Everybody's quoting Andrew Sullivan on this, because he nailed it:
It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism - in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy.
What he didn't do was give an airy, abstract, dreamy confection of rhetoric. The McCain campaign set Obama up as a celebrity airhead, a Paris Hilton of wealth and elitism. And he let them portray him that way, and let them over-reach, and let them punch him again and again ... and then he turned around and destroyed them. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check.
But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.
From Tuesday's Wonkette, In response to CNN's Leslie Sanchez's moronic comment "Is it the dress or what's in it? Michelle Obama covered the key milestones but the image of her in a cocktail dress left us wondering":
Watching Michelle Obama’s speech last night, you might have been struck by how deeply shameful it is that such an obviously smart and decent person must repeatedly assure the public of her patriotism so that a nation of suspicious and resentful idiots don’t think she’s planning to bomb their local scrapbooking club with a Socialist Black Muslim Virus. Or you might have looked at her dress and thought, well, whatever the f**k Leslie Sanchez was thinking.
God save us from the trivial and shallow pontifications of TV news commentators who look for news where there's none and never mention the news that is actually there. What qualifies these pathetic swindlers for their jobs?
UPDATE: If you were watching the networks, you probably had to listen to pompous pundits and missed the great populist speech of Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. Go Big Sky Country! My dad was from Butte.
SECOND UPDATE (Okay, I know I'm getting out of control and I promise to go back to work after this): You know when you see an ad for a book or a movie that you know is terrible and that you know that nobody liked it, yet still the ad puts out highly truncated quotes from the critics? Like "...fantastic... a great movie..." I always suspect that the original quote must be something like "It was a fantastic waste of time. I was expecting a great movie, but it was crap."
Well, that's what McCain is doing in his new ad (this is via TPM).
The ad's narrator says: "Obama says Iran is a 'tiny' country. 'Doesn't pose a serious threat.' Terrorism? Destroying Israel? Those aren't serious threats?"
Here is the full May 18th Obama quote, as supplied by the McCain press release itself:
"Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet."
This is not just twisting Obama's words. It is altering the context so dramatically that it utterly changes the meaning. In other words, it is a lie. Can people be so naive to fall for this? Can they?
One thing I wonder -- how can someone be so lazy that they never do research on what a candidate actually says or does, but they still have the energy to go to the poll to vote?
It is a measure of the Orwellian state of the US media and politics that he should have to bother. I mean, the place is a burned out hulk where hundreds die every month in political violence, where armed militias are ubiquitous, where nearly 5 million people remain displaced from their homes, where you have unemployment rates of 50% in some major cities, and where pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists face off against Sunni Arab nationalists and Salafis and Kurdish separatists. If this is a success, I'd hate to see a failure."
ANYONE WHO MAINTAINS THAT OFFSHORE DRILLING WILL HAVE ANY EFFECT ON CURRENT GAS PRICES IS LYING OR MISINFORMED. That's all, thank you. Now I have to get back to work.
