Thursday, September 04, 2008

live blogging Palin at the RNC

**NB: this is belated because Brent's laptop is not on internet, had to retype it all on my desktop this morning.

Giuliani: "how dare they ask if she will have enough time with her children--they would never ask this of a man"--fair point--but unfortunate cut to Cindy McCain holding Palin baby...irony? of course not.

cancellation of the intro video? whaaaa? no maudlin scenes of childhood and gummy music? what on earth for? what's in there? who wants to bet some unscrupulous person gets hold of it and makes a big splash?

No introduction...Giuliani barely mentions her before going back to McCain and then bam! There she is on stage.

how many shots of Bristol Palin can we get? should I be keeping a tally? let's start here at 1.

BP2

BP3

Brent notes catcalls in audience.

she hasn't started speaking yet...still saying "thank you."

hey, good lookin' man she caught there.

"I will be honored to accept your nomination"...you fool. I wouldn't touch it with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole.

BP 4

BP 5

other kid 1

BP 6

baby 4

She does speak well. She's got some edge.

BP 5

getting the slogans in: country first.

wow, MUST she emphasize the word MAN so strongly? "he's a MAN." is this some subliminal message like, "don't worry folks, you're not really voting for a woman"?

fist mom ref: "as a mother of one of those troops"...oldest son Trask gets his first shot.

...extended mom riff...

introduces her whole family: girls stand up to beauty queen wave at cam, boys stay seated. all part of the RNC daughter pawn strategy?

emphasis on "perfectly beautiful" baby boy Trig a little heavyhanded IMO. I don't disagree; I don't think Down's is a reason to abort, esp. considering how many false positives those diagnostic tests get. Just don't like the way the RNC trend of showcasing one's offspring as evidence of one's superior virtue is continuing with Palin.

BP 6

baby

short resume of hubby: something about snow racing? who cares, let's just get him on camera, the hottie. met in high school, "still my guy." Yeesh.

"every woman can walk through every door of opportunity"? really? just not get paid as well, but we better not whine about it? (and what about that teen mom halfway house whose budget you slashed--they don't have a door to walk through because now they don't have a house.)

hmmm..shot of boy not in uniform. other son? [no--turns out to be BP's fiance]

small town, working class, I'm one of you, so is John McCain...

here it is! "average hockey mom" followed by PTA ref in one breath!

it gets better! a hockey mom joke! "what's the diff btw a hockey mom and a pitbull? lipstick!" great! here's another: what's the diff btw a hockey mom and a VP? credentials?

Okay, NOW we're finally getting to making a case for mayoral experience as exec experience, and cred for VP. AFTER spending how much quality time on SP as MOM? what's more important, that she's a mom or used to be a mayor and is now a governor? is there a reason we lead with the MOM bit and not the professional cred? (Oh believe me, I think there is.)

crowd chanting "Sarah." Is Palin too hard to say? Or do we insist on being on a first name basis with ALL our women politicians? ah well. it's not like their last names are really their own anyway, right? so the presumptive first name basis really doesn't show a condescending familiarity in place of respect, after all, right?

who is that? protester led out by security?

Obama slam. I'm one of you, McCain is one of you, the other guy sucks because he said a mean thing about you in CA (guns and religion line, very unfortunate. I guess an NRA member has special contempt for someone who would think clinging to guns is a bad thing).

MAN, again. "he's the same MAN..." this is so not an accident. very clever. disturbing.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment though some in the media take this as lack of experience"--crowd boos that naughty liberal lefty media for far too long. she's just standing at the podium while the crowd boos. cut it off, SP! you don't want to stand there the sole object on stage with a bunch of booing. uncomfortable.

what is this weird accent? Alaskan? it's got this down-homey twang that should be Southern but isn't. (reminds me of that article on Texas accents I read a few years back that noted a study that length of residence in TX had nothing to do with strength of TX accent; loyalty to identity as Texan did, and cited GW as case in point.)

camera catches woman in audience mouthing to neighbor: "I love her."

Why is Mount Rushmore in background while she refers to fighting the "good ol' boys?" I'm sure it's an accident but that is just hilarious!

ah, the luxury jet. you know, if I were in the position of having to divest myself of such an inconvenient object, I would certainly choose the people's way: eBay. so much better than that classist method of parking your unwanted junk in your front yard and haggling...

other proof that she's no elitist: drives herself to work, fired the gubernatorial personal chef. kids regretted that. good line: mentions fam again and also implies that she continues to cook family dinner after all the governing nonsense is done for the day.

uses the above as smooth transition into her record on budget; defends her use of veto power to control "wasteful spending" (like that Covenant House for teen moms thing, I suppose.)

now energy independence: the natural gas pipeline as first step to independence from foreign sources of oil. energy is cast as a SECURITY issue, not environmental one--an American issue, not a global one. Oh, and the tragedy of Gulf Coast hurricanes is that they make us more dependent on foreign oil. (how about, um, deaths and devestation and homelessness?)

"they keep telling us drilling won't solve all our problems, as if we didn't know that"--well we know drilling won't solve all our problems, but there's not reason not to do it in the meantime? what? was that supposed to be a logical argument?

Obama as Moses slam. dudes (and dudette), I would stay away from painting your opponent as divinely inspired and powerful. but that's just me. maybe it really does incite some kind of self-righteous rage against supposed Democat idolatrousness. I mean, after all, we all know we're supposed to be worshiping the FLAG, not some guy.

"Our opponent" is against producing more energy???

Victory in Iraq is within sight???

Obama wants to raise taxes? Why not just out with it and call him a liar?

Boo! Hiss! crowd says, whatever you do, don't take MY $$. bottom line voters.

MAN alert: "chosen the right MAN."

"the American Presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery"--she got applause for this line--WTF does that even refer to? Obama as hero of Bildungsroman?

"only one MAN has fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat mean death." oh, is this a criterion for Presidency? have the rules changed, the loser gets shot or something?

MAN. MAN. fellow.

God.

Evil.

Ah, POW story.

[pause to note my gratitude that shots of family, even BP, seem to have ceased. Thanks be to God.]

MAN.

Thank you and God bless America. Just once, I would love to see a politician break out of that xenophobic prayer formula and ask that God bless the whole damn world. Or all people. Or all creation. Or something, but all of that something and not just our petty little piece of it.

Why is she still all alone up there? She looks abandoned.

finally here comes the fam...now she's holding baby. I wish I felt like that were a triumphant thing, but I just feel like it diminishes her and every other woman to "mom AND."

BP holding hands with boy. Boy chewing gum.

Finally, here's McCain. Hug. Of course, you can't shake hands with a woman. Seemed awkward though.

Catcalls.

last line of night, John McCain: "and what a beautiful family." why? because that's the most important thing about her.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You crack me up! Our commentary through the night was very similar. Although I did really get worked up about the slandering of community organizers (among other things). Travis sent me a similar link, it's hilarious! http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2008&base_name=shorter_sarah_palin_speech

Anonymous said...

1) What channel were you watching?
2) I think her emphasis on "man," along with the ridicule of community organizing, was more about questioning Obama's masculinity (by contrast) than about assuaging voters of their skepticism of women having actual power. That's not to say that rhetoric can't do double duty, but gaying up Democrats is on p.1 of the GOP playbook written by Karl Rove, and her speech didn't stray far from it.

Casey. said...

Your retelling is much like my thought process when I was watching last night....except for the part where Sarah Palin made me cry with her dismissals of poverty. I was very excited to see the momentary glimpse of the rogue protester.

jch said...

Who is Palin?

Justin Burton said...

I liveblogged in my head as I watched and, like other posters, was right with you on several things.

Giuliani: "how dare they ask if she will have enough time with her children--they would never ask this of a man" Problems with this:

1. Giuliani is a champion of women?

2. Who is 'they?' The RNC is very good at finding the things leftist bloggers say and pretending without explicitly saying so that Obama and his campaign said it. When, in reality, Obama and his campaign aren't saying anything at all about Palin's family. (Hannity did a similar thing the other day, managing a full hour of complaining about 'their' unfair treatment of Bristol without ever saying who 'they' are).

3. This would have a lot more teeth if the McCain campaign's entire presentation of Palin weren't centered around her motherhood.

Um, everyone saw Piper fixing Trig's hair, right? That was the coolest part of the night, easily.

As for the video introduction, I don't think it was an accident. I bet it was never really made. I think it's in the GOP's best interest to go with the gradual reveal on Palin to keep everyone's curiosity piqued.

I'm very excited for Biden-Palin.

-----

Just for the record, Giuliani managed to ridicule community organizers and tear down all but the smallest distinction between Islam and terrorism, all in a single speech. Well done, Governor Slimeball!

Lauren said...

This post made me so happy. And it made me laugh, which I really needed, since I was so angry last night that it took me several chapters of Harry Potter to calm down enough to go to sleep. Very little said about issues (aside from drilling), although I guess it is hard to expect people to vote for your ticket if you admit that your plan is to cut taxes for corporations and rich people and hope (or pretend) that eventually, some day, the market will cause those cuts to bring improvements to the rest of our lives. So she resorted to belittling and ridiculing Barack Obama, which I found unseemly and immature.

And when are the Republicans going to stop trotting out this tired old myth about the unholy union of the media, the Washington elite, and the cosmopolitan liberals who are out to destroy all that is good and decent?

But I think what bothered me the most was the out and out lies. I've heard neutral, third-party analyses of both candidates tax plans, and Barack Obama's plan really does include lowering taxes for most of us, while McCain's only provides tax relief for the wealthy. So how does she get to stand there and say that Obama will raise everyone's taxes? Is that not slander? Wouldn't it be nice if politicians just stood by their policies and told the truth and Americans were actually given the opportunity to vote for the person who is going to do the things they want done, rather than the person who tricks and manipulates them the best?

JTB said...

I was watching MSNBC, I think.

I suppose when your model of masculinity is Rambo, Obama does come off pretty gay. (totally a plus in my book, of course.)

They. We all know who They are. They are Not Us. They are so damn useful!

Palin is totally putting motherhood front and center in the worst way. That's the next blog post, been writing it in my head for days.

I also felt like a lot of the Obama attacks were pretty much out and out lies--which makes me ponder the role of epistemic humility and trust in public discourse. It seems to me like Obama is much more willing to take McCain campaign claims at face value, assume they are sincere, and explain why they're wrong. I.e., "I don't think it's that McCain doesn't care. I think it's just that he doesn't get it." That's harsh, but it doesn't question McCain's integrity or call him a liar. That's different from the sort of crap Palin was slinging at Obama last night.

kel said...

what's really sad here is that tina fey is no longer with snl. she could totally do an awesome palin. she could totally do the accent (which is all joan cusack, btw).

kel said...

also, my thought when she made the hockey mom joke was, "do they know that pit bulls are being outlawed all over the u.s.?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breed-specific_legislation