Posts Tagged Under ‘Barack Obama’

More From Slate: Political Ringtones

I’ll tout another piece of the site on which I recently worked, the new political ringtones we launched this week. We don’t yet have Verizon support–annoying for me since I have Verizon service–but anyone else can download these and annoy your friends with the Hillary laugh:

It’s 3 a.m. What’s Your Ringtone?

Hillary, Penguins, Romantic Comedies, Fruit, Moving

It’s been a while since something substantive. So here you go:

• Hillary’s defeat in Indiana and North Carolina is, as previously mentioned, a Pyrrhic victory for the Obama camp. I can’t predict if she’ll quit early–I personally think she won’t, and will ride it out to the convention’s bitter end–but it almost doesn’t matter. Things that happen early in the campaign are dug up and kept around until the end–anyone remember “I voted for it before I voted against it?”–and Hillary has beaten up enough on Obama already that there’s little left unsaid. I do think McCain’s proxies will bring back the secret-Muslim thing because it’ll play a lot better with Republicans in the sticks than it has so far with Democrats. Despite Hillary’s “He’s not a Muslim, as far as I know,” statement, the Indonesian childhood and Kenya photo really haven’t been hammered too much. The funny thing about that will be that Obama’s taken so much flack for being too close to a Christian pastor, and now he’s about to be hit for not even being Christian. The fun of election season!
• I think Hillary’s surprise effect on Obama was that he came into the race expecting the negative stuff to come out only in the general-election phase, and that he could actually use the negativity against the Republicans. (”Same old G.O.P. character-assassination shit while they let the country die,” etc. etc.) But then when Hillary started throwing kitchen sinks, he couldn’t very well take the line that, “This party is no good for you; look how negative they are.”
• For people who liked my Crosby piece, or people who didn’t, here’s what I think about the series:
  1. I like the offense’s chances against Biron. Biron has faced significantly more shots–an average of 32.91 shots per game in the playoffs, vs. Fleury’s 28.44 average–but he hasn’t played against a team with as much line depth as the Pens. Washington and Montreal both have great players, but not as much consistency across multiple lines. Eventually a goalie is going to get weary of being sprayed with pucks, and after two rounds that might be now.
  2. Kris Letang, Georges Laraque and Brooks Orpik are going to be the big factor in beating up (perhaps literally) Derian Hatcher and protecting Crosby and Malkin. I think the Flyers might have things in toughness, though definitely not in talent. (Though I would take Briere on Pittsburgh anyday.) Big Georges (that’s singular), you are the man, but please tell your web guy that your site needs an update reflecting the six years since the 2001-02 season.
  3. I thought about buying tickets to a game in Philly, being that it’s so close, but then I do value my life. Seriously, Philadelphians: I have never not picked up an incredibly angry vibe while traveling through your town. You don’t have to be stuck on how you became a has-been town once the 1770s ended. People call Pittsburgh a has-been town all the time, but you don’t see us throwing batteries and snowballs. (Except at Dave Parker.) For real: it’s time to find a new, friendlier identity.
• Today the Mrs. went to see Made of Honor, starring Lucius Vorenus and Dr. Octagon of “Grey’s Anatomy”. Fortunately I had to work, so I was spared the trip. I was later informed that the movie was a great example of what I hate most about romantic comedies: the innocent victim.

  The innocent victim is exactly what he (usually a he) sounds like: somebody who does absolutely nothing wrong, but gets dumped (often at the altar!) simply because he’s not the star. Lucius Vorenus’ character was apparently smart, handsome, successful, athletic and considerate, yet he still got dumped right in the middle of his vows so some reluctant lurker could come along and steal the show. Then the movie ends, and we’re supposed to be happy that some homewrecker ran roughshod over the type of dependable dude who keeps this great nation running. (This MSNBC article does a good job of illustrating this.) “But he just wasn’t right for her,” the ladies are saying. So? How do you know he realized that? Even Patrick Dempsey himself played this role, in Sweet Home Alabama (ugh). Other famous examples are Bill Paxton in Sleepless in Seattle and that other “Grey’s Anatomy” dude playing a weird Italian guy in The Wedding Planner (a really, really, really awful movie). Life is unfair, but these movies want us to cheer when this is demonstrated to us yet again. F that.

  And to any dudes who won’t accompany the ladies to these movies because it’s “gay”: have fun dying alone.

• Fruits, in descending order of great-tastingness:
  1. Watermelon
  2. Cherry
  3. Blueberry
  4. Grape
  5. Apple
  6. Pear
  7. Orange
• Finally, I’ve buried the lede here, but we’re moving to Chicago in two weeks. I’ll be there this summer before Michigan, then plan to find a job there again in 2010 after graduation. I forgot to inform the readership that I will once again be based in the land of Vienna Beef and US Cellular Field. Word to Sean Connery in The Untouchables.

And For More Pyrrhic Victory Analysis

There’s this from The Root:

The Democratic Party’s Nightmare

A Winner Is Clinton

Whiskey-drinking beat gutterball-bowling today in my home state’s leisure-activity primary, proving that the Canadian distilled-spirits industry packs an electoral punch that can’t be beat.

I’m pretty surprised by the results in this Pennsylvania primary-results graphic from NYTimes.com, in that I figured Hillary would probably win, but not by this much. She crushed Obama in all the whitey parts of central PA that will vote Republican anyway, but she also won Allegheny County. (Pitt students: as a large body of the young people who are supposed to be all “Obama is my life,” where were you on that one? Did everybody skip the primary today to drink 40s at the O?) Admittedly Allegheny was closer than the boonie counties, but then a 10% margin of victory (55-45) is pretty significant.

Six quick summations to end:

1. I’m not at all surprised by Hillary’s win;
2. I am surprised by her margin of victory;
3. Throwing the kitchen sink at your opponent works a lot better than political optimists would like to admit;
4. Hillary can kiss the black and youth vote goodbye if she wins the nomination;
5. Barack is just going to be a “meh” candidate for the huge working-class Democratic segment if he wins;
6. Winning the Democratic nomination is becoming more of a Pyrrhic victory each day.

Obama and PA

Friend of the site Steve B., whose New York Islanders failed to make the playoffs and thus are not up three games to none like my Pittsburgh Penguins, writes:

what do you make of this Obama/Pennsylvania thing?

Well, Steve: in short, it was mad dumb and probably will get its damage on.

This is usually what happens when you play too hard to your audience, and playing to the audience is particularly frought with difficulty when your audience is a political group like San Francisco liberals that’s defined very specifically on a national level. Americans aren’t into the whole condescending thing, and thus will vote for someone who fronts like a regular guy even as he keeps them down over somebody who might genuinely care about average people but can’t hide a sense of hoity-toitiness well-enough. Obama already has problems with so many of his supporters being hip, urban types — the type of people who are resented by rural PA dudes. William Kristol really went off the deep end trying to say that this makes Obama into some closet Marxist, but this was still tone-deaf politically. So there’s that aspect of it that will hurt him with all the Pennsylvanians who like guns and religion, I think moreso than Jeremiah Wright — at least it was Wright saying that stuff, not Obama.

Plus, it doesn’t even make sense to say that people pursue cultural activities like hunting or religion because of their economic situation. Lots of people back home go hunting and go to church, and I can’t remember ever hearing someone walk out of Mass to shout, “Woo! Take that, all you outsourcing CEOs! Where’s your Chinese manufacturing now!?”

On a related note, liberal fans of cute furry things shouldn’t look down their noses at hunting. With all the deer in Pennsylvania that would otherwise end up starved to death or exploded by a tractor trailer, hunters are a vital population check, plus they tend to be very pro-environment. So there’s that.

Quick Hits

• Barack Obama’s speech today was a good one, but I don’t quite know why it’s being presented as a game-changer. He had some really intelligent things to say, but he said them over half an hour. Now he’s dependent on a soundbite media to convey that message to voters who won’t otherwise seek him out, those being the ones he’s trying to win over in PA and in the general election. Rev. Wright, meanwhile, offers plenty of soundbites.

But maybe I’m still wrong and voters this election cycle want broader information from their candidates. This dude’s grasp of things is certainly encouraging. (The best part is how the interviewer gets completely owned after expecting some sort of dumb-ass answer.)

• On that note, why does the man-on-the-street interviewer in that clip come at his subjects with such a chip on his shoulder? I always followed the “catch more flies with honey” principle when doing man-on-the-streets. Considering you’re going up to a complete stranger and asking them to give you honest opinions, that seems like the only way to do it.

• There are some things that Rev. Wright says amidst the vitriol that make sense and are legitimate criticisms. Certainly the United States has serious issues with how it’s treated its minorities. But how much positive change are you really going to affect by turning all of your listeners off of the very system that needs to be fixed? This is my problem with many leftists: conservatives jump in and take control of societal institutions, but so often liberals prefer to sit on the sidelines and wait for some perfectly fair system to magically evolve — while they leave control of that system to the aforementioned conservatives, mind you. I’m a liberal and I’m heading off to get my MBA in part because I believe you can only change things by engaging them. And yes, I know that the media exists to spotlight things for scrutiny, but it’s a powerful societal institution that can’t be ignored.

Criticism is always more fun, but so often ineffective.

P.S. - did you know Wright was in the USMC?

• Should the U.S. boycott the Olympics this summer because of China’s brutaltreatment of Tibet? I really don’t know. I do know that it would be the greatest thing in years to see the entire U.S. Olympic contingent walk in to the stadium in “FREE TIBET” T shirts.