s skippy the bush kangaroo: so ironically self-referencial that any deconstruction in this headline would lead to a logically internal breakdown of ...uh, where were we?

skippy the bush kangaroo



Tuesday, July 24, 2007

so ironically self-referencial that any deconstruction in this headline would lead to a logically internal breakdown of ...uh, where were we?

the screeching head media slash inside the beltway pundits slash politicos are scrambling to stay relevant in the wake of last night's populist youtube debate.

first of all this morning cnn had a segment on the important fact that, while youtube may have made debates relevant, it was television that invented presidential debates. they included a brief history of televised presidential debates.

wow. stop the presses.

"sure, the automobile can get you anywhere real fast, but remember it was the village smithy who first stood beneath chestnut tree..."

but even more irrelevant is the supposed "controversy" between hillary "it takes a spillage" clinton and barack "to the future" obama over this seemingly innocuous exchange:

a moment from last night’s debate has burst into a full-blown dispute today between senator hillary clinton and senator barack obama, the two leading democratic presidential candidates. it is their first public wrangling.

senator obama said in the debate that he would meet with the leaders of rogue nations; senator clinton said she would first make sure that such meetings were not intended as propaganda.

pundits generally saw hers as the better answer, underscoring her experience on the world stage and at the same time casting senator obama as inexperienced.

today, senator clinton drove home the point by directly criticizing senator obama’s statement.

“i thought that was irresponsible and frankly naïve,” mrs. clinton told the quad-city times in iowa.
and, as we all know, as goes the quad-city times, so goes america.

seriously, tho, it seems like a pretty small molehill to be breaking out the mountain-climbing gear for. tho we ourselves are no fans of obama, one would assume that (a) obama would probably put context into any future considerations of meetings with any nation, and (b) clinton's latching onto this as a major concern is itself propaganda.

and further, it seems to us that clinton's qualifying and parsing of words about the subject of meeting with heads of state from rogue nations, whatever the hell that means, only shows again how sen. clinton refuses to actually take a stand and commit. how about a yes or no, sen. clinton? instead of a waffly "i'd have to make sure it wasn't a bad thing first." like, duh!

we agree w/steven d over at booman, who found sen. clinton's answer to another youtube also lacking in substance:

which is why we had this exchange last night, perhaps the most significant question that was asked and answered all evening. here's the question:

question: …as the mother of an american soldier deploying to iraq for a second time, i would like to know if the perception is true that the democrats are putting politics before conscience.
how many more soldiers must die while these political games continue in our government? …
and here's how various candidates answered this very serious question from a soldier's mother:

senator clinton went first:

clinton: well, i want to thank her and her son for their service and their sacrifice. when we send a soldier or marine to combat in iraq, we really are sending a family...

i happen to agree that there is no military solution, and the iraqis refuse to pursue the political solutions. in fact, i asked the pentagon a simple question: have you prepared for withdrawing our troops? in response, i got a letter accusing me of being unpatriotic; that i shouldn't be asking questions.

well, one of the problems is that there are a lot of questions that we're asking but we're not getting answers from the bush administration.
senator clinton gave a classic non-answer. first, she thanks the mother and her son for their service. let me be the first to say that i've had it with politicians uttering these self-serving statements of praise for our troops' sacrifices. nothing could be more meaningless than to praise someone for risking their lives for a lie while you, a powerful senator, with the ability to take the lead on getting those troops home, does nothing of substance to achieve that goal.

then clinton turns the question on its head, making it all about her. "look what i've done," she says, i asked a question of the defense department and they were mean to me!" frankly, i don't care that she was attacked by some neoconservative second banana with an office at the pentagon. was she wrongly attacked? sure. was it politically motivated? no doubt. but it had no bearing on what this mother wanted to know.

it was simply shameless self-promotion by senator clinton to respond in this fashion. she turned a mother's honest request for an explanation as to why nothing has been accomplished by a democratic congress to end the war since january, into a blatant attempt to garner sympathy, while also portraying herself as someone working hard to end the war, when nothing could be further from the truth. being attacked by the bush administration is not evidence of anything clinton has done. its simply standard operating procedure by the republicans. a day doesn't go by when one of them is attacking senator clinton or her husband for one thing or another. to imply, as clinton did, that such attacks establish her anti-war bona fides is beyond ludicrous, and actually more than a little bit insulting to our collective intelligence.
but we digress, which is what we do here. back on point, it seems to us that to make this tempest the big attraction in last night's teapot is to denigrate the major step that was taken with the youtube debates.

and that step is: eliminate the middle man. who needs pundits to interpret what candidates say and what people are thinking? let the actual people talk to the actual candidates their own damn selves.

sorry, nedra. your services are no longer required.

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posted by skippy at 5:03 PM |

4 Comments:

That picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam did nothing to slow the drumbeat of war...

How does one find out if the meeting is only for propaganda purposes without talking to them first? Ask Bobo or Pumpkinhead?
commented by Blogger George, 7:36 PM PDT  
I'm not a fan of Yes or No answers. Nothing is that simple but I do want actual answers.

That CNN touts television and its byproduct of televised presidential debates is no great creation. True, no presidential candidate can be elected without them today IMO, but have we really had a single great president emerge from a debate?
commented by Anonymous sean on li, 10:10 PM PDT  
...television invented the debates...? I thought I remembered something somewhere about the Lincoln/Douglas debates...of course, I am somewhat senile...
commented by Blogger moderate, 4:00 AM PDT  
The Lincoln/Douglas debates weren't actually for the presidency but for the Illinois senate seat available. Because the debates focused on the hotbed issue of slavery and their views so polar to one another, the debates were reprinted in papers throughout the nation.

There were some radio debates prior to 1960 but those were for presidential primary candidates ... kinda like those being done currently.
commented by Anonymous sean on li, 2:00 PM PDT  

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