At first I was confused as to why no one seemed to consider that conservatives would be quick to step in with a joke or two at the expense of the new administration, but then I remembered that conservatives aren't very funny. Does anyone remember The 1/2 Hour News Hour, Fox News's answer to The Daily Show? No, because while the latter is in its thirteenth year and has been joined by an equally-successful spin-off entering its fourth year, the Fox offering flopped like a drunken diver after six months on the air. Why? It wasn't funny, so no one watched it.

Meanwhile, one example of conservative political humor that I've heard during the last week is: "So did you hear that the White House is now the Black House?" This, while lacking the caustic and embittered tone of most of what I've been hearing, sounds like something an elementary-age child dreamed up. In short, we can't expect the right-wing to pick up the slack in the humor department.

But do we really think that moderate and liberal humorists will be forced to abandon a suddenly-dry well of topical humor? Surely not, and as an example of what I mean, I present to you two hilarious videos from the past few days. The first is from a website I just discovered (236.com), and should be avoided if you find profanity offensive (there are, like, two).

The second is a clip from The Daily Show, which should answer specifically an article I saw which wondered if Stewart's comedy could survive an Obama presidency. Granted, he takes a few shots at Bush and spends the lion's share of the clip on his favorite target (the media), but there are some definite jabs in Obama's direction. Enjoy:

You can tell they're really from Ireland because they think Texas is celebrating McCain's loss. Catchy song, though.

Seriously, though, this is a really really big deal. No matter how you feel about the new president-elect, take a moment to reflect on this milestone. The last time a 3rd party carried any electoral votes was in 1968, when George Wallace won 5 southern states on an anti-desegregation platform. 40 years later, there is a black man in the White House. Try to be proud of it, because it is worth being proud of. Be proud because, if nothing else, we have collectively chosen our president out of hope rather than out of fear. The hope may be misplaced, but the fear was certainly misguided.

Even more importantly, though, I would like to take this moment to offer some advice to McCain voters. Don't spend the next four years (or even the next four days) weeping and gnashing your teeth. Get over it, and get over it fast. There's nothing to be afraid of, and there never was. (And I would like to point out that, Palin aside, I was never really concerned by the idea of a McCain presidency.)

In fact, we could even make a deal. You try really hard not to go ape about an Obama presidency, and I will do my best not to laugh at you (at least not out loud) when all of your outrageous predictions for the next four years fail to come about. Whaddya say?

>.>
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And, for the record: Yes, comparing Sarah Palin to Evita is probably totally sexist.

I don't remember whether I ever mentioned this on my blog or not, but I was pretty happy with the state of the election back when McCain had won the Republican nomination and then Obama finally edged Clinton out of the Democratic ring. It seemed like a uniformly hopeful election to me. In light of the past two elections, and the ugliness of the pre-primary playing field, things seemed to have turned out rather well. In a country that has seemed increasingly polarized between red and blue, both candidates felt like relatively healthy shades of purple.

McCain was the moderate Republican, the one who avoided the Coulter-esque rhetoric of his party, unlike Giuliani or Romney or the current presidential administration. Obama wasn't Hillary (though I may be damning him with faint praise there), and, what's more, he was (and remains) an inspiring figure to an enormous segment of the population.

Then, somewhere between Hillary's defeat and the Republican National Convention, McCain lost his way. I don't really know when or how it happened, but at this point I think it is pretty undeniable that he has lost sight of the principles he started with as he felt the presidency slipping through his fingers. In those intervening months, McCain (and especially his slimy running mate) has turned increasingly to mudslinging tactics, extreme jingoistic rhetoric, and preying upon the emotional fragility of the voting public. And it's not all McCain's doing, either. Despicable e-mail forwards crowd my inbox, and the pile grows every day: a frightening smoke-screen of manipulative lies perpetrated by the conservative base. The election has turned ugly.

I don't really have enough experience to comment definitively on the precedent for the sort of things that are happening at McCain campaign rallies (as detailed in the above stories). However, I would venture to say that there is a level of fear and anger among conservative voters that has not been seen in a long time, perhaps even since the 1960s. If you're paying attention to the news, you're probably thinking now of the comments by John Lewis (which McCain has criticized so shrilly). McCain's outrage aside (and, really, how else can he respond?) I think Lewis has a valid observation.

I should pause for a moment and applaud McCain for standing up to his own constituency and counseling calm respect and sanity towards his opponent. That's a glimpse of the McCain that I liked a few months ago. Still, when his campaign, including his running mate, are so busily whipping up a frenzy with crap like this Ayers terrorism connection, what does he expect? If he can somehow calm the angry white vote during the next few weeks, that will be a real feat of leadership.

No matter who wins the election next month, there are going to be whole demographics of angry voters who will suddenly feel very marginalized and threatened, and I think we should be ready to see them lash out when that happens. If (and I am still tempted to say "when") Obama wins, those voters will largely be white, conservative, perhaps Christian Americans who have been fed a pack of possibly the most irresponsible falsehoods ever spread about a candidate. These are people who do not understand anyone who is different from themselves, and who are afraid that their president may be a terrorist and a foreigner who wants to take away their freedoms (in the form of things like guns and religion) and maybe even ultimately their lives.

Understand here that I am not necessarily speaking of anyone that I know, or know of, or have encountered. I'm talking about the people at these McCain rallies who read somewhere that Obama is an Arab, and who are shouting out things like "terrorist" and "kill him." What worries me, though, is that they are not as much on the fringe as they ought to be. After all, I am getting some of these e-mail forwards from people I know, even people who should know better. I am hearing some unwarranted fear and hatred in gatherings with Christian friends. Above all, there is a genuine (and misguided) shock that the Obama these people think they have pegged (a man who does not, in fact, exist) is days away from cinching the presidency.

I understand the source of a lot of these emotions, and some of the criticism I hear is not unfounded, certainly. But the irrational, baseless fear of Obama is strong, and it is undeniably a product of some combination of ignorance and blind prejudice of a sort that I have not seen directed at any presidential candidate in my lifetime . . . even Clinton at the height of the Lewinsky scandal.

Despite these strong, raw emotions, I believe that Obama will still win this election, possibly even by a margin larger than any we have seen in 10-20 years. However, if he doesn't, that, too, will prompt a reaction. I think that an Obama loss will prompt outrage among certain segments of the black community, and a dull disillusionment among the more idealistic liberals (like the reaction to Gore's loss in 2000, but stronger). Because a McCain win would resemble a punch to the gut for those on the left, while an Obama win might be characterized more as witnessing a sacrilege, it is possible that the response of Obama supporters might be more muted if they lose. However, it would be unwise (though, at this point, politically correct) to overlook the volatile role that race may still have to play in these proceedings. I'm just saying.

If I seem more concerned about behavior from the McCain camp, it is for three reasons: First, the possibility of a volatile reaction to an Obama loss has bee floating around for quite some time now, while I think anger and fear about an Obama win has only reached a fever pitch within the past few weeks. Second, as I keep saying, I really feel like a McCain loss is the overwhelming likelihood at this point. Third, until he cinched the nomination, McCain was not viewed with a great deal of sympathy by the right. There have got to be a lot of people, at this point, who are voting against Obama, and because that is the case, McCain may not have a lot of "pull" when he tries to allay the fear and prejudice of those voters. In any case, I hope both candidates will be working overtime, both in the days leading up to and the days following the election, to calm the voters down regardless of the outcome.

Also, I hope that nobody I know, at least, is voting for McCain because they are afraid of Obama, or because they are afraid of those who are. The former is foolish, and the latter is perfidious. Do what you think is right, certainly, but don't do it for the wrong reasons.

What I'd like to basically do is walk through the segment in its entirety. This portion (like most of what she had to say) is filled with fragments, run-ons, awkward phraseology, tangents and disconnected ideas. In it, she latches onto a single word spoken by Biden, and uses it to springboard into a totally irrelevant topic. She runs with it, but flounders twice into irrelevancies. Once she does get back on track, she still manages not to say anything. In short, it is the perfect demonstration, in miniature, of Sarah Palin's mental bankruptcy and the source of my disgust.

For context, the moderator had questioned the candidates about what their presidency might look like if anything were to happen to their running mates after the election. Biden answered first, and explained the Obama policies he would follow and why. Palin went next and ended her answer with a dig at Obama's economic policies (which was, at best, questionable). Biden quickly jumped back in with an indictment of the results of Bush administration policies, and drew the all-important link between Bush and McCain. The important quote, coming about halfway through his remarks, is this: "[...] ask them whether there's a single major initiative that John McCain differs with the president on. On taxes, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the whole question of how to help education, on the dealing with health care."

Palin responds:

Aww, say it ain't so, Joe. There you go again pointing backwards again though. You prefaced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad that you did. I know that education you are passionate about and with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her, her reward is in heaven, right? Um, I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watchin' this debate.

Education in American has been in some senses some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It's not doin' the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it's near and dear to my heart. I'm very, very concerned about where we're goin' in education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

She chuckles her way amiably through the first few sentences, prefacing a deflection that everyone can see coming a mile away. "Doggone it," she just wants us all to forget about what a mess the last eight years have created and how closely aligned her running mate is with the leader that brought us here. Well should she want to just laugh Biden's comments off and then ignore them. President Bush's approval rating last month was at 19%, a record low. That's lower than Truman's during the Korean War, lower than Carter's during the Iran Hostage Crisis, and even lower than Nixon's during Watergate. To honestly acknowledge the accuracy of Biden's observation (which you'll notice she does not deny) would be political death. Instead, Palin grabs ahold of the lifeline Biden has unwittingly tossed her: An in into a topic she actually thinks she knows something about.

You mentioned education and I'm glad that you did. I know that education you are passionate about and with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her, her reward is in heaven, right?

Oh, I'll bet she's glad. I will forever wonder what she would have come up with if he hadn't mentioned it. Still, she derails herself almost immediately in an attempt to form a sentence that reminds me of watching a hamster scrabble at the walls of its aquarium without gaining any purchase. It tries to go in three directions at once, loses track of its syntax, and finally circles around into a rhetorical question.

Um, I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving.

She starts over again and takes another run at the topic, getting a bit further this time. We've got a crushingly obvious observation, phrased backwards (education, America should focus more on it) and followed by a run-on thought that totally fails to make any sense, leaving a sad trail of mutilated verbage in its wake. Does she mean that schools need to improve to justify the already-high level of funding? Does she mean that they deserve more funding and should get it? Does she mean anything at all? We may never know.

Teachers needed to be paid more.

But now they . . . don't? This is just the first in a string of nonsensical and disorienting tense changes: "My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years." Ow, right? But that's nothing compared to what's coming.

My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watchin' this debate.

This just shows that her mind isn't staying far enough ahead of her mouth to save her from dissolving into a lazy drift along the good old stream of consciousness. As one might eventually infer from that much-abused jumble of words, Palin's brother Chuck Heath teaches third grade at the above-mentioned school. Lord knows what she means by "best schoolteacher in the year," but it hardly matters. By the time she finishes leading herself down the garden path that is this whole paragraph, she has completely lost the thread of whatever it was she was trying to say (something about how teachers used to need more money, wasn't it?).

Education in American has been in some senses some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards.

She limps gamely back into the fray in the next paragraph, but crashes and burns again without even leaving the tarmac. It's so outrageously stupid that it's almost clever; she seems to hint at a little apathy in American education without getting into potentially offensive specifics. Really, though, that's just one possible interpretation of a quasi-sentence-like mass that might keep a crack team of linguists and literary theorists occupied for years under different circumstances (i.e. if someone of importance who spoke with an ounce of credibility and intelligence had said it).

We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching.

After briefly navigating the treacherous, policy-filled waters of No Child Left Behind (and neglecting to mention the Bush/McCain backing of the program), Sarah "Captain Obvious" Palin sails the good ship "You Betcha" back into the more familiar territory of the blindingly self-evident. The success of this voyage emboldens her, and she decides it is safe to bring it on home.

We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line.

Whoops. Watch out for that grammatical sandbar. You might want to think about plugging that leak with a verb, or at least a complete thought.

My kids as public school participants right now, it's near and dear to my heart.

Sentence fragment ahoy! It's okay, dear. We know what you meant. Nevermind the dock, let's just get this sucker to the beach.

I'm very, very concerned about where we're goin' in education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

A last, helpful swell from the direction of innocuous (but meaningless) statements that everyone can agree with brings the governor blessedly ashore and the lifeg- err, moderater hops to her aid with a quick joke. And you thought the guys on Wall Street were the only ones getting a bail-out . . .

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate my complete bafflement that anyone can listen to Palin "talk" for two minutes and not have immediate doubts about her qualifications as a mayor or governor, let alone a possible vice-president. She has charisma, certainly, but it's like a black hole behind her eyes that consumes all doubt and derision, leaving nothing but brash, unfounded confidence in its place.

I think the commentators and pundits who were waiting for her to burn out spectacularly during the debate were morons (despite her desperate flopping in the Couric interview). They are the ones who set the stage for her ghastly nonperformance to exceed expectations. Note to everyone: Just because the candidate does not suffer a nuclear meltdown in mid-sentence does not mean she performed well, or even adequately. You've got one month to realize that she needs to be sent packing. Now, go do the right thing.

As of now, I still have not been able to discern what ratio of Palin's rhetoric is sincere blue-collar arrogance (more on that in a moment) and how much of it is naked, cynical pandering, but I'm certain that all of it is some combination of the two. I simply do not understand the appeal to any voter of someone who refers to herself in every other sentence as "average," "middle-class," "Joe Six-pack," etc.

Why would I vote for someone who self-identifies with the typical knuckle-dragging xenophobe who spends his leisure time chugging beer on the couch? This goes back to something I've had cause to complain of before: growing American pride in the "redneck" label and all of the moronic bigotry that that label implies. When did it become uncool to be well-educated, well-spoken, and well-bred?

As to specific complaints about Palin in the debate, her statements throughout the evening only reinforced her status as a mindless McCain mouthpiece, a clueless, bumbling tool of a dying campaign. I very much doubt she could have shoe-horned in one more use of the word "maverick" if she were getting royalty payments for it. It seemed to magically morph into every part of speech at some point during her remarks: "The maverickish maverick mavericked maverickally."

With respect to the economy, she stated that the best barometer of how the economy is doing is to attend a kid's soccer game. When asked who was at fault for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, her response began, "You're darn right it was the predator lenders." I don't in any way want to downplay the complicity of pure capitalistic greed. However, starting off on that tack is offensive on two levels: On the one hand, it ignores the personal responsibility of the people who took on more debt than they could physically afford, and on the other hand it demeans their intelligence, painting them as hapless rubes who were suckered by the Wall Street snake-oil salesmen.

Throughout the debate, Palin's dialogue was littered with button-cute, country-fried buzzspeak and strangely devoid of meaningful content. So much so, in fact, that it leaves me with very little to talk about beyond a general distaste for her values, her style, and the lack of activity taking place between her ears.

In the words of a pre-debate commentator: "People making the mistake of trying to understand her unparseable constructions suffer greatly. Only by matching her smile and blank cheerfulness can one withstand the sucking black hole of unreason that is Palin attempting to communicate with words."

Quite.

I despise her and her entire regular-American approach to politics with a flaming passion. It has been a blight on the nation since the days of Andrew Jackson. I'm still with Jon Stewart. I want my president to be an elitist. You don't know anything about leading the nation because you're just like the rest of us? Well, screw you. Get out of the race.

Details here.

I certainly don't need to recap the time that has passed. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of my readers remember them as well as I do. They've been very good years, on the whole. In any case, the use of phrases like "the far side" is a historiographical fallacy which implies that I have reached the end of something, when I'm really just pausing to make a mark *somewhere* on an unfinished timeline on which I am walking backward.

I'm still as addicted as ever to this nebulous, unquantifiable "thing" that blogging is, and I would like to think that I'm better at it now (whatever that means) than I was when I began. More relevant, perhaps, would be a consideration of what sort of effect, if any, the process has had on me. In a very general way, I believe that blogging has improved various qualities of my writing. Perhaps in other ways the nature of the form itself has reinforced or resulted in bad writing habits . . . but I don't think so. In fact, I believe the very nature of the beast has steered me in a generally positive direction.

In one respect, blogging has probably been a negative force; that is, as a creative drain. Blogging is a tempting distraction from other writing endeavors. Every minute spent crafting a line of ruminations about my blogging experience (and surely blogging about blogging is one of the ultimates in self-indulgent hipster navel-gazing) is a minute not spent on more serious fiction or non-fiction projects. That, of course, is part of the appeal, but it can hardly be called beneficial. How many volumes of unpublishable, self-absorbed dreck have I penned and posted in five years?

However, in my attempt at a moment of unpretentious honesty, I have probably overstated the case. Let's talk about the positives for a moment. Several things spring immediately to mind. For instance, to turn that last observation on its head, blogging has shown me that I can, indeed, write book-length quantities of material. Laying considerations of quality aside for a moment, discovering the ability to fill that kind of space is a daunting obstacle to have overcome, particularly for someone as lazy and often unmotivated as myself.

Furthermore, blogging often fosters creativity in that it allows me the opportunity for virtually-infinite experimentation with what works and what doesn't. What sounds good? What do I take the most pride in, looking back, and what was forgotten almost immediately? Where did the latter go wrong, and the former go right? Revision, where necessary, is simple, and input and feedback are easy to come by.

Chief among the benefits, though, is that blogging has given me a definite audience, in some form. Writing for an audience, even an incorporeal one populated in part by various aspects of myself, necessitates certain things: intentionality, a pressing desire to inform and/or entertain, and an effort at quality of composition (stylistically, grammatically, etc.). Above all, one is forced to attempt to express oneself as clearly as possible, or not at all.

The lessons I learned here, I have taken and applied with confidence in virtually every area of my life, be it academic or otherwise, with excellent results. This is perhaps most notable (at least I hope it will prove so) in the launching of my second, more topical, and (dare I say) commercially-minded blogging venture a year and a half ago. Moviegoings continues to grow in readership and exposure, provide me with both a motivation to expand my knowledge and expertise in the subject and an outlet for my interest in it, and open up thrilling new opportunities that I'm excited about pursuing.

Here's to five more years . . .

I would say that McCain fought dirty last night, and I'm not referring to how hard he worked to reinforce the "inexperienced" label Obama has. Although, to rabbit trail into that for just a moment, I think McCain is making a mistake in his approach to that issue. Laying aside the situation with his own running mate in this campaign (which didn't come up), McCain came off looking and sounding incredibly snotty at several points last night: "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't know the difference between a strategy and a tactic." *patronizing fake smile*

In any case, what I mean when when I talk about fighting dirty is that McCain is, either cynically or sincerely, engaging primarily in rhetoric that I would not be surprised to hear coming out of the mouth of, say, a Fox News commentator. He is (sometimes very, very subtly) playing to the nationalistic emotions of the public, flexing his own patriotic chops while attempting to make his opponent look decidedly unpatriotic. In doing so, he avoids having to honestly address the real issues, and, in fact, makes that sort of discourse impossible. I think that, more than anything that was explicitly named last night, puts him in the same boat with the current administration. And that's not a boat I've wanted to be sailing in for quite some time.

I think the debate's worst moment last night came during the bracelet exchange. McCain, in a naked play to emotion that could not have been more irrelevant to the topic at hand, said that he had a bracelet given to him by the mother of a deceased soldier. He went on to say that she had asked for his promise that her son would not die in vain, and used that to springboard into a slam on Obama for wanting to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." Obama's response began, "Well, I have a bracelet, too . . ."

At that point, I just had to laugh at McCain, but I was also somewhat saddened. I doubt the families of the men who used to own those bracelets feel used, but they have been used. Shame on McCain for bringing that up and lowering the level of political discourse so shamelessly. Incidentally, the mother who gave Obama the bracelet asked that he make sure no other mother had to go through what she has. Obama went on to say that no soldier dies in vain because all of them are carrying out the orders of their superiors for the good of the mission. There's certainly some wiggle room for argument on that point (particularly for someone like who has seen how meaningless war can be), but it was an excellent response to McCain's characteristic jibe.

In the end, I honestly think both candidates showed that they could be president, at least with respect to the debate topics last night. Overall, I was more impressed by Obama's responses on economic questions than McCain's. I also thought Obama came off better (barely) on the topic of Iraq, though both of them made excellent points and I would have liked to see the nuances of the discussion teased out a bit more.

Both men spent a little too much time talking about how wrong the other one had been with respect to the war at various times, and not enough time talking about where it should go. When they did address that topic, however, I think Obama demonstrated a pretty clear direction, while McCain remained bogged down in the rhetoric of withdrawal as defeat. If he becomes president, regardless of whatever good he may do, I think he will keep us in Iraq until hell freezes over, no matter what turn the situation takes.

For the record, both candidates had excellent responses on the issue of torture. I applaud them, and they made me feel that they were both trustworthy in their stance on the issue (whether they actually are is another question, I suppose).

I could go on, but if I did, I'd go on for a long time, and I'd rather not right now. I'd be more than happy to discuss it further in the comments, if anyone has anything to say. This is as good a time as any to drop a YouTube clip. I've had a lot of videos up about Palin lately because, let's face it, that's all anyone seemed to care about for awhile . . . but this one isn't (well, she's in it a bit, come to think of it, but anyway). It's kind of bizarre, but it fits right in with the general Obamamania, and I was amused. Oh, and if the title of this post seemed cryptic, I was referring to this. I spent more of the post on the debate than I had originally intended.

I have to say, first and foremost this is a hilarious, spot-on dig at the unbearable committee-written crap that Disney churns out for families these days. I'm pretty sure I've seen movies just like this a few times . . . The Pacifier, for instance. "From the producers of The Mighty Ducks and Syriana." Lol.

Emmy Red Carpet Guy: The McCain campaign...I guess they thought it sexist? They responded...kind of the whole thing was...

TINA FEY: I saw one lady trying to form a thought that it was sexist on the news, but she didn't really get it together. Probably because she was a lady and she was dumb. ... Wait. Is that sexist?

Nailed it.

"I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy."

--Frank Zappa

"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."

--Ecclesiastes Chapter 12, verse 12

"The multitude of books is making us ignorant."

--Voltaire

"The number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes."

--Denis Diderot

I've never heard of Denis Diderot, but he was a prophet. You have no idea. Seriously, you don't.

Don't be a big chicken. Sit still for the whole thing (rocking with laughter is permitted). The dance solo that starts at around 1:50 is totally worth it. Apparently the source of this is a non-trinitarian cult called The Way International. There's another video of there's up on YouTube called "Our Promised Seed" but I can't get it to play for some reason. Probably just as well. It couldn't possibly live up to my expectations.