I would like to know this, this morning :
How many people actually watched John McCain’s speech last night?
I didn’t. As soon as the NFL football game on NBC was over and Brian Williams’ misshapen head popped into view, I changed the channel to ESPN to catch the second half of a fairly decent college football game. I had no desire to watch John McCain reading from a teleprompter, much less for the instant analysis from the talking heads which followed. I commend BooMan for his due diligence, but I had no desire for, and little interest in, whatever McCain might say. So who here had the television turned to Johnny Mac, and who did not? Fess up.
Couldn’t do it. Flipped on the TV to see what was happening at the convention and was greeted with the Republican “tribute” to the events of 9-11. I personally know too many people who actually did lose someone in those attacks, unlike most of the people in that hall last night. After spewing all over the TV, I decided that I had better things to do with my time than watch anything being presented by Republican scum.
Back in 1980 my punk band briefly considered changing our name to Spew.
I tried to and managed to get about half way through before the dullness of it overwhelmed.
It was seriously possibly the worst acceptance speech I have ever seen in my life. I’ve watched all of the others through to their conclusion but this one I simply couldn’t.
He deserves to sink in the polls after that. Even Toobin called it “the worst since Carter in 1980.”
I watched an hour of it, then noticed brain cells oozing out of my ears. For self preservation I had to turn it off.
The lead in video was the worst militaristic propaganda I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever.
The only good thing was to see that an Iraq Veteran Against the War member and two Code Pink women were able to get in and make a short stand of it. McCain looked like he wanted to beat them senseless with his bum leg.
The Gaffe of the Night
Watch It
John Bush?
All in all, I “watched” about half of it (I flipped back and forth between other shows for a while). It was so terrible, boring, uninspiring, badly delivered…I felt like I had won the lottery when 10 p.m. rolled around and I could switch to the Daily Show.
And seriously, why was he STILL blathering on at 10 p.m. Central time?
No TV, no temptation. 🙂 And my best computer (the one with speakers, etc.) is belly up.
I did go over to a friend’s house to watch Obama’s speech. That was impressive. We weren’t hugging and crying, but felt satisfied that he covered most of what needed to be said and that he said it well. (I would have liked a reference to the Constitution and restoration of LAW.)
He also writes his own speeches, so we’re much more likely to get his own thoughts.
McCain? Why listen to him drone from a teleprompter’s copy of a speech written by committee? The most original thing he did or said lately was a disaster (picking Palin because his little soldier saluted), so I’m sure that his minders have him on a tight leash (no ad libs, no reporters, no interviews, no questions).
BTW, the corporate media sells our eyeballs to the advertisers, and are perhaps not going to give prime attention and free coverage to somebody who drives viewers away.
I give you a 4 for reminding us that Obama USED to include the restoration of constitutional rights to his rhetoric, and that it’s been off the table due to pregnancies and gas prices, I suppose.
We need the reminder. What’s our agenda as progressives? (Please add to this list, and it’s not in any order . . .)
my Tv is unplugged. But this from The Guardian, UK
is an indication that some who are bankrupt of ideas resort to theft:
This from a man who has been in Washington for the past 26 years. Obama-Biden should have fun at his expense.
The Real McCain – Meet the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War
They Guardian, like most news organizations, forgot to mention “Afganistan.”
I tried but fell asleep
I fell asleep before it began. And what’s so bad is that my “I don’t want to talk about politics” brother called to see if we were watching the speech–and he was laughing hysterically.
And I still went back to sleep.
From what I read, I didn’t miss much, except the wonderful, outstanding and fearless Code Pink. (I’ve had the good fortune to talk to Code Pink members. Among many other things, you’d be surprised at the people who tip them off to get into hearings and such.)
I watched it, if you define watching as having the teevee on while someone was showing me pictures of green jello molds…
The protestors near the beginning were the highlight. It was really hard to pay attention to what McSame was saying, and it didn’t make much sense, as he’s switched from “I’m the guy with experience” to “I’m the change guy, look at my bright shiny veepee pick”
I even think he folks in the audience were falling asleep.
what is with that lime green background?
I thought Republicans were supposed to be good at the stagecraft. It was obvious what was happening, they didn’t calculate that when they projected a giant image behind him for the hall to see, only the tiny portion on the bottom of the screen would show up on TV. The blue was the sky with the giant flag behind him, I have no idea what the rest of the big screen showed when it was green behind him.
Maybe it was a glitch in the pictures they were supposed to be projecting?
The moved his podium out into the audience so the side shots would make it look like he was in a sea of supporters. That massed up the camera angles of the screen behind him
I think the green was the grass in front of the mansion they kept showing. What the heck was that all about and why would they project that behind him when they’re trying to prove he’s just one of us?
heh, it’s even better than that. The idiots were projecting an image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA instead of Walter Reed Medical Center.
That is amazing.
yes, read that somewhere and thought it was a joke. don’t they have a graphics budget? totally bizarre. time to compare no-drama-Obama campaign with totally -clueless -graphics McBush campaign – or maybe it’s part of not having discovered the intertubes. the look of dialup in 1992. the historic MIT coffee cam.
I sort of watched it with the sound off and tried to imagine what he was saying. Mostly I was transfixed by Cindy McCain who seems to think she’s a character on Sex and the City…..
I don’t think I can repeat what I had to say about her “look” last night….luckily, I had to go see someone in the hospital and missed her speechifying.
I did not. I wasn’t interested in what he had to say.
I made it for ten minutes before I ran screaming from the room.
slipped my mind b/c was busy in the office playing spider solitaire; after exhausting hate fest of wed night i forgot there was one more night on the schedule. running against congress and washington? they really are insane (or afflicted with multiple personality disorder).
My friends, I endured the entire ordeal, beaten with a wet noodle of a speech. And when I had the chance to escape, I would not leave my wife alone to face the ghost in front of the green monster. Only when the ministers of propoganda came on afterwords did I break.
I hope you were rewarded for your bravery.
I didn’t watch it. The rest of the house wouldn’t allow it. Did he say anything NEW?
Didn’t watch it at all. Old age, stomach problems and all that. Did see some McCain ads on TV. Blames Obama for the lack of a balanced budget! Says Obama will raise taxes. The audacity of the right never fails to leave me muttering to myself.
Not me.
I peeked in quickly the night Palin gave her speech. It was like looking at a coven of over-the-hill vampires. With one moderately fresh newbie brought in to spice up the lame proceedings a little.
Nasty.
Why watch?
Of course…I didn’t spend much time watching the Dem thing either. I mean…just because people like Nancy Pelosi are just this side of being over the hill in the vampire sweepstakes doesn’t make them much more palatable. Not to me it doesn’t. And there was no mystery going on. Obama won, Biden’s his VP and the Clinton camp was going to at the very least mouth the correct platitudes.
Again…why watch?
For the outdated, mediocre music?
Please.
I probably won’t even watch the electoral returns.
Whoever wins, wins. Depending on who that is, I will either go on about my accustomed business or prepare to leave the country as soon as possible.
Simple, eh?
Saves a lot of time and energy, too.
I mean…can watching this process influence it in some way?
No. Of course not.
Go do something useful.
Like cleaning out your toilet.
It’s useful, and toilets smells better than conventions, too.
Actually watch Carville!!!???
Please.
I have actually been able to feel the blood being sucked out of my neck and straight into the TV tube when I have made that mistake in the past.
Wake the fuck up.
Wake the fuck up.
You don’t want to be the victim of vampires?
Stay out of their neighborhoods.
Later…
AG
See?
Best summary of the speech I’ve seen yet.
I didn’t.
In fact, I fell asleep uncharacteristically early. I don’t know why. It was like a soporific cloud had descended on the country or something.
It’s been so long since someone used that word on a blog. Anywhere, really.
I think I just came.
Speech was in progress when I turned it on. Immediately noticed two things:
Then, I heard the crowd chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”
Okay, I know this script too well. Turned it off.
Sidenote: When did the nationalistic chant of “USA!” get started? My sense is that it was the result of Cold War sentiment, especially after the Vietnam was ended, and usually expressed during Olympic games. Prior to that period, I have a sense that Americans in general were mostly self-confident with their identity, and didn’t need to chant LOUDLY to help feel better about their country.
According to Wikipedia, it began at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid.
Never thought to look up that info. My hunch was pretty close–I would have guessed it started with the 1980 Olympic hockey game against the Russians.
It did surprise me that someone thought to include this past week’s chants in the Wikipedia entry
Well, I decided that was a bit incomplete, so I edited the page to say (and added links):
(I thought it was useful for the historical record to include that factual and contextual last sentence.)
Man, I didn’t know how often it was chanted until I started to check speeches. Every speech I checked had the chant. Did every speech include it? I dunno…I stopped looking because I simply got tired of the quest.
I wonder if the Alaskan Independence Party chants U-S-A! during their convention speeches.
I missed most of it since I was trying to get into the overcrowded Obama HQ opening here. I caught the last 20 minutes, and thought without Palin, he was dead in the water. He still comes across as dead in the water. He’s perhaps the least inspiring speaker I’ve ever heard.
No, I didn’t watch.
I’m so busy working to pay two mortgages (until the former house sells) that I don’t bother to waste time on the TV anymore.
And on writing that, a puzzle is solved. I’ve been wondering why my blood pressure has been going down over the past couple of months, to the point where I might not need the meds anymore. I think the TV is no longer raising my BP.
See, working two jobs solved your health care problems–another terrific benefit of our economy!
It’s scary how easily I just spit out a thoroughly plausible wingnut talking point to justify the BS we’ve been going through. Geeze…
I confess I watched it to the end thinking how controlled and regimented the Republican delegates were; kind of like the people at Nazi rallies in Germany during the 1930’s. This group-think process reminds me of people gathered at a hanging or a pogrom of some sort. Absolutely terrifying because it is so mindless and so easily directed at some innocent third party. It was like observing hatred in motion. Scary, indeed.
I watched the entire thing because regardless of the outcome of this election, McCain’s actions directly affect me as one of his supposed constituents. It was horribly delivered and horribly written. He will get a bounce, though, because he wasn’t giving a speech to us (though the yapping heads considered it a display of maverickism), with all the buzzwords in there, it was clear to me that he was speaking to the crazy wing of the GOP. “culture of life” “judges shouldn’t legislate from the bench” “government should stand with you, not against you” “insert other bumper sticker idiocy from the right here”
And I’m sorry, but the levels of militarism infused with U.S. culture scares the shit out of me. It’s a bi-partisan thing.
I don’t have that much masochism.
I watched in the middle of the night repeats in the hopes that it would bore me to death (which it did) and put me to sleep. Unfortunately the part time insomniac in me kept me awake through the entirety of it.
After watching some of the previous speeches and their constant barrage of all of everything unGOP on the other side… I found his speech reaching out to “others” to be a huge craptacular mass of mediocre hypocrisy.
But it is not like I would ever vote for him anyways. I may be unaffiliated but I am not stupid.
… and devoid of specifics on policy
Sounded like a high school student body president speech until he got to POW stuff – full of unconfirmable details that change with each recounting
… and the audience response seemed transparently – and often very inappropriately – calculated
Our local Democratic club was actually holding an event for everyone to get together and watch it, and my wife really wanted to go — not to see McCain, but to see the local Democrats. i wanted to go to, but I thought it was unrealistic because we would have had to take the kids and it was way past their bedtime. True, I could have watched it at home, but I had better things to do. I was already aware that McCain is a pathetically bad speaker.
Watch? no. But I listened to the whole thing on NPR while I was fixing dinner. Exciting? no.
I have no idea how effective his conciliatory bi-partisan tone will be in persuading independents to vote for him. I don’t know whether it would have been effective if he had chosen another veep. But you’ve gotta think that many undecideds will weigh whether they are willing to trust the next four years to a seventy-something man with some health issues (whose father died at seventy of natural causes) — especially when he’s just picked a right-wing looney veep (some of whose supporters are praying that he’ll drop dead during his term). No matter what their objections to Obama, McCain’s health and Palin’s wing-nuttery are likely to scare most moderates with half a brain.