Monthly Archives: September 2008

I was out of the room feeding cats and sorting mail for a while so I missed about ten minutes. In what I saw, it didn't look to me like anyone drew any blood. I suspect most voters came away feeling that their guy is the guy and that he missed a lot of key opportunities to slap the other guy upside the head. McCain came across as patronizing in some exchanges and some viewers may resent that. Obama said "I agree with John" a few too many times but he also came across as a guy who knows a lot more than his opponent is willing to give him credit for.

I'm curious to see the "fact check" websites, not so much to see who distorted reality as to get a little more info on some of the claims that were not fully explained.

All in all, kinda dull. I think Jim Lehrer should have handed them each paintball guns and told them they could only answer a question after they'd scored a direct hit on their opponent. Or maybe they could have released about 300 live tarantulas on the stage and at the end, Lehrer could have brought out a watermelon and whacked it with a sledge hammer. Anything to liven things up.

The problem with all this arguing about what Henry Kissinger thinks is that it's Henry Kissinger. McCain should be ashamed to have Kissinger as an advisor and Obama should be ashamed to have Kissinger approving one of his positions.

This is a pretty boring debate. Part of that is because Jim Lehrer keeps changing the topic just when it's getting interesting.

Apparently, they think the winner is whoever can use the word "fundamental" the most times.

Assuming John McCain doesn't suspend his campaign again in the next fifteen minutes, he and Barack Obama are about to debate. Everyone seems to think they're going to take a debate that was supposed to be about foreign affairs and turn it into a discussion of what we laughingly call our national economy. I have no particular predictions other than that each side is going to insist their guy "hit it out of the park." The McCain forces seem to have jumped the gun and begun papering the web with banner ads that say he won the debate that has yet to take place.

The one thing I can't help but think about is that this debate is taking place at The University of Mississippi. I'm not that old but at the time I was born, they wouldn't have let a guy who looked like Obama attend school there, let alone compete to maybe become the next President of the United States. That's no reflection on the current population down there…just a marker of how far we've come.

It's going to be interesting, six months after the election when we start getting the behind-the-scenes books, to find out what was up with this whole "McCain suspending his campaign" business. No one, including the most rabid of McCain partisans, seems more than about 25% confident of their theories. Nor can they say what it means to suspend one's campaign except that you bail on David Letterman and lose a bluff about postponing a debate. It's fascinating how much the Thursday agenda of McCain, who was ostensibly not campaigning, resembled the agenda of Obama, who was.

We're all going to watch the debate tonight, of course. I'm going to wait for the first time McCain gives some vague, insufficient answer and then Obama says, "Gee, I think the Senator has suspended his campaign again…"

Actors Equity, the labor organization that represents theatrical performers, has put together a primer on the Health Care situation in the U.S. and its problems. It includes a side-by-side comparison of the Obama and McCain proposals in this area. It's all in this PDF file.

Film director Rian Johnson, who was responsible for Brick and The Brothers Bloom, wouldn't mind if the rumor began circulating that he's directing a live-action movie of this comic book I do called Groo the Wanderer.

We're flattered he likes the comic and the rumor's fine with us. But we've already sold the rights to do an animated Groo movie, which is being worked on now, and that contract precludes a live-action film. Maybe someday…though I'm not sure I'd want to see the kind of actor who'd be "right" for the lead in a live-action Groo picture…

Entertainment Weekly interviews Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and also gets them to pose for a great cover. And check out the list at the end of past EW articles on those two funny boys, too.

You know, I'm all for animal rights. True, I haven't gone so far as to give up eating them but I've stopped eating the products of certain companies that treat them inordinately poorly and I've stopped buying things made out of them. I also feed (and neuter and take to the vet) stray cats and, going back a few years, I stopped a TV producer from booking a couple of animal acts that I thought were cruel to their performers. And a few years before that, I had a neighbor who was beating his dog. I called the police on him and it ended up with the dog going to another home. (The dog-beater was a prominent author and I used to hear him on talk shows lecturing people on how they should treat one another. I was always tempted to phone in and ask him about that poor Great Dane of his…)

Anyway, my point is that the lot of animals would be much better if everyone in the world was as considerate of them as I am. And I wish that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would stop making ethical treatment of animals into a joke with stupid crap like this.

A quick jaunt around the news sites this morn tells me that no one knows what's up with the planned Presidential Debate tomorrow night. Will there be one? At the moment, it looks that way. Will McCain show up for it? No one seems to know. Might he send a surrogate? Or might it just wind up as Obama being interviewed for 90 minutes by Jim Lehrer? Good questions. Here's what might happen.

My favorite part of these debates is always the post-debate spin. That's the part where representatives of both candidates meet with reporters and maniacally insist that their guy "hit it out of the park" (they're required to use that phrase in one out of every five sentences they utter) and that every single thing he said was right and every single thing the other guy said was wrong, foolish, disingenuous and an act of desperation. They're required to argue that and also that "the American people see through" all the nonsense that the opposition candidate spewed.

I especially like the little token "just to be fair" remark that most of the spinners will make, never about anything that matters. It's usually something like, "I'll give him credit, though…he got his own wife's name right and he did have on a very nice tie." But then of course, even that is followed by, "But the American people can see right through that tired party line and collection of discredited talking points." Once in a while, a spinner will even declare that their boy did so well and the other guy did so poorly that the election is over and a concession speech is expected at any moment.

The great part of what goes on in the Spin Room — can you believe they actually call it that? — is that it never has anything to do with what was actually said in the debate. Zero. So I'm imagining that McCain pulls a No Show and Obama debates an empty podium…

Obama answers a question and then Lehrer says, "Senator McCain, you have 45 seconds for rebuttal," and we all stare at the podium for 45 seconds. In the meantime, McCain still dispatches his campaign officials to spin that he won. After the event, they're out there saying, "By not being there to answer that question, McCain hit it out of the park."

Regarding the part where Lehrer asks the candidates to explain their plans for Social Security and there's two minutes of silence from the McCain side, the spinners say, "Two minutes of nothing from McCain made more sense than two minutes of actual policies from Senator Obama." Extra points if they have the gonads to add, "The American people would rather have a president who does absolutely nothing and doesn't even show up than one who's there and who does the wrong thing."

It wouldn't surprise me if something like this actually happens tomorrow night. I'm also imagining that if McCain isn't there, every so often the news coverage cuts outside where we find Ralph Nader and Bob Barr pounding on the door, yelling, "Let us in! There's camera time that isn't being used!"