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October 9, 2004

I Read It On One Of The Internets

When in doubt, raise your voice!

Despite the negative poll results and the general feeling amongst
the punditocracy, I didn't think that the first debate went
exceptionally poorly for President Bush. It didn't go well, but it
also didn't go as badly as it could have, given that (and I have to
say that I love this description, courtesy of an unnamed but very
astute journalist friend of mine) "the factual environment is very
anti-Bush." (Factual environment! Phenomenal!) The second
debate? This one I will unabashedly say went HORRIFICALLY for
President Bush.

Bear with me a moment as I drop some extensive sports
metaphors/ cliches: Bush came out really tight and forced a few
balls on his first series. Threw pick that got returned for a
touchdown. Then he fumbled the subsequent kickoff and Kerry
scored three plays later. Suddenly he's down 14-0. And he has to
start throwing. Only it isn't his day. Another pick. Kerry could
just sit back and let him self-destruct -- protect the ball, control
the clock, and let Bush beat himself. Kerry wins 24-3.

(Sorry about that. Couldn't be helped. It's football time of year!)

Now I think that they negotiated the colors of the ties
beforehand: again, blue was red and red was blue last night!
This sparked enthusiastic debate at the town hall meeting where I
was watching the debate, even leading some to speculate that
the respective tie colors had been negotiated as part of the overall
debate rules. Not out of the question. Though it's worth noting
that the Veep candidates both wore red ties on Tuesday. Read
into that as you will.

Shame, shame, shame on me: my high school debate coach
(and one of the smartest people I have ever met), Bro. Rene
Sterner, FSC, gets interviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer about
the first debate and I missed it! FOR SHAME! Though I wouldn't
say that I was terribly shocked by his comments, it was good to
see him coming down hard on the President. Although he didn't
go so far as to label President Bush "intellectually lazy," he did note
that "Bush... he looked like he was annoyed, like there was a fly
buzzing around the room and he wanted to swat it and couldn't."
(NB: He thought Kerry won.)

Not as bad as when Daddy didn't know about bar code
scanners, but still not all that sweet: while in general I think
it's a little petty to give the President grief for occasionally
mispronouncing hard words (is it polite to make fun of people with
speech impediments? No.), his use of "Internets" in last night's
debate was pretty hilarious. As in, "I hear there's rumors on the
Internets that we're going to have a draft." That is, the plural
form of Internet. First I worried that this was a clever ploy to
connect with voters on the IM-less side of the digital divide. Then
I thought that maybe there is more than one Internet and I'm the
one who's the idiot. Then I just started to get angry that he was
being so derisive about the Internet. Say what you will about The
Times and the liberal media, but I will respectfully request that you
leave my good friend the Internet out of it.

Note -- figures not drawn to scale: when queried on his
environmental record, President Bush indicated that he had a plan
to "increase the wetlands by three million." Ummm, three million
what? Wets? Lands? Internets?

Beware poisonous drugs from the third world!: the
President's explanation of why he won't allow cheap prescription
drugs to enter the US market from Canada? "When a drug comes
in from Canada I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill
you. And that's why the F.D.A. and that's why the surgeon
general are looking very carefully to make sure it can be done in a
safe way. I've got an obligation to make sure our government
does everything we can to protect you. And my worry is, is that,
you know, it looks like it's from Canada and it might be from a
Third World." A couple things here, and I won't even discuss the
duplicitous parts (that is, acting like the "drugs from Canada" are
anything except the exact same drugs sold in the US and are
brewed in some hut in sub-Saharan Africa). First, I think there's
pretty good reason to worry about, AHEM, drugs from AMERICA
being dangerous, what with antidepressants being linked to teen
suicide as well as Merck pulling Vioxx off the shelves because an
internal clinical trial revealed it could cause strokes and/ or heart
attacks. Second, the preferred nomenclature is "developing
world," not "Third World[s]," though his use of the plural is again
troubling. Maybe he knows something about drugs from another
planet? Not out of the question.

Also, there was a lot of shouting. Not so impressive. Let's just
hope that people from other countries didn't see it. Then they'll
really be scared of us.

Posted by thatkid at October 9, 2004 2:11 PM under The Papers

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