Friday, November 16, 2007

a question. a better answer for a friday

There are two prominent events that seem to be clogging up the political landscape this week. I’m not much of a supporter of either of the two involved candidates but I find both yards full of screaming banshees completely off balance.

First, the planted question at a Hillary Clinton town hall meeting that took place somewhere in Iowa. Clearly, she has campaign workers ‘placing’ questions with audience members at Clinton rallies and tea parties. I find the practice distasteful because it shows that candidates, and their focus group mentality, aren’t confident enough to answer real questions. But, I’m also fairly confident that every other campaign participates in the same sort of shenanigans along these lines – she just got caught. What bothers me more is who brought this to the fore and her punishment escaped. The student who let the secret ‘slip’ is as poor a reflection on the American voter as it is on the politicians. Exactly what was her role in this malfeasance? I suspect that her thought process involved some desire to be ‘the one’ to hold a microphone and address a real live famous person – her integrity certainly wasn’t involved in workings of her brain gearage. How moronic do you look when you tell everyone that you simply asked a question that a guy in a blue suit told you to ask? If I’m at a political gathering and I’m thinking of asking a question about the electoral college, I’m certainly not going to change my question because some grad-school campaign volunteer pulls me aside and sweet talks me with some crap question. I suspect I might tell him to sod off.

Second, we’ve got the McCain lunch counter stop where a supporter asked him “how are we going to beat that bitch?” The supporter (a woman) was speaking of Hillary Clinton and McCain didn’t seem to have any immediate response – he was blindsided by the freak eating lunch and cursing another candidate. Is McCain responsible for the behavior of his wack-job supporters? In this case, probably not. Those who work in his campaign? Certainly. The video is really a reflection of absolutely nothing to do with politics and a candidate – it’s something of nothing. Unless she was a plant… (cue conspiracy music)

On the lighter side, here’s a video that X showed the boys last night. After watching a few other short skits by them I came to two conclusions: they are just fantastic; and, they will end up overexposed in commercials and various other media outlets.



T.

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