The Lysergic Acid Diethylamidiotic Joe Biden & Sarah Palin VP Presidential Debate thread in the 2 zero zero 8 (2008 party over oops)

how and when did you first become aware that Biden was "transparently rigging" his response, and what made you so sure he was doing so?

it didn't feel right when it happened. yes, it was effective and emotional, but also out of left field. reading the transcript clarified the impression. and I can't be "sure" he was doing so, but this wasn't some free-wheeling coffee klatch, it was an extremely experienced + gifted politician debating during a high-stakes campaign for the second highest office in the land.

or what caek said

it didn't feel right when it happened. yes, it was effective and emotional, but also out of left field. reading the transcript clarified the impression. and I can't be "sure" he was doing so, but this wasn't some free-wheeling coffee klatch, it was an extremely experienced + gifted politician debating during a high-stakes campaign for the second highest office in the land.

If yr line had any merit, Biden would already be president.

t cause palin says "I'm a mom" that doesn't mean biden has to automatically say "I've been a mom too! a tragic tragic mom! *SNIFF*"

Sure it does.

well that's where we disagree. I agree I'm an asshole, though.

look, I can't stand sarah palin, but if you really think it's less manipulative to bring up your major life tragedy during a VP debate (masterfully or no) than to talk about being a hockey mom.... uh I dunno what to say here

although that's what it was in response to, i don't think that's the right comparison - it's biden using his circumstance versus palin mentioning her special needs kid, "diverse family", at every opportunity through the five weeks, to cloying effect. i thought biden could have gone further at some point to debunk the mainline to americanism that small-town families have monopolised.

score:

Emotion = 10
Restraint = 2

Sure it does. "I'm a mom" is supposed to be some sort of magic superpower that puts a tiny Sarah Palin inside the heart of every voting American who uses coupons or something. Biden's single-parenthood deflates that completely. And you're an asshole.

― rogermexico., Friday, October 3, 2008 12:17 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

meanwhile Rich Lowry's in love:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

PEW PEW PEW

"little starbursts"

hahahaha

Peggy Noonan is zapped by little starbursts of joy:

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We've got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.

It's so sweet that Rich calls ejaculate little starbursts.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1185304443/bctid1832907349

The best part about Biden choking up was that it made Palin completely lose her footing. I think her handlers probably had her expecting Biden to come at her guns blazing. Instead he barely acknowledged her and quite obviously threw her completely off with this. As mentioned upthread, her response made it sound like she was reading off the contents of a tag cloud rather than saying anything coherent:

DEMOCRATS REPUBLICANS AMERICANS ROMNEY LIEBERMAN SANTA BUSH MCCAIN ALASKA WARS ECONOMY WALL STREET NOT GOT TO ALLOW PARTISANSHIP REPUBLICANS DEMOCRATS OTHER

― stet, Thursday, October 2, 2008 10:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

When Palin said "special needs" I got a bingo! So basically that means she'll always have a place in my heart.

My friend was really upset because she needed "Pakistan" for a bingo, and then Gwen Ifill asked Palin a question specifically about Pakistan, and somehow Palin didn't say "Pakistan" even once. I mean, that's pretty impressive. The woman is pretty talented when it comes to speaking entirely in generalities. (Although she did say Ahmadinejad about five million times, and also "The Castro Brothers," one of my favorite arcade games.)

this is what was going on inside biden's head during the whole debate

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

Great, just what we need. Our first bimbo VP. Winking?! Who falls for this? Emotionally deprived people who got dropped on their head a lot as kids?

I thought she was really cute throughout the debate, but I'm not in the habit of voting with my dick.

A new meme is born. All welcome the starburst meme.

sarah palin, appealing to the lizard brain of undecided voters

maybe they can arrange a second debate where biden can rend his clothes and palin can have a wardrobe malfunction

Ed stealin my jokes

for those unlucky enough to not have watched the debate on cc this highlight reel has the awesome undecided voters tracker at the bottom there which is awesome

"on cnn"

Who will clean up the living rooms of America? Dripping with ricochet starbusts?

I thought she was really cute throughout the debate, but I'm not in the habit of voting with my dick.

good, cause those new touchscreens are hard to clean

i figured when she said "o'biden" it was an attempt to bring back the 1850s

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/alien/shanty.jpg

her usual YA WANT SOME JUICE HON delivery

oh my lols

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/3/84824/0108/623/618748

interesting fact-checking article:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/fact-check/

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/starburstin.gif

lol oh boy

I love Joe, but when he goes "I'm ready, you're ready, Barack Obama is ready" I really want him to go

http://www.bonesaw.org/history/bonesaw.jpg

BOONNE SAW IS READ-EE!!!

Great, just what we need. Our first bimbo VP. Winking?! Who falls for this? Emotionally deprived people who got dropped on their head a lot as kids?

― Michael White, Friday, October 3, 2008 4:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the first time she winked the other two people in the room were in conversation and missed it and I thought what she'd done was so tawdry and inappropriate to the situation that I... I thought I'd winked and the pressure on my eye had distorted my vision. then she did it again. and again, until the surrealism faded and it just became a cheap joke

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20081003/capt.a9a835d7222843cda7329d263a718f02.vice_presidential_debate_mots151.jpg

I ... I think she just winked at me! *starburst*

You didn't ask me about the debate, but...
By
Roger Ebert
on October 3, 2008 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

I have some observations about what we observed Thursday night. They are not political. They involve such matters as body language, facial expression and vocal tone. These are legitimate subjects for a film critic. As Patrick Goldstein wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times: "In some ways film critics are probably better equipped to assess the political theater of today's presidential campaigns, since our campaigns are -- as has surely been obvious for some time -- far more about theater and image creation than politics." I would like to discuss the vice presidential debate as theater.

I sensed that Sarah Palin was nervous. Well, she had every right to be, and as I thought about the debate during the day on Thursday, I felt some empathy for her: In university terms, she was being asked to defend her doctoral thesis without having written it. If that had been me facing Joe Biden with the same preparation, I don't know if I could even have walked onto the stage.

So she was understandably nervous, and you could tell that by her rapid speech, faster than what we've heard before from her. Listening to her voice, you could also sense when she felt she'd survived the deep waters of improvisation and was climbing onto the shore of talking points. When she was on familiar ground, she perked up, winked at the audience two of three times, and settled with relief into the folksiness that reminds me strangely of the characters in "Fargo."

Palin is best in that persona. You want to smile with her and wink back. But who did she resemble more? Marge Gunderson, whose peppy pleasantries masked a remorseless policewoman's logic? Or Jerry Lundegaard, who knew he didn't have the car on his lot, but smiled when he said, "M'am, I been cooperatin' with ya here." Palin was persuasive. But I felt a brightness that was not always convincing.

Yes, she wins high marks for emerging from the debate still standing and still smiling. Polls show that she performed better than a great majority of viewers thought she would. My concern here is not with the substance of which either candidate said; that would be political. My concern is with the performances. Watching the debate, I was reminded of a famous observation by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century English critic, who went to witness with his own eyes a woman giving a sermon in a church. This was unheard of in his day. "A woman's preaching," he told his friend James Boswell, "is like a dog's standing on its hind legs. It is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all."

One thing a critic of a live performance is sensitive to is any unanticipated moment. There was a famous moment at the National Theater in London when an actor pulled out an automatic pencil to make some notes. It contained no lead. He should have pretended it did. Instead, he said, "There is no lead in my pencil." Then, fatally, he paused to listen to what he had said, and the audience roared with laughter when they were certainly not intended to.

A very different sort of unanticipated moment took place during the debate. Biden said, "I know what it's like to be a single parent raising two children." He did not know if his sons would survive the auto accident that took his wife and daughter. For a moment, he lost his composure. Looking at the moment again here >http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/02/biden-gets-choked-up-talk_n_131449.html<; I believe, as I did at the time, that it was genuine emotion, and not stagecraft.

It could not have been anticipated by Palin. The next camera angle was above and behind her. She paused. The silence seemed to anticipate words of sympathy and identification from her. But Biden had ended in a sentence using the word "change," and her response, reflecting no emotion at all, cued off that word and became a talking point about McCain. This felt to me, at worst, insensitive and callous. At best, that she had not fully heard Biden. In either event, her response troubled me. If a man had responded in that way to such a statement from a women, he would be called a heartless brute.

Sometimes during a live performance you can hear an actor "going up." That's actor-speak for forgetting the lines. Laurence Olivier went up on an Oscarcast, after he was awarded an honorary Oscar. Whatever he said (the transcript shows it made no sense), the speech made an enormous impression. In an audience reaction shot, you could lip-read Jon Voight: "Wow." The next morning I went to interview Michael Caine. "Larry called me last night," he said. "He asked what I thought of his speech. I said it was wonderful, but I didn't have the slightest idea what he had said. He said I was exactly right: 'It's like during Shakespeare, when you go up and start blathering about being off to Salisbury on the morn.'"

I sensed that happening during Palin's response to the question about same-sex marriage and civil contracts. She was clear that she opposed same-sex marriage. So was Biden. I have no idea what she said about civil contracts. Neither did Gwen Ifil, apparently, because she concluded that Biden and Palin were in agreement. I knew what McCain (and supposedly Palin) really thought about the subject. I sensed that Palin had gone off to Salisbury.

These are some of my observations during the performance. What about Biden? I felt he basically jiust stood there and said what he thought, weaving in some talking points, of course. He seemed to want to come across as level, convinced, confident, and he did. To recycle a figure of speech, it was not a surprise to find him standing on his hind legs.

we did shots on "redistribution of wealth," "government is not the solution it's the problem" and "white flag of surrender" inside of like 20 minutes and decided we better not play that game anymore

Where's that dude with the thread that can animate .gifs real fast?!

http://www.sweetstall.com/acatalog/Starburst.jpg

for those unlucky enough to not have watched the debate on cc this highlight reel has the awesome undecided voters tracker at the bottom there which is awesome

this was amazing

The same-sex marriage thing pissed me off somewhat. I feel that O/B are going backwards in their rhetoric on that one.

Really? I thought that was pretty consistent w/ Obama's position of separating the religious implications of marriage from the civil definition.

edward and person who made that bizarre comparing mccain's pow-pimping to biden's comments last night,

this is what i look like reading your posts:
http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/tunnelofhorror.gif

please stop talking.

thanking u,
the schef

not this again

x-post

The substance is the same but the rhetoric is regressive, I think. I also agree with separating religious marriage from the civil rights associated with it but at the same time I don't think "marriage" should be a magical term reserved only for the religious.

I'm going to start busting ass if I hear more gay talk.

lolz

maybe i'm an idiot but what does the tracker at the bottom of the cnn screen indicate w/r/t the undecideds? i don't know if having the sound on matters, i can't turn on the sound right now.

define "busting ass." is "busting ass" in the Constitution? What would the framers say?

the schef looks like a baby