The Phony Campaign

2008-07-13 Update

In a stunning development, John McCain has taken the lead in the only poll that matters:

Query StringHit CountChange Since
2008-07-06
"John McCain" phony712,000+36,000
"Barack Obama" phony658,000-94,000
"Bob Barr" phony11,200-800

So what's driving this phony hit parade?

  • Diana Rigg turns—aieeee!—70 this month. She weighs in on our election:
    She is a big Barack Obama fan and thinks John McCain is too old for the job. 'I know I should be saying the opposite because I'm the same age as him, but I do think his age will make a difference. At 70, you aren't as physically robust as you were. I don't think your mental capacities are as good as they were. The President should be a younger man with older advisers.'
    It's somehow reassuring that aging British actors can sound just as cluelessly superficial as young American actors.

    <voice imitation="dr_zoidberg">So this showed up in our Googling, why?</voice> Because:

    People still send her Avengers photos to sign, but she refuses. 'I feel such a phony. That is not me. That is another person.'
    Even if he's lost Dame Diana's vote, maybe McCain still has a shot at Emma Peel's. Because that's another person, see?

  • Morton Kondrake is the latest person to question Obama's credibility. He hits many of the usual targets: flag pin, check; Reverend Wright, check; faith-based initiatives, check; FISA, check; public campaign funding, check; NAFTA, check; Iraq withdrawal schedule, check. With respect to the latter, More-tiny-toons-on-TV concludes:
    It would convince me that he was a daring man of character if he went to Iraq, saw Gen. David Petraeus and the situation on the ground and came back saying: “This war was wrong at the start, but now we have to win it — and we can win it, politically and militarily. We will withdraw — but only under conditions of success.”

    Such a statement would finally show that he can buck the dominant attitude of the Democratic Party. If he added that he was wrong to oppose Bush’s 2007 troop surge, so much the better.

    Pending such an unlikely event, the question is open: Is this guy the real deal, or an eloquent phony? A flip-flopper, a cynic, just an ordinary pol with a gift of the gab — or a genuine center-liberal capable of tacking while steering a determined course?

    There’s time to find out before November, but the media have to help with intense, ongoing scrutiny and lots of tough questions.

    Talking about "unlikely events"…

  • The New York Times wanders out to Oregon to discover that Obama Supporters on the Far Left Cry Foul.
    “I’m disgusted with him,” said Ms. Shade, an artist. “I can’t even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this ‘audacity of hope’ stuff, it’s blah, blah, blah. For all the independents he’s going to gain, he’s going to lose a lot of progressives.”
    I suspect the Obama campaign has made that calculation and said "Hmm… no problem there!"

    But congrats to the Times for discovering the "far left"; usually they reserve that term for photo captions, describing someone or something on the edge of the picture.

  • A Mr. Joe Mingin of Glassboro, New Jersey, explains why he's not bothered by Barack Obama's 180 on accepting public financing of his campaign:
    Last fall, Republican John McCain's foundering presidential campaign was broke. To continue on in the primaries, he obtained $4 million in bank loans by promising to use public financing as collateral if necessary. He opted out of public financing, and its limitations, after winning the South Carolina primary improved his cash flow.

    Now, the same people who looked the other way at McCain's flip-flop are shocked -- shocked! -- because Democratic candidate Barack Obama won't accept the same public financing McCain refused. This is just another phony election campaign issue in a long line of them. It won't be the last one.

    Joe's argument seems to be that if McCain does vaguely-related thing X, it justifies an Obama flipflop on Y. Parodizing Joe: this is just another transparently lame argument justifying Barackrobatics in a long line of them. And it won't be the last one.

  • We continue our quixotic effort to promote "Barackrobatics" as the trendy and hip way to refer to the gyrations of BHO's campaign in drastically moderating positions while insisting that that the positions haven't shifted at all. Our word, however, is still being drubbed in Google Hits by "Obamafuscation", 911 to 4.


Last Modified 2014-12-01 10:54 AM EDT

Experimental Results

2008-07-13

This week's test of the Sunday Basic Cable Movie Actor Theory:

  • 4:00AM on AMC: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Clint Eastwood)
  • 8:00AM on AMC: A Fistful of Dollars (Clint Eastwood)
  • 12:00PM on A&E: Lean on Me (Morgan Freeman)
  • 5:00PM on AMC: Million Dollar Baby (Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood)
  • 5:30PM on TNT: Deep Impact (Morgan Freeman)
  • 8:00PM on AMC: Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood)
  • 11:00PM on TNT: Deep Impact (Morgan Freeman)

I think that Morgan Freeman fella might have a new movie coming out sometime soon. So I've heard.

And so the theory stands unrefuted for the past 21 weeks.


Last Modified 2008-07-13 1:18 PM EDT