Posts by Jolisa
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Whatever Palin's credentials she isn't that stupid (really) and she can talk.
If stringing together random snippets of English counts as talking. I mean, really, you've seen the Couric interviews? (And the SNL take on them, which uses verbatim quotes).
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Wow, check out McCain's animus against Obama in this exchange of letters from 2006.
(Link via a comment in the BAGnotes thread Bob mentioned above).
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Oh, certainly. But I didn't say exclusively folksy/churchy language. Just a smattering of it. The way that, if you're constructing a quilt out of a handful of related colours, you add in a dash of a contrasting colour to make it all the more beautiful.
I was just hoping for more of the Obama we saw in his 2004 debut at the Democratic convention, y'know? That section about the bottom-line similarities between the red states/blue states had people on their feet. I like that stuff and think he could do with a bit more of it. I know he's keeping his powder dry, but it's not a sin to be quotable.
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Thanks for all the compliments on the delicious children. It is amazing what you can do with photoshop and/or a soapy flannel.
Bob, on the other hand, is unretouchable. I can testify that he is spectacularly gorgeous (if something of a wimp).
Emma, my boys are jealous - your guy has a room of his OWN??
Oh, and Danielle, check it out:
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My only criticism was that, on occasion, [Obama] complicated matters unnecessarily - the issues are complex, but in that format, simplicity is essential
I couldn't agree more. He doesn't have to abandon his professorial mien altogether, but it would be nice to have a little variety in tone, slightly more folksy/churchy language, and some more punchy phrasing.
Like, the second time he rattled off his laundry list of alternative energy sources, instead of the same blah blah blah, I'd have loved to hear him say something like "We're going to solve this with good old American know-how. We have the best universities in the world, the smartest and most dedicated factory floor workforce, some of the cleverest designers and technicians, and a population that sees no limit to what can be achieved..."
It doesn't have to be 100% true, it just has to sound true and inviting, "hey yeah" rather than "will this be on the test, sir?" And a bit more "you and I" and "we" would be nice; verbal gestures that include the audience. I do respect his Cool Hand Luke (almost Vulcan) persona, but a dollop of warmth and humanity and personal connection would be decisively to his advantage.
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drop your tv viewing to only what's absolutely necessary.
It's astonishing to me how going without TV re-regulates your brain, and also astonishing how long it takes and how quickly it can be undone again.
We've been cold turkey on broadcast TV for a couple of years now (for various reasons -- cost of cable access, children who can operate a remote, my need to get some work done, and for some reason our TV set doesn't get free-to-air channels). We make do with DVDs of things we actually want to watch. Quite a lot of DVDs, and YouTube for news and classics. But no commercial TV.
After watching the Presidential Debate at a friend's place the other night, the TV stayed on through the post-debate news broadcasts. I was stunned. The TV news looked like Kabuki to me. Not just the heavy make-up and the weird costumes and sets, but the stylized gestures, the elaborate turns of phrase, the heightened artificiality of the whole thing. Opaque, and utterly foreign. I almost felt like I needed subtitles to make sense of what was being performed, because it clearly wasn't regular speech, and was communicating to the audience at some whole other level.
Alas, the effect wore off after half an hour and the things on the screen began to seem normal again.
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Stunning story, Emma, and well told, with the inanimate-object-o-nyms adding a welcome touch of surrealism :-)
Since we're dancing like Tze Ming is watching, can I bring the feminism, a little bit? I'm trying to imagine the scenario with the genders reversed, and I just can't. Your story reminds me of another one that did not turn out so well, and I still recall the mother of the dead girl asking, in an anguished, but rhetorical sort of way, How is it that a young man comes to think he owns a young woman, that he would rather kill her than think of anyone else touching her?
And while I can think of tons of reasons you never told anyone -- the brain is not a rational organ when it is threatened, and peer groups so often trump personal welfare in those teen years, and denial is not just a river in Egypt but sometimes a potent survival strategy -- I also can't help wondering whether hindsight had given you any more insight into why you did not tell? Who or what was more worthy of protection at the time than your own good self, and perhaps the next girl he wanted but did not get?
Sorry, not meaning to second-guess you and how you understand your ghastly experience, just wondering if there is more that can be said and understood here on the subject of young men, young women, and casual threats (and irreversible acts) of violence.
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There's a fascinating (alarming) quiz at Salon: Palin or Bush?. And a related article.
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She wasn't terrible, she was quite good for her target audience but that's a preppy-wannabee mob; the kind who want to hang in the rougher parts of town but only with a relocated Molly Ringwald-type
Yeah, their squareness and whiteness never more evident than in the final boogie-down after the speech. Republicans dancing: not pretty.
And I was going to say, hands off Molly! Just because she played the rich princess that one time in the Breakfast Club? But her latest project turns out to be spookily relevant.
We need a new thread, eh? But in the meantime: the speech didn't strike me as wooden so much as hand-on-hips arch and mannered, in the style of a shallow but crowd-pleasing high school debater. And (after racking my brains for a non-sexist adjective) bratty, also in the manner of a high school debater. Lots of barbs and ad hominem attacks and insinuations, but very very short on actual argument.
And secondly: I really want to see that list of library books she wanted banned. Somebody find the librarian!
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Tell you what: as sheer cultural spectacle, it's hard to beat the novelty of a woman with babe in arms delivering a speech like that on a stage like that. Wild.
The content of the speech, though - meh. I'll wait for the fact-checkers to comb through it. Here is a start.
And was it just me, or was there a weird subtext to those musical choices at the end: We're All Raising McCain [but who's raising Trig?] and, dear oh dear, If the House is a-Rocking, Don't Bother Knocking?! [your daughter might be in here]. Still, it got the delegates up and boogying. Which was a spectacle of its own...