Jonah says:
It’s hard to guess what, exactly, the SNL skit will look like. I think the press is congealing around the (erroneous) idea that Obama won precisely because that’s what the focus groups seem to be saying, or at least what the focus groups are saying allows the press to get away with claiming Obama won (for the record I think McCain won the parts I saw, but I’ve long argued that the press mostly cares what the polls say about these sorts of events). And SNL’s instincts are, lamentably, to go with liberal conventional wisdom.
It is going to be John McCain going to great lengths to avoid looking Obama in the eye. I can see them having Darrell Hammond holding up his hand to shield his eyes, I can see them having him hide behind the podium, I can see them having the moderator force them to move their podiums so they face each other and McCain then looking down.
That is my bet.
Dave Latchaw
I think this means that he watched the debate when the Cartoon Network was showing commercials.
Ted
I think the most likely explanation is that he was prepped to not look at Obama directly in order to avoid an eruption.
At any rate, I do love the fact that McCain potentially caused all four of the big broadcast networks to commit an FCC violation with the “horseshit” mutterings. If the FCC were consistent with the wardrobe malfunction crap, the nets would all get fined.
Dennis - SGMM
Yes and Palin’s informed ripostes to Joe Biden’s after-debate comments were devastating, weren’t they Jonah?
Michael Scott
“Focus groups,” that’s another way of saying “polling,” isn’t it, Jonah?
And yes, that’s usually how they determine who won a debate: Polling.
Jesus, if we could only tap into the GOP Stupid, we’d have a 100% renewable energy supply for the foreseeable future!
Joshua
Man, you really gotta love this shit.
The most important thing in the world is what Joe American thinks, not who actually understands the “issues” and got his answers “right” (see: Gore vs. Bush debates)… unless Joe American thinks that the Democrat won, in which case Joe American is obviously just a stooge for the goddamned liberal media. Obviously.
Hubris
I guess I’m a bad person, because I would focus on the memorial-wear: “Well, I happen to be wearing a cock ring given to me by [looks down] Betty Johnson of Sioux Falls, South Dakota–she whittled it from a 100-year old oak tree on her family farm just before the bank foreclosure…”
dslak
I don’t buy the “horseshit” nonsense. It seems perfectly clear to me that he’s saying “course not.” On the other hand, his history of blowing up and cursing at anyone in the vicinity makes it a believable accusation.
Juan del Llano
That quotation is the most words I have ever read by that fellow, whom I have steadily avoided allowing into my consciousness over the years, but I have this to say: what remarkably bad writing, in just that little bit! The overuse of parentheses in particular…
How astounding it is that there are so many people out there getting paid to “write” who are neither as smart nor as erudite as thousands of bloggers and commenters doing it for free. Quite the comment on our culture, isn’t it?
RSA
Uh, yeah. I think the press should ignore what the polls say about who the public thinks won the debate, and concentrate on what I say “on the record” of a Web page.
nepat
The SNL angle is going to be fusillade of McCain swearing under his breath, general distemper, and shielding his eyes from Bright Star Obama.
Davis X. Machina
Cotton Hill is perfect.
Ted
Sounded like “horseshit” to me. I’ll watch it again for the context, but “course not” seems out of place when Obama’s accusing him of unwillingness to meet with the PM of Spain.
Marshall
I am beginning to wonder if Sarah Palin is going to resign from the ticket “in the interests of her family.” Why else hide her so effectively ?
I refuse to believe that Sarah couldn’t have come out and done a few “I think John did a great job” sound bites without falling on her face, and that would have squelched a bunch of criticism and ridicule. Why, then, did she not ?
Unless they are taking this time to prepare a functional Sarahbot, I get the feeling that she is toast.
mellowjohn
mcsame is probably the kind of (old, white) guy who crosses the street when he sees a black guy walking towards him. or would be, if he wasn’t surrounded by secret service protection.
and i say this as an old, white guy.
Balconespolitics
Sarah can’t resign. The religious right didn’t like McCain before, but he’d still have gotten about 80% of their vote just for the Supreme Court justices.
Palin popped that up to 100%, plus their ground game support next month. But if it looks like Palin got pushed out in any way, shape, or form … McCain will be lucky to get 25% of the evangelicals to come out and pull the lever for him.
You want to see McCain lose 50 States? Ok, yeah, I do too. But he doesn’t.
Don’t fantasize about Palin gracefully pulling out, either. This woman believes it’s God’s Plan for her to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and she’s not going to derain His plan. Plus, Palin has to know that with Troopergate looming back in Alaska, once the national spotlight gets turned out, her political career has pulled into the cul-de-sac and probably can’t turn around. Just like she was McCain’s “Hail Mary”, the VP bid is now Palin’s “Hail Mary”.
nicethugbert
I can see McEarmarkSkits biting the podium. And, during his angriest moment, what was he doing down there behind the podium? Stabbing a voodoo doll?
Ted
Oh, and
Doughy Pantload.
DoughBob LoadPants.
…for the Google.
Incertus
I hope they do a Tina Fey cameo of Palin knocking back shots at a Philly bar, leading cheers or something while the debate is on, and perhaps screaming a drunken “No comment!” at reporters.
gbear
Could this guy be any more clueless? Any other writer who’s being published at a well-known location would at least pretend to have seen the entire debate when coming up with something to say about it.
Jonah is so determinedly casual and dismissive of his own chosen career that he doesn’t take it as part of his fucking job to pay attention for a full 90 minutes. He then so fucking full of himself that he thinks he can admit to missing much or most of it and still think that people should care to read about what he thinks.
Fucking spoiled brat fraud to the eleventyieth.
the Reverend boy
In fairness, at the debate party we all noticed that neither of the candidates looked at each other for almost the first 30 minutes! It wasn’t until Obama started to find a groove that he looked at McCain directly. He is a great orator and I wish he could find a way to bring more of the passion he displays in his speeches to the debates.
Our consensus was the debate more or less reset things between the two of them to zero. It’s still anyone’s game…at least until the next one, where my money is on Joe Biden.
Incertus
Well, when you’ve had people telling you for your whole life that you’re the special-est and most handsome-est and most smart-est boy around, you might wind up a little self-absorbed, especially when those people give you a cushy job for which you are particularly ill-equipped.
Dennis - SGMM
Here’s the Obama campaign’s debate ad. It’s titled “Zero” – for the number of times that McCain mentioned the middle class in the debate.
gbear
Probably because the interview you described would only last for 20 seconds before someone would have to ask her a followup question.
What they should have done is pre-record a clip of Palin saying how great McCain was in his debate victory and then distributed it to all the stations in advance, kind of like the WSJ print ad that congratulated McCain for winning the debate half a day before it occured.
cleek
frankly, i agree. i only saw the last 30 mins or so, and i was +6, but i thought McCain did better: more confident and comfortable with the material, at least in presentation. and if i didn’t know the topics any better, i’d have to say McCain walked away with it. i was happy to see the polls disagreed with me.
they were clearly pissing each other off, though. and that was fun.
low-tech cyclist
Pantload: I think the press is congealing around the (erroneous) idea that Obama won precisely because that’s what the focus groups seem to be saying, or at least what the focus groups are saying allows the press to get away with claiming Obama won
Let’s see: the insta-polls and the focus groups all show Obama having done better. But Jonah thinks McCain won, so the liberal media” must be wrong when they conclude Obama won.
Jonah, you might want to step outside and see what the weather’s like outside your head, dude.
Jonah adds: “I’ve long argued that the press mostly cares what the polls say about these sorts of events.”
Yeah, I remember how the press cared about the polls after the first debate in 2000. The public thought Gore had won, until the “liberal media” spent the next few days talking about Gore’s sighs.
Ted
Noron, just now on MSNBC, pretended to think Obama’s numerous “You’re right about X, but…” prefaces were agreement with McCain. I really tire of her.
ann
Next debate will be hilarious because McCain WILL look Obama in the eye, in a creepy and overcompensating way.
trollhattan
The parts that he saw?!? WTF is diverting the attention of the overpaid [find the hidden vast overstatement] grande pantaloon as the election looms? Posing his Teletubbies action figures?
Oh yeah, McCain totally kicked ass. And my WaMu stock is gettin’ me that new Eff Two-Fiddy diesel.
What a waste of human flesh.
RML
Obama won hands down. He had command of the facts. He was current on both foreign policy and economic policy. He connected to the voters and he looked more presidential. McCain looked angry, disjointed and sometimes incoherent. He wouldn’t look Obama in the eye. He was condescending and rude. Very un-presidential. Additionally, He and his wife were disrespectful to Obama and Michelle. The Obama’s had to chase down the McCain’s for a departing hand shake. There were many factual errors in McCain’s delivery…including the part about voting against Reagan’s Plan to send Marines to Lebanon in 1982. He wasn’t a senator until 1983 and there was no way he could have voted against this action. Also, I heard the discussions of the former Secretary’s of State on NPR and Mr. Kissinger did say we needed to talk to Iran…Baker and Colin Powell concurred with this assessment. McCain is not a foreign policy expert. Just because he was a former POW doesn’t mean he’s an expert on foreign policy. Mixing up Spain with Latin America, Sunni with Shia, saying we would be out of Iraq quickly…points to the fact he is out of touch and out of his league compared to Obama. McCain is a fraud…the press has perpetuated this lie about his foreign policy bona fides.
Bobzim
Is exactly right. As someone who has had anger-management problems in the past, I was thinking the same thing last night.
Dennis - SGMM
Here’s a preview of Jonah’s column for October 3rd, 2008:
“The press (With its usual bent toward excessive criticism of Conservatives) is calling Sarah Palin’s performance in last night’s debate “a debacle” and is declaring that she’s ‘not ready.” Well (In the parts I saw) Palin came across as refreshingly average. Few voters understand the financial crisis and fewer still know that Alaska does not border Waziristan. Isn’t it about time that Americans are represented by someone just like them? Palin is the salt of the earth, the common clay, and she deserves a place in the highest circles just for that.”
Laura W
Best LOL of the day so far! Phew I needed that.
This is more Jon Stewart than SNL. Do send it off to his writers stat!
w vincentz
If cottage cheese could look angry, that’s what it would look like. Wash it down with a bit of tea and sympathy and the meal might stay down long enough to make it porcelain patty.
harlana pepper
Cotton Hill *is* perfect, had his kneecaps destroyed by the enemy in WWII.
Incertus
The point it makes is a solid one, and one that Obama needs to punch all the way through to November, but I can’t be the only person who has had more than enough of the Mastercard “number of blah blah blah” constructions. Not only is it old and tired, it’s also a subliminal connection to lots of people who are currently fucked by their credit card debt, and it’s not a good connection.
Dennis - SGMM
McCain reminds me of the Lloyd Bridges character in the “Hot Shot” movies:
“My intestines were removed during action in the North Atlantic. Took a torpedo in the low abdomen. And they replaced every foot of my bowels with hemp…”
MLP
Dude if we are discussing possible SNL skits, why has no one mentioned that the McCain said at least twice in the debate that he didn’t win “Miss Congeniality.”?????????????????
If thats not ripe for satire I don’t know what is.
On Jonah Goldberg, I think gbear has it right. Jonah thinks of his job as a game, where the only thing that matters is having something to say. He doesn’t care about the consequences of ideas, he just values the abstraction of ideas. This is a guy who has more to say about FDR’s administration than the current one. And he doesn’t really have anything interesting to say about FDR, its just regurgitated conservative revisionist history, its not even original. What really pisses me off about Goldberg is that whenever he writes anything he lives himself a nice back door to escape when pressed on his writings. If someone challenged him on the quote John just used he would say, “Well I did say I only watch some of it.” I swear this guy is the biggest coward and he is the silliest political intellectual around today (and that includes Hewitt and K-Lo).
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Interview Sarah Palin.
Dennis - SGMM
ROTFLMAO!
Comrade John Cole
ThinkProgress noted that he mentioned that twice, and in reality, his running mate actually did win that title.
SGEW
Sully’s retracted that.
It took a bit of willful belief to think he cursed.
(and it would’ve been a grand 3 points in my drinking game)
[cross-posted from previous thread]
J. Thomas Duffy
John
I’d have Hammond come out for the debate with Horse Blinkers on … Large, obvious, Horse Blinkers, perhaps with the McCain logo on them …
Peace
JTD
cleek
ah crap. i was thinking about doing that with my Sarah Markov generator. guess i wasn’t fast enough.
jibeaux
McCain clearly won the debate, and the fact that focus groups, polls, and undecided voters thought Obama won is indeed, central to my point.
comrade dsc
Others have commented about McCain’s avoidance of any eye contact as part of anger management.
I’d bet Dr’s checked McCain’s reaction to Obama’s image, his posture, and especially his name, “Barack”
I’d bet the EKG spiked into dangerous territory.
He’s used to calling people he hate “Senator,” so he stuck with “Senator Obama” rather than the familiarity of “Barack” or “Barrry,” while Obama was calling his senior senator “John” (though he bobbled the smoothness of his delivery a few times, once calling him Jim.
This analysis of what everyone “saw” is fascinating.
SGEW
I was rip-roaring drunk halfway through the debate, so my “analysis” of how it went should take that into account.
handy
I honestly thought Barack was weak in this one (yes, Gramps McSame was creepy and cantankerous), but I’ll gladly take the narrative the media’s now building up.
And, really, the only reason to quote JoBerg in any context is to mock him mercilessly.
SamFromUtah
Could this guy be any more clueless? Any other writer who’s being published at a well-known location would at least pretend to have seen the entire debate when coming up with something to say about it.
Yup. This is a pretty good one for the Pantload, though, because at least he didn’t ask his readers to go look up what he thought of the debate.
Comrade PeterJ
A post over at Hot Air. I do hope that the people pushing the Drudge internet poll because over 300,000 have voted in it are trolls, cause otherwise it’s just sad. And then there are the ones that has come to term with it and have started shouting about a civil war…
mcc
I… what… what other measure of success could there possibly be, besides focus groups and polls?
McCain may have lost with the electorate, but he will always have won in Jonah’s heart.
Chris Johnson
I’m going to call it- McCain will not look Obama in the eye, period.
Because he is intensely superstitious- and has decided that Barack has the Evil Eye.
It ain’t anger management, folks. McCain can’t meet your gaze if he thinks it will jinx him. Talk about a great qualification for high-level talks with Russia or whoever.
Padraig
I think the press is congealing around the (erroneous) idea that Obama won precisely because that’s what the focus groups seem to be saying
Poor Jonah. Does he not know that we elect President’s through an open vote by the people, so the polls showing a victory are therefore prima facie evidence that Obama won the debate, in the sense that the voters, who elect Presidents, liked Obama more? And why did he only watch the parts of the debate where he feels McCain won? Why doesn’t anyone remotely intelligent have his job, again? So many questions…
Comrade Ivan Fookinov (fmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I think it would be funny to have Hammond come out, pick up the podium and turn it to face completely away from ‘Obama’ and the moderator.
comrade pseudonymous in nc
Oh, gawd, it’s easy enough to make it equal-opportunity parody.
With lots of no-looky.
Comrade PeterJ
If you didn’t know, McCain’s superstitious.
mcc
Couldn’t he get Sarah Palin to give him protection from witches?
Mike G
for the record I think McCain won the parts I saw
Doughy Pantload makes a living as a ‘pundit’ (in the very broadest definition of the word akin to ‘pulling opinions out of my ass’) and he couldn’t be bothered to watch the entire debate?
And he’s always asking his readers to review books and articles he can’t be bothered to read. What a lazy turd.
Hubris
Thanks, Laura W. ;)
Bullsmith
“the parts I saw” WTF? What did the doughy pantload have to do that was more important than the debate, but only intermittently so…. Oh my goodness I think the boy’s been up to no good.
grandpajohn
Its a result of Nepotism, just like Bush and McCain it results in the advancement of some individuals by using family/parental influence to overcome the individuals own incompetence and ignorance