story is golden - because it's Palin, and women, and the question of politesse vs. hardball, and the classic reversal of candidate of the supposed "party of women" getting himself in hot water for saying something his rivals in the "daddy party" could argue with even minimal plausibility was "sexist." Because this is what cable news, and talk radio, and the American media in the 21st century, hunger for. Because you can't imagine what a huge star Sarah Palin has become in less than two weeks, and how the mere mention of her name causes ratings to spike - and so if one anchor were to refuse on principle to lead with it, the channel surfers would just jump away to a rival who was more than happy to feed the bottomless hunger for this latest twist in the tale.

If I were an Obama supporter, I would be more disheartened today than I have ever been about this candidacy, because it is demonstrating not only a lack of sure-footedness, but a rather astonishing amateurishness.
What was striking about Obama's perceived insult is that he's been characterized as this Kennedyesque figure, one of soaring rhetoric and the "politics of hope." Instead, he sounds peevish and small and (maybe) sexist. On top of that, more Americans are coming to the realization that Obama is all talk and no action...and now his talk is starting to backfire.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Instead, he sounds peevish and small and (maybe) sexist".

Exactly true what you said. I've been watching this election from more of a distance until Sarah Palin entered the picture. Sen Obama I thought was the guy with the high-flown words, inspirational oratory etc. What happened to that guy?? It's like someone replaced him with a typical liberal politician at the DNC Convention and things have been going badly downhill for him since. Kind of disappointing actually, but it's better to know this now than later if he gets elected to higher office.

Anonymous said...

Lipstickgate says more about the media than it ever could about Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, or Arnold the pig.

Add a little "OMG, whatever's in this news cycle. right now. is THE BIGGEST THING EVER!" and you have a recipe for the usual nonsense. Tell me more about the big bad liberal media, mommy.

DBrooks17 said...

"Tell me more about the big bad liberal media, mommy."

You already watch Olbermann every night, so you know everything there is to know about them.

Nuclear Necrology said...

Obama has to be very frustrated because any criticism of Governor Palins qualifications or experience will highlight his own lesser qualifications and experience. I think the Republicans should spend a little time on accomplishments. Obama is much like the rest of the Hollywood elites, superficial and pretentious.

Anonymous said...

It really doesn’t matter if ‘lipstick on a pig’ was aimed at Palin or not, does it?

It is amazing however, that someone on Team Obama could give such unbelievably short-sighted and BAD political advice to use a phrase like that, knowing full-well how it would be interpreted.

I’d say the larger story is that someone in Obama’s inner circle is very politically inept.

-Axeldumb

Anonymous said...

Any "relevance" is synthetic and generated by self-referencing media and the blogosphere. This discussion is a waste of time.

Our government has committed hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to bail out the horrendously mismanaged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Three cheers from major investor China on that score because they need Americans' living beyond our means so we can continue to buy the output of the manufacturing machine that has left the US and gone to China. So much for a free market.

Thousands of Americans have lost their lives and thousands more have been permanently injured in an Arab nation-building exercise that is pulling hundreds of billions of dollars out of our economy when we need it most. We know what William F. Buckley had to say about that. It is not hard to imagine what Barry Goldwater would have to say.

True conservativism is dead.

Get serious. Please.

Anonymous said...

"Tell me more about the big bad liberal media, mommy."

You already watch Olbermann every night, so you know everything there is to know about them.


Bad timing. MSNBC just bumped Olbermann and Matthews from its election coverage, but somehow, NOT Scarborough. And that's the crazy leftwing pinko channel... or so the blogs tell us.

But you keep right on sticking with the unreasoning suspicion that "feels right" to you. Reality should never be allowed to kill a good talking point.