9:02 PM–Bob Schieffer looks great in HD.
9:04 PM–You are right, McCain. Americans ARE angry. Angry that they can’t see Bob Schieffer when you talk.
9:07 PM–I want to rescue Bob Schieffer like Obama wants to rescue the economy. I want to pick him up in a helicopter in a jungle under heavy enemy fire.
9:09 PM–This debate should just be a three-way discussion between three identical Bob Schieffer clones.
9:14 PM–I will gladly pay Bob Schieffer taxes.
9:17 PM–Bob Schieffer is getting feisty. I like it.
9:20 PM–Bob Schieffer can balance the budget.
9:25 PM–You know what’s erratic? My heartbeat when I see Bob Schieffer.
9:27 PM–I would never repudiate Bob Schieffer.
9:28 PM–Bob Schieffer is running a positive campaign…for my heart.
9:31 PM–You know who loves Joe the Plumber? Bob Schieffer.
9:33 PM–Bob Schieffer is my health care plan.
9:37 PM–Mr. Ayers could never bomb Bob Schieffer from my heart.
9:40 PM–Bob Schieffer made Joe Biden cry.
9:42 PM–Bob Schieffer is MY Vice President.
9:45 PM–Bob Schieffer is not cockamamie.
9:52 PM–Drill, Bob Schieffer, drill!
9:54 PM–Bob Schieffer went to Colombia and fought the narcotraficos and won.
9:55 PM–I want to get hammered with the auto workers. And Bob Schieffer.
9:56 PM–I will gladly sit down without preconditions with Bob Schieffer.
9:59 PM–Joe the Plumber is back! Also: Bob Schieffer.
10:00 PM–Bob Schieffer won’t pay no fines.
10:04 PM–Bob Schieffer is big government at its best.
10:07 PM–My litmus test for anything? Bob Schieffer.
10:11 PM–Bob Schieffer is pro-whatever-he-damn-well-pleases.
10:14 PM–Bob Schieffer.
10:18 PM–I was schooled by Bob Schieffer at an early age.
10:21 PM–Bob Schieffer left no child behind.
10:24 PM–Bob Schieffer is probably tired of this debate. I know I am.
10:28 PM–I want to kiss Bob Schieffer on the mouth.
10:30 PM–Bob Schieffer wishes that this debate had been like Double Dare, with slime and Marc Summers.
This is just about the creepiest thing I’ve read re: the Palin-Biden debate:
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
Little starbursts? And unicorns and fairies and puffy little clouds, too? Do I need to remind Rich Lowry that people on the TV aren’t talking directly at him? Does he understand how television works?
This is actual commentary from a bastion of conservative thinking, National Review, albeit their online blog, The Corner. I’m no conservative, but to see this sort of shameful writing for a formerly erudite publication is embarrassing. He’s basically saying that she gives him a boner, right? Is the McCain camp gonna call sexism on this one?
I say this because I’ve seen some commentators (and most of the loonies at NRO’s The Corner) suggest that Gov. Palin actually won the thing. Sure, she didn’t fall completely on her backside, but, Dear God, by any measure of debating she was awful. Imagine if you were in a high school (high school!) debate class and you told the moderator that you weren’t going to answer the question in the way that they wanted, that you were just going to talk about something else. You’d be pilloried for it! You’d definitely lose the debate! Your teachers would be embarrassed. I was embarrassed just sitting there watching it. Because Gwen Ifill failed to ask pointed followups like Couric and Gibson did (”Care to respond?” is not a pointed follow-up), Palin just read PR garbage off her cue cards. Like a high-school debater. That’s not substance; it’s called being a parrot. Pathetic.
Fred Kaplan gets it at least: stringing together coherent sentences is not a qualification. We have set the bar that low.
I urge everyone out there, even you Kazan-haters, to go to your nearest video store or reconfigure that Netflix queue and pick up A Face In The Crowd, a terse, creepy movie about a folksy politician, (*cough* Palin *cough* Bush *cough*) played convincingly by Andy Griffith, whose appealing banality eventually gives way to evil. Very prescient stuff, and not to make a Nazi comparison here, but it’s like Hannah Arendt all over again.
