Editors have a hard time resigning themselves to the creeping destruction of the English language. A few have decided to fight back against the hackneyed popular fiction and nearly incomprehensible public speaking that infects common discourse. Though some 80 million copies of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code have been sold, Brian Joseph Davis of The Globe and Mail writes that the author’s writing style “is so toxically inept that Vladimir Putin could use it to poison dissidents.”

Rather than simply criticizing idly, Davis took a crack at editing the first two chapters of Brown’s novel. He released PDFs of his efforts, complete with deletions, additions, and comments in the text. Davis tried desperately to excise a few uses of the word “slowly,” which appears 7 times in the first 10 pages.

A similar effort was undertaken by the editors at Vanity Fair, after Sarah Palin made a mockery of her native language during her resignation speech. The literary editor, copy editor, and research editor took their pens to a transcript of the speech in a valiant effort to make the semi-coherent speech comprehensible. The result is cluttered with ink, but a vast improvement over the original.

Both efforts came too late to salvage the original source material. Perhaps next time, Brown will think twice before using the word “slowly,” and Palin will try and check her facts. (Not likely, though.)

Sources: The Globe and Mail, Vanity Fair 

Image by  AlaskaTeacher,  licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The Fall-Winter 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities is all about civility—that virtue too often confused with its less polished cousin, politeness. That’s a shame, Amanda Waldroupe argues in her feature article “Not Rocking the Boat,” since politeness is the Great Destroyer of democracy—hamstringing intellectual exchange—whereas “civil conversation” gives us “the opportunity to. . . critically discuss and fully understand a political issue.”

“In [civil] conversations,” Waldroupe writes, “we are not necessarily polite, but we do have respect for the other’s political positions and opinions. Neither party thinks that the opposing view is necessarily illegitimate or flat-out wrong. Rather, each willingly makes an effort to understand the premises of the other’s views.”

Waldroupe’s assertion evokes something now-Vice President Joe Biden said back on the campaign trail, during his debate with Governor Sarah Palin. The question posed was how each candidate would endeavor to “bring both sides together,” how he or she would “change the tone” in Washington. Biden answered by sharing a vivid lesson he learned in his first year in the Senate: Don’t question people’s motives. Question their judgment.

In other words: Be civil.

This isn’t just a critical lesson for Washington, however, it’s an ethos equally employable in cities and neighborhoods, among family and friends, even around the lowly kitchen table. When President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address, he asked Americans to embrace “a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly.” That starts with coming together, and coming together starts with civility.

For more sage advice on how we can talk (meaningfully!) when we disagree, check out our Nov.-Dec. 2007 issue, when I had a chance to catch up with Stephen Miller, author of Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. Plus, in our next issue (March-April 2009), I’ll be writing about reconnecting the public with its public servants.

Take a break from guessing who’s going to snag an Oscar and check out who’s in the running to take home top honors for their political blunders this year. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo released the nominees for the second annual Golden Duke awards with fun categories like Sleaziest Campaign Ad and Best Scandal: Sex & Generalized Carnality. My favorite is Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-Based Chutzpah. Marshall says it’s difficult to judge because it’s so nuanced—not to mention “the difference between chutzpah and just being a complete f---ing moron sometimes is subtle.” Winners will be announced on Wednesday, so now is the perfect time to start an office pool for your personal favorites. You could also just bet on Sarah Palin—the repeat nominee is bound to nab at least one. 

There’s a steady feed of anxiety buzzing across the airwaves and blogosphere about Barack Obama falling short on Election Day.

First, there’s the infomercial gamble.

Then there’s the incessant stream of bad news about voter suppression. And the potential of a Florida redux.

And where to begin with the polls? Nate Silver’s soothing graphics and heady analysis can’t even stave the fear that the polls are way off. The New Republic and Washington Post have some scary bedtime reading on that front. But what about the impact of Obama’s perceived lead? Will it keep would-be Obama voters at home? Will it convince hard lefters to go Green Party? How anyone in a post-Bush v. Gore world could succumb to such a line seems inconceivable, but my colleagues Julie and Danielle kindled such irrational fears in me yesterday by reporting that Green Party nitwits at Minneapolis’ trendiest co-op are handing out fliers for Cynthia McKinney with the chant, “Obama’s up 14 points.”

As if this glut of fear weren’t enough, some folks are spinning some hypothetical nightmare scenarios with all the care of horror film scriptwriters.

Newseek’s Jonathan Alter was kind enough to spin this Halloween-esque yarn about “Why McCain Won”:

Obama shifted New Mexico, Iowa and Nevada from red to blue. But there was a reason Virginia hadn't gone Democratic since 1964. The transformation of the northern part of the state couldn't overcome a huge McCain margin among whites farther south. They weren't the racists of their parents' generation, but they weren't quite ready to vote for the unthinkable, either.

...

Obama had wired every college campus in the country, and he enjoyed great enthusiasm among politically engaged young people. But less-engaged students told reporters the day after the election that they had meant to vote for Obama but were "too busy." History held: young people once again voted in lower percentages than their elders. Waiting for them turned out to be like waiting for Godot.

And then there’s this personalized bit of horror that’s making the rounds from MoveOn.org. (I thank my big brother for sending it to me after I rattled on a little too long about recurring nightmares of McCain taking Pennsylvania.)

So what’s a nervous wreck to do, outside of hitting the bottle or the Xanax?

Normally, I wouldn’t turn to Larry David for advice about anxiety, but he does offer one option that, I suspect, many others are taking:

The one concession I’ve made to maintain some form of sanity is that I've taken to censoring my news, just like the old Soviet Union. The citizenry (me) only gets to read and listen to what I deem appropriate for its health and well-being.

Of course, there’s always yoga. The Huffington Post’s Tara Stiles has some election-timed tips in this video.

The Associated Press has a few suggestions as well:

Take care of yourself by getting enough sleep, eating right and exercising. You'll feel better while recognizing those things you can control, says Wilmette, Ill.-based psychologist Nancy Molitor.

Realize that no candidate is as good — or as bad — as you might imagine, Molitor says.

When all else fails, change the subject, says Lisa Miller, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University Teachers College in New York. "Turn to those things which are more eternal and more important, such as nature and family," she says. "It's a great time to go into nature. Go camping."

Unfortunately, these tips seem about as realistically helpful as the fantastical prescriptions the Stranger came up with last month, such as Palium, which “[i]nduces a Valium-like calm with respect to all things Sarah Palin.”

In truth, the best plan is to either tune out until November 5th or white-knuckle it until the results are in (really in).

Did you scoff at the TV when Sarah Palin told ABC’s Charlie Gibson, “I'm attributing some of man's activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now”? What about when she said it didn’t really matter what caused global warming in the vice presidential debate? Well, be prepared to scoff again, because it turns out she’s hardly alone in her skepticism. A new study finds that a mere 18 percent of Americans “strongly believe that climate change is real, human-caused and harmful,” according to the Nature Conservancy.

Lee Bodner, executive director of EcoAmerica, the consulting group that did the study, told the Nature Conservancy that “political party affiliation was the largest indicator—by significant margins—on whether people see climate change as a threat, believe that it is human-caused, and even whether they've noticed the weather change or trust people who speak about global warming.” Bodner said 90 percent of Democrats believe the earth is warming, versus only 54 percent of Republicans.

Nevertheless, the candidates at the top of both party’s tickets have indicated their commitment to reengaging with the world on climate change. And the eco-activists at 350.org are seeing to it that they keep that promise. From the site, you can send both McCain and Obama an invitation to attend the UN’s climate talks in Poland this December. More than 30,000 people have already done so, but they need your help to reach their goal of 35,000 by Election Day.

Talk of assassination during this presidential election has been a taboo violated in a few notorious instances. But yesterday’s discovery of a disturbing, if far-fetched, neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Barack Obama has renewed anxiety about various worst-case scenarios that many people think about but few mention aloud.

Yesterday’s revelation is only the latest resurgence of the A-word. There was Hillary Clinton’s unfortunate RFK gaffe last spring. There are jokes made by Fox pundits. There are websites created by insane people. And then there are the  sentiments of those at Sarah Palin’s rallies, who have shouted  “Kill him!” on more than one occasion.

Blog chatter among those sympathetic to the candidate is marked by anxiety. After Gawker ran a photo of Obama addressing a crowd of 100,000 in St Louis, some commenters fretted about him appearing in such wide-open spaces. “I was going to say something about how much this looked like a Kennedy or MLK Jr. rally, then I remembered how that panned out for them,” wrote one. “I just want to fast forward to November 5, if only so I can stop holding my breath.”

Another worried: “This sort of open air speech setting seems almost [to be] defying history to me. It's as if Obama is thumbing his nose at common sense.”

This comment was met with a sound rebuttal: “You either have to just get out there and give your speeches and assume God or Fate is on your side, or frankly, you probably don’t have much business trying to be president, particularly in these times.”

This last suggestion seems to be the one Obama has taken to heart on the campaign trail, thumbing his nose not so much at common sense but at the cynicism, hatred, and fear-mongering that has been too much the norm of late.

We should begin with what is perhaps the best video of the campaign season:

Here are a few cinematic suggestions for John McCain’s next spate of attack ads. As Mother Jones' Riff blog notes, the Wes Anderson take at the end is the best:

And now compare the responses of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin when asked by children what exactly the vice president does. (Hint: One of their answers is accurate.)

Biden's remarks come toward the end, but it's worth watching the whole thing:

Governor Palin, your response?

The always-thorough folks at FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) have compiled the “Top Troubling Tropes of Campaign ’08,” a handy (if alarming) roundup of eleven misleading, factually bankrupt themes that have dominated election coverage.

Not only do journalists organize the election story around the question—not terribly helpful to voters—of who's up and who's down, they largely base their evaluation of the race on shallow image-based narratives that the media construct themselves: Barack Obama is an "elitist" who might not "get the way we live" ( Extra! , 8/08), while John McCain is a straight-talking "maverick" ( Extra! , 6/08).  

The FAIR report goes well beyond deconstructing the “maverick” and “elitist” labels (Troubling Tropes #1 and 2), using extensively sourced analysis to rebut the claim that the so-called liberal media has “smeared” vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (#3) and contesting the media’s treatment of John McCain as a “national security pro” (#4).

Then there’s “false balance” (#8), in which the media’s fact-checking is doled out “equally”—you know, debunk an Obama claim, then one of McCain's, then back to Obama, and so on.

In recent elections, media "fact-check" reporting often bends over backwards to choose an equal number of falsehoods or distortions from each side—which can give voters a misleading impression of the prevalence of political lying when one side is obviously more guilt of exaggerations.

In this election, it is beyond question that that the McCain/Palin campaign has been more aggressively lying in its campaign ads and rhetoric than the Obama/Biden camp. Nonetheless, the overriding media tendency is to blunt that disparity and see the campaign as a series of back-and-forth attacks. . . .

Read the full report at FAIR’s website.

John McCain's campaign tries on new messages like Paris Hilton tries on new shoes. But since Sarah Palin entered the race, they've managed to deliver at least one consistent rallying cry: We are the ticket of small-town values.

Small-town mythology has become the cornerstone of Palin’s pitch to voters. She spoke about “Main Streeters like me” in the vice presidential debate and talked up “Joe six-pack.” In her speech before the Republican National Convention, she told the audience that the nation grows “good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.”

Palin’s speech channeled Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to a friend in 1785, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.” But the Jeffersonian portrait she sketched of rural America doesn’t tell the whole story.

Palin didn’t touch on the fact that small towns are hemorrhaging young people, who grow up and leave in search of opportunity. She didn’t mention that hope is scarce in some towns, as a 2008 survey (pdf) of rural Midwesterners completed by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute found. Only 15 percent of those asked to forecast the future of their communities believed life there would be better in 10 years. Palin didn’t explain to the nation that small towns have fallen on hard times. Nor did she promise rural Americans that a Palin vice presidency would mean a better future was on its way.

Because that wasn’t really the point. Palin peddles small-town nostalgia and an outdated image of the “average American” to cast shadows of doubt on her enemies, not to offer solutions to her friends. The Wasilla gal is George Bush, the guy you’d like to swill beer with, in fierce pumps and trendy glasses. She embodies the same everyman appeal that Bush did and uses it to stoke the kind of fear and division that made Karl Rove a household name. But at a time when the country is fighting two wars abroad and trying to piece the economy back together at home, can the politics of cultural resentment still turn the election for Republicans?

Probably not.

To understand why, take a look back at the Republican National Convention, when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told the Washington Post, “This election is not about issues.” If it was, the McCain camp looked to be fighting a losing battle as the campaign entered the home stretch: An ABC News / Washington Post poll released Oct. 13 reported that 68 percent of likely voters preferred Obama’s positions on the issues, with only 29 percent preferring McCain’s. But the poll found those voters favored McCain’s personal qualities over Obama’s 61 percent to 34 percent. The takeaway? McCain’s best shot at the White House was to make the campaign a referendum on character.

You might think that would mean we’d be hearing a lot about McCain’s dark days in Vietnam in these final weeks. But instead, the campaign has shaped its character attacks almost singularly around the image of Sarah Palin. They’ve deployed Palin’s small-town biography to tell the story of a fabled “real America” that the terrorist-friendly Obama, as Palin and others paint him, isn’t a part of. At an Oct. 16 fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, Palin declared that, “the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America.” She went on that in these “pro-America areas of this great nation…we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.”

“I bet bin Laden feels like a real asshole now,” Daily Show host Jon Stewart responded on the following Tuesday’s show. “What?! I bombed the wrong America?!” Stewart skewered Palin further saying, “I guess if you’re from New York City and you signed up to fight in Iraq and you died, I guess it doesn’t count.” Palin’s comments didn’t play much better beyond the Daily Show, either, and Palin eventually issued a half-hearted apology. The fact is, most folks don’t live in Palin’s “real America”; according to the New Republic, 84 percent of Americans live in the country’s metro areas.

It's true that rural voters play a disproportionate role in national elections. Just look at in Ohio in 2004, where they ignored pocketbook issues and handed George Bush the presidency because of his stances on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Palin’s job is to make sure rural voters put their values above their wallets again in 2008. But will they?

Small-town America no longer looks like a place Republicans can easily clinch by devoting a little airtime to their opponent’s Godless positions on abortion or gay marriage. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, told National Public Radio that those two hot-button wedges of 2004 aren’t even among religious voters’ top five concerns this year. With social issues taking a back seat to the economy, Republican dominance in rural areas is waning. A late September poll by the Center for Rural Strategies showed McCain with a 10-point lead over Obama in rural America. The center's newest poll, however, shows a dramatic shift. Conducted in the first three weeks of October, the poll reports Obama leading McCain 46 percent to 45 percent among rural voters in 13 swing states.

Unlike past Democratic candidates, Obama has made a point of showing up in historically unfriendly territory, making sure rural swing voters hear his message. Explaining to New York Times Magazine reporter Matt Bai how he won rural Nevada in the Democratic primary, Obama said, “a lot of it just had to do with the fact that folks thought: Man, the guy is showing up. He’s set up an office. He’s doing real organizing. He’s talking to people.” According to Bai, Obama has 50 campaign offices in Virginia, 42 in Indiana, and 45 in North Carolina, all states his party usually writes off in national campaigns.

When he shows up, Obama appeals to rural voters with an economic message he's been hitting for some time. In July, for instance, he swung through rural Missouri on an economic tour, giving particular attention to his vision for the green economy of the future. The McCain campaign, by comparison, has delivered a shaky economic message at best. The economy simply isn’t what they want to talk about. McCain adviser Greg Strimple told the Washington Post in early October, “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." But the page has not turned on our economic woes, and unfortunately for McCain, voters are interested in talking about it. 

Nevertheless, McCain and Palin continue to push a campaign that celebrates the common man in lore more than substance. Joe the Plumber, who has recently eclipsed Palin as the campaign’s “average” sensation, is McCain’s symbol du jour of the further economic pain a President Obama would impose on the country. Yet Joe, at his current income level, would fare better under Obama’s tax plan than McCain’s, exposing deep imperfections in the relationship between McCain's message and his policy.

McCain seized upon Joe without vetting just as he seized upon Sarah, out of a belief that symbolism could trump candor. Sarah Palin is indeed a powerful embodiment of a certain American story that has a tight hold on our imagination. America was born as a nation of small towns, and we tend to celebrate presidential stories that originate there. But that is no longer the America in which we live. In 2008, it's a mistake to believe that there is only one quintessential American story or that Sarah’s is any more American than Barack’s.

Photo by cmaccubbin, licensed under Creative Commons.

Wordsmith.org, whose “Word.A.Day” emails dispatch daily doses of rare vocabulary, has taken up the election as its theme this week. Specifically, creator Anu Garg is featuring words that contain the candidates’ names.

These words have been on the books since long before this never-ending campaign began, but let’s see if we can force some creative connections and use each in a candidate-related sentence.

Here’s the list so far:

palinode (PAL-uh-noad)
noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.
From Greek palinoidia, from palin (again) + oide (song). It's the same palin that shows up in the word palindrome.

Please use the word in a sentence:
If Sarah Palin had apologized for her recent bilious musings on the “Real America” in poem form, rather than as a hypothetical hedging, it would have been a Palin palinode. (For Palin-inspired poetry, check out the submissions to our Great Writing Salon.)

bidentate (by-DEN-tayt)
adjective: Having two teeth or toothlike parts.
From Latin bi- (two) + dens (tooth).

Please use the word in a sentence:
One wanting to caricature Biden’s latest campaign-trail gaffe might show him as a bucktoothed, bidentate goofball. 

obambulate (o-BAM-byuh-layt)
verb intr.: To walk about.
From Latin ob- (towards, against) + ambulare (to walk). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ambhi- (around) that is also the source of ambulance, alley, preamble, and bivouac. The first print citation of the word is from 1614.

Please use the word in a sentence:
This one’s too easy. Any candidate can obambulate a stage at a rally, so: Obama will certainly ombambulate in Richmond, Virginia, today. Perhaps it’s a more fitting word, though, to describe his opponents’ wanderings during their second, townhall debate. (You can relive those moments with The Daily Show video below, starting around 7:20.)

Check in tomorrow or Friday with Wordsmith for the McCain edition.

Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank continues to supply noteworthy information from the campaign trail about Sarah Palin’s evolving relationship with the press. This troubling bit of news comes from a live chat Milbank hosted with readers:

…I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty—protecting the protectee—and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.

At Political Animal, Steve Benen asks the natural follow-up question: “Why on earth would an independent journalist play along with these ridiculous rules?”

Dana?

(Thanks, Romenesko.)

Image by alex-s, licensed under Creative Commons.

When Christopher Buckley endorsed Barack Obama in a column for The Daily Beast last week, news traveled fast. As he accurately predicted, “the headline will be: ‘William F. Buckley’s Son Says He is Pro-Obama.’” It reads a bit more anti-McCain than it does pro-Obama, but it is an interesting piece from a longtime McCain friend and supporter.

This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once–first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Buckley opted not to air his opinions in his back-page column for the National Review, the conservative magazine his father founded in 1955; he took them to The Daily Beast instead, hoping to avoid the deluge of “foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails” that his fellow National Review columnist Kathleen Parker received when she criticized Sarah Palin (including one that, according to Buckley, "suggested that Kathleen's mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster").

It didn’t save his job, though. Just four days after the Obama endorsement, he was back at The Daily Beast to report that, in response to his own deluge of hate-email from National Review readers, he’d offered his resignation. “This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler.” (Lowry claims that the National Review only received about 100 emails regarding Buckley’s endorsement—“a tiny amount compared to our usual volume.”)

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

With a notoriously “faith-based” presidential administration in its last throes and a race for the White House boasting a varied slate of Christians—a  man who’s been called a “semi-Baptist,” a Pentecostal conservative, a Catholic Democrat, and a member of the United Church of Christ whom some insist is a “secret Muslim”—it’s surprising that faith and religion aren’t playing a more central role in the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

There’s been a relative lack of religious talk during the presidential face-offs, and various spirituality blogs are wondering if tonight’s will be any different. Both Christianity Today and the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life noted a dearth of religious talk in their liveblogs of last week’s debate, with the notable exception of Tom Brokaw’s zen question. GetReligion also called attention to the fact that the latest presidential debate’s only spiritual reference was to Buddhism, after the website live-blogged the Palin-Biden debate and its own lack of religious language.

One explanation is that Iraq and the tanking economy have largely pushed aside religious and social issues that dominated previous debate cycles. Nathan Empsall at the Wayward Episcopalian is glad the candidates are addressing the economy, but still frustrated by both candidates’ remarks in that regard. With McCain foundering in the polls and in need of a game changer, it’s questionable whether Christianity will make an appearance in tonight’s debate.

Image by Ricardo Carreon, licensed by Creative Commons.

A wiry thirtysomething guy bikes out of the Whole Foods parking lot, a pannier of organic produce strapped to his rack. He’s on his way home to make dinner after a couple of hours volunteering at the local Obama campaign headquarters. He inches down the driveway, waiting for an opportunity to turn right into the busy rush-hour traffic.

He sees an opening and jumps into the lane, pedaling quickly. But he’s not moving fast enough for a hulking SUV whose impatient driver doesn’t want to change lanes. She tailgates him for several yards, laying on the horn, then swerves into the other lane and tears past him, yelling something about getting on the sidewalk. The cyclist gives her a one-fingered salute, then notices a McCain-Palin sticker on her bumper.

Typical.

We are all guilty of certain prejudices. In the escalating (and increasingly dangerous) tensions between car commuters and bicycle riders, battle lines are drawn. As an avid cyclist leaning fairly hard to port, I had very little reason to interrogate the stereotypes embodied in the scenario above. But eventually a few needling questions penetrated my insulated sphere of thought: What if there are conservatives who ride bikes? What the hell do they look like? And where can I find them?

On the Internet, of course.

“I am a gun-owning, low-taxes, small-government, strong military, anti-baby murder, pro-big/small business, anti-social program, conservative Democrat,” wrote Maddyfish, a poster on Bike Forums, an Internet discussion forum where everyone from the casual hobbyist to the obsessive gearhead can discuss all things bike-related, from frame sizes to the best routes downtown. There are dozens such forums for bicyclists and I recently crashed three of them—Bike Forums, MPLS BikeLove, and Road Bike Review—with a simple question: Are there any conservative cyclists out there? Maddyfish (an online pseudonym) was one of the first to reply: “I find cycling to be a very conservative activity. It saves me money and time.”

And just like that, biking conservatives came out of the cyber-woodwork, offering their own mixtures of bike love and political philosophy. “I do not care about gas prices or the environment. I care about fun and getting where I am quickly,” wrote Old Scratch. “I’m a Libertarian,” wrote Charly17201. “I am extremely conservative, but definitely NOT a GOPer. … I ride my bike because it provides me the opportunity to save even more money for my pleasures now and my retirement in the future (and my retirement fund is NOT the responsibility of the government).”

The more liberal bikers in the forums repeated some variation of this formulation: “Drive to the ride = conservative; bike to the ride = liberal.” In other words, conservatives load bikes onto SUVs and drive them to a riding trail, while liberals incorporate their bikes into every aspect of their personal transportation, whether utilitarian or recreational. For moneyed conservatives with a large portion of their income budgeted for recreation, high-end bikes and gear have taken their place along golf as a rich man’s leisure activity.

But there are conservatives who integrate bikes into their lifestyle just as thoroughly as their liberal counterparts. Mitch Berg is a conservative talk-radio host whose blog, A Shot in the Dark, is divided between political content and chronicles if his experiences commuting by bicycle. “I grew up in rural North Dakota, and biking was one of my escapes when I was in high school and college,” he told me. “It’s my favorite way to try to stay in shape. And if gas fell to 25 cents a gallon, I’d still bike every day.”

Berg doesn’t believe there’s anything inherently political about riding a bike. “But people on both sides of the political aisle do ascribe political significance to biking. The lifestyle-statement bikers, of course, see the act as a political and social statement. And there’s a certain strain of conservatism that sees conspicuous consumption—driving an SUV and chortling at paying more for gas—as a way to poke a finger in the eyes of the environmental left.”

The impression that bikers are liberal is reinforced, Berg feels, by the most vocal and political members of bike culture. These are the folks who corner the media's spotlight (and draw drivers' resentment) with high-profile events like Critical Mass, a group ride that floods downtown streets in many cities at the end of each month as riders zealously reassert their rights to the paths normally traveled by cars. Similarly, when the price of gas climbed to $4 over the summer, the media couldn’t run enough stories about the unprecedented popularity of bike commuting. Activist bikers leveraged the newfound media attention to promote certain messages: that bicycling is an inherently political activity; that cyclists care about traditionally progressive causes like environmental protection; that more tax money should be allocated for bike paths and a transportation infrastructure that takes vehicles other than cars into account.

“The faction of bikers that is fundamentally political has done a good job of tying [bikes and politics] together,” Berg says. “The Green Party has wrapped itself around the bicycle.” But for many, biking is political because everything is political: “You need a public infrastructure to [bike],” wrote Cyclezealot, on Bike Forums. “So, cycling will always be affected by politics, like it or not.”

When politics does bleed into cycling, does it create tensions? I asked Berg if he ever feels outnumbered on group rides dominated by liberals, and if those differences ever come to the fore. “Of course,” he replied, “On several levels. I’m a conservative. I don’t believe in man-made global warming. I’m biking for reasons that are partly personal and partly capitalistic; I don’t want to pay $4 for gas.” But he has made liberal friends based on a common love of cycling. So has William Bain, a retired Naval officer living in the Pacific Northwest whose bike commute is a 43-mile round trip. “Cycling is the common bond I have with my liberal friends,” said Bain. “We can get in a heated passionate argument about politics and then go out and try to ride each other into the ground. Good clean fun.”

Berg and Bain have allies in the government who see bicycle advocacy as a nonpartisan issue. Take Republican Greg Brophy, a Colorado state senator and an avid cyclist who competes in road bike marathons and uses his mountain bike to haul farm equipment. Brophy worked with Bicycle Colorado to pass Safe Routes to School and is supporting a “Green Lanes” bill to give bicyclists safer routes through metro areas.

Conservative cyclists don’t tend to get help from all their political allies, however. Some right-wing personalities know that biking is a hot-button issue and make pointed attacks on cyclists while reinforcing the liberal-cyclist stereotype. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s hard-right columnist Katherine Kersten earned the ire of the Twin Cities bike community in 2007 when she characterized Critical Mass as a mob of “serial lawbreakers” bent on ruining the lives of honorable citizen motorists. “Are you rushing to catch the last few innings of your son's baseball game? Trying to get to the show you promised your wife for her birthday? Critical Mass doesn't give a rip.”

Last fall, Twin Cities talk-radio host Jason Lewis made on-air remarks decrying the “bicycling crowd” as “just another liberal advocacy group.” He recycled a common anti-bike canard—that bicyclists have no rights to the roads because they don’t pay taxes to service those roads—before issuing a call to arms: “The people with the 2,000-pound vehicle need to start fighting back.” Lewis’ comments seem especially reckless in light of recent events: In September alone, four Twin Cities cyclists were killed in collisions with motor vehicles. One conservative blogger celebrates bike fatalities and gleefully anticipates more. “Keep it up,” he tells cyclists, “and the law of averages says we’ll have a few less Obama voters in November.”

While such critics tap into right-wing rage at all things liberal, conservative bikers appeal to a saner tenet of their political tradition: the free market's invisible hand. “Let the market roam free,” Berg exclaimed. “The higher gas goes, the more people will try biking.” And where there’s money to be made, bikes and bike-share programs will emerge. When the Republican National Convention came to the Twin Cities in September, for example, a bike-share program was there to greet it. Humana and Bikes Belong made 1,000 bikes available for rental during the convention, with 70 bikes staying behind as part of a permanent rental program.

Conservatives on bikes represent the breakdown of party-line stereotypes. They are heartening examples of crucial divergences from the lazy red/blue dichotomy the pundits are relentlessly hammering in these last frenzied days of campaign season. They are a microcosm in which a stereotype falls away to reveal an actual individual. What's more, they represent not just the abandonment of tired clichés, but more bikes on the road—something all of us on two wheels, regardless of our political idiosyncrasies, can agree is a good thing.

Image by  Kyknoord , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

By the time Tina Fey emerged onto the cultural landscape in 2000 as an anchor on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment, the Second City alum was already the show’s head writer, quietly shepherding the comedy institution into its late-'90s renaissance and noticeably improving its ratio of funny-to-bad sketches.

Her star continued to rise with the razor-sharp satirical sitcom 30 Rock, which premiered in 2006 and solidified her status as the embodiment of geek chic in an entertainment climate where brainy, funny women are tragically undervalued. Fey has carved out a career in which she accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of injecting savvy cultural and political commentary into mass entertainment, with her cerebral, rapid-fire monologues on “Update” and then with the surprisingly subversive 30 Rock.

But no one could have predicted Fey’s next act until August 29 of this year, when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. The world pounced on the striking similarity between Fey and the VP candidate, and Fey didn’t disappoint. She has returned to Saturday Night Live to lampoon the candidate’s disastrous interviews with Katie Couric and her debate against Joe Biden, and delivered a speech with Hillary Clinton as played by longtime collaborator Amy Poehler. For her part, Palin has joked about honing her own Tina Fey impression, telling reporters she dressed as Fey for Halloween. (When? Last year?)

This week, Fey signed a multimillion-dollar book deal for a collection of humorous essays in the vein of Woody Allen and Nora Ephron. She appears undaunted by relative missteps like the box-office flop Baby Mama or her shilling for American Express, and now wields enormous cultural influence—as writer, performer, and human barometer of that uniquely American nexus of politics and entertainment.

Fey doesn’t necessarily relish her newfound cultural clout, however. As successful as her Sarah Palin gig has been, Fey hopes it doesn’t last long: “I want to be done playing this lady November 5,” she said backstage at this year’s Emmys. “So if anyone could help me be done playing this lady November 5, that would be good for me.”

We’ll do our best, Tina.

Image by David Shankbone, licensed by Creative Commons.

With less than a month to go until Election Day, Barack Obama and John McCain are pegging their hopes on two very different campaign strategies. Obama is waging a ground war to get out the vote, while McCain is lobbing grenades at his opponent’s character. Which tack wins in November will say as much about Americans as it does about the two candidates.

The two camps’ approaches have come into stark relief over the last few days. On Saturday, Greg Strimple, a top adviser to McCain, dimwittedly announced to the Washington Post that “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans.” Then the surrogates were unleashed on the Sunday talk-show circuit to stoke the fear about Obama’s association with Weather Underground cofounder Bill Ayers. Here’s a quick-and-dirty video roundup from the weekend smearfest by TPM:

Sarah Palin has beaten the same drum on the stump, saying Obama was “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” And in Bill Kristol’s column in the New York Times today, she resurrected—at the conservative shill’s prodding—the specter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

And in advance of Tuesday’s debate, McCain unleashed his own vitriol. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” McCain asked a cheering crowd in Albuquerque, tipping his hand to show what will surely be the strategy from now until November 4: Scare people away from this Barack (Hussein) Obama. 

Meanwhile, on Monday, Obama’s key strategy came center stage as the deadline for registering new voters in several states hit. The Washington Post parsed the preliminary numbers, and things do not look good for McCain: 

In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states -- 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.  

In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear -- of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds. 

(USA Today has a handy chart showing the two sides’ gains in battleground states. And to read a great account of what this effort looks like on the ground, read FiveThirtyEight’s dispatch yesterday from Tippecanoe County, Indiana.)

And so as McCain, Palin, & Co. rumble in the muck, the Obama team is still steadily hitting the pavement, reaching out to new voters in an attempt to remake the electoral map. (For an excellent dissection of Obama’s long-term strategy, read the American Prospect’s September cover story, “It’s His Party.”) 

Now, that’s not to say the Obama campaign hasn’t launched its own negative assault. Today, they unveiled their Keating Economics documentary and website. But, as Utne.com’s Jake Mohan notes, “it remains to be seen whether anyone besides the die-hard wonks will sit through a 13-minute video about the economy—and how well Obama’s attack will stick” amidst the McCain camp’s sharper jabs.

Then there’s the qualitative difference between the two negative tacks. The Keating punches are based in criticisms of policy, while McCain’s assaults are meant to question Obama’s character. If Obama wanted to take that lower road, he could, of course, run ad after ad showing Palin being blessed by a witch hunter who wants to ensure she’s elected so she can put God back into the public schools. Or, as Democratic strategist Paul Begala noted on Meet the Press, the Obama campaign could start hammering McCain for sitting on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom. Begala explains:

You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

Bye, bye, Florida.

Instead, though, Obama seems focused on the ground war, a strategy that tends to make Dems fret about not swinging back hard enough (see Kerry, Swift Boat). And the nervous Nellies could prove to be right, though I can’t help but think back to 2000, when Bush’s evangelical get-out-the-vote effort stealthily won the day.

It all depends on whether American voters opt to open their hearts to seedy fear-mongering, and, if they do, whether a crop of newly franchised voters outnumber their weaker fellow citizens. In that way, this election seems more a test of Americans than of John McCain or Barack Obama.

Adapted from image by  realjameso16 , licensed under Creative Commons.

American politics crept its way into Paris Fashion Week, where models lankier than Obama himself strutted down runways in attire inspired by the presidential contender. Designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac debuted a loud yellow, black, and white dress with a headshot of Obama printed on the front and Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words, “I have a dream today,” on the back. The model sporting the dress wore fingerless gloves reading “yes” on one hand and “no” on the other. Obama also captured the creative imaginations of Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte, who sent a simple knit dress with “Obama” written boldly across the chest down the runway as part of a tribute show to Sonia Rykiel.

But the Democrat isn’t the only one making a mark on the design and retail worlds. Mother Jones reports the release of the Sarah-Cuda, a pink camouflage crossbow named after Sarah Palin and touted by the retailer as a “tribute to women like Sarah Palin who bear the responsibility of family and work while strengthening the moral fiber of society.”

When Sarah Palin was asked what magazines or newspapers she read before she was John McCain’s vice presidential candidate, she said, “all of them.” (Video below.) Clearly, then, she reads Utne Reader. She went on to say, “I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.” I thought I saw her skulking around our library of 1,500 publications. Using her logic, I dug into our library and put together a list of other sources that Sarah Palin must read:

Russian Life : This English-language bimonthly must be a valuable resource for understanding Russian-American relations, if “Putin ever rears his head.”

Ms. Magazine : As one of the best-known feminist publications, Ms. likely helps Gov. Palin keep track of the latest in feminist thought.

The Chronicle of Higher Education : In the debates last night, Palin said of Joe Biden’s wife, who works as a teacher, “God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?” This magazine, which profiles people working to get teachers some reward in this life, is probably on her reading list, too.

$pread: One of the only magazines for sex workers, this magazine gives a voice to people not often heard in most other media. The latest issue has a “Sex Worker Voter Guide” that says, “ No major presidential candidate in American politics today can be said to embrace a genuinely pro-sex worker agenda,” but the fact that Sarah Palin reads the magazine must be a start. Right?

What else do you think Sarah Palin might read?

Image adapted from original by  T toes , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Watch a video of Palin talking about her reading habits below:

As political junkies across the country eagerly await the Biden-Palin showdown tonight, On Faith, a joint project of the Washington Post and Newsweek, asked a panel of contributors what they would want to know about the candidates' faith. A few of these spiritual thinkers said the debates would be better if the questions left out religion all together.

Michael Otterson, head of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said:

I would ask Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin absolutely nothing about their religious beliefs… The media, political pundits, and many of the public have gorged themselves on religious issues of almost complete irrelevance while the country, deeply divided by everything from the Iraq war to how to control the price of gas, has spiraled toward economic meltdown… As long as respected news organizations treat religion like this—presenting it like it's a public policy issue or giving platforms to extreme voices to generate controversy—more people will become disillusioned until matters of faith lose their relevance altogether. Please! Let's grapple with the real issues of an election and leave the candidates to pray and worship in whatever way they choose.

Deepak Chopra, founder and president of Alliance for a New Humanity said:

If Joe Biden and Sarah Palin aren't asked about religion in their upcoming debate, that would be healthy. The fact that the right wing has profited handsomely from the religious issue doesn't make it fair or even constitutional. Nor does it offset the harm they have done. The Constitution kept God out of politics in order to avoid the inflamed conflict that has mired this country since the Reagan revolution.

Susan K. Smith, senior pastor at Advent United Church of Christ said:

Quite frankly, I am tired of all the discussion about religion and beliefs in this campaign. Being "religious" doesn't make one a necessarily better president. George Bush is religious, but neither the world nor this country seems to be the better for it. So, I really don't care about Palin's and Biden's religious beliefs. I do care, though, about what they think about what is the best way to help “the least of these” in this country and in this world. I hate religion. I hate how it makes people think they're better than others, or how it seems to make people think they have the right to stuff their beliefs down the throats of other people... and still treat people really badly. I think some of the nicest, and most moral people, are NOT religious. So, given the chance, I would not ask Palin or Biden about their religious beliefs.

The press finally found something more compelling to cover than Sarah Palin: “It's the economy, stupid,” according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Each week in its news index, PEJ breaks down the storylines that are filling the nation's news holes, and the results can be quite telling. The week of September 15–21 marked the first time since the Democratic National Convention that campaign coverage had been dominated by a story without Palin as its central character. According to PEJ, the economy sprinted to the top of the pack that week, accounting for 43.3 percent of campaign coverage.

But, “the focus on the economy practically came out of the blue,” despite the fact that our financial woes had been brewing for some time, says PEJ. Take a look at campaign coverage for the week of September 8 – 14:

NPR aired a story this week that may offer some explanation. Media consultant Jeff Jarvis tells David Folkenflik that even the media are overwhelmed by the nature of the news these days. “It’s just too big and too complicated, and it requires both too much background and fundamental understanding about economics,” Jarvis said. Folkenflik writes that the media is struggling to keep up with such huge national developments in the midst of a presidential campaign. “The breakneck pace of developments means a lot of news worth knowing receives the briefest burst of attention before being dropped for something hotter.”

Charts courtesy of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a project of the Pew Research Center. "Top Campaign Storylines of the Week, September 15-21," published September 22. "Top Campaign Storylines of the Week, September 8-14," published September 15.

A realization just hit me like the explosion of a roman candle firing across the sky: Sarah Palin isn’t inarticulate; she’s a beat-style poet, extemporaneously constructing stream-of-consciousness, free-verse works of art during interviews. Consider this poem Palin rattled off in her recent interview with Katie Couric: 

This is crisis moment for America,
really the rest of the world also,
looking to see what the impacts will be,
if America were to choose not to shore up what has happened on Wall Street,
because of the ultimate adverse effects on Main Street
(and then how that affects this globalization that we’re a part of in our world)
so the rest of the world really is looking at John McCain:
the leadership that he’s going to provide through this,
and if those provisions in the proposal can be implemented
and make this proposal better—
make it 
          make more sense 
                    to taxpayers 
                              then again,
John McCain is going to prove his leadership.

Now compare that to the beginning of Howl by Allen Ginsberg:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

Or this quote from the same Sarah Palin interview:

But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the, it’s got to be all about job creation, too: shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track, so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief, for Americans, and trade—we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that more as more opportunity—all those things under the umbrella of job creation, this bailout is a part of that.

And compare that to a quote from On the Road by Jack Kerouac:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!

You can watch a clip of Palin’s poetic genius below:

The press has finally had enough of the McCain campaign’s decision to cloister Sarah Palin away from interviews and press conferences. Reporters cried foul yesterday in a widely publicized blowup over who would be allowed to witness Palin’s meetings with world leaders in New York City. As Ta-Nehisi Coates predicted on the Atlantic blogs, “even the meekest, most bespectacled, nerdiest kid has a breaking point.” 

The McCain campaign has been garnering headlines lately by attacking the press, pointing out how reporters are “in the tank” for Obama and criticizing them for being too hard on Palin. The problem is, Jeffery Goldberg writes for the Atlantic blogs, “If Sarah Palin becomes vice president, she will presumably have meetings with people who are scarier than Michael Cooper, the Times reporter who seems to have the misfortune of covering her today.”

Even conservatives have begun to wonder about the McCain-Palin game of hide-the-candidate. Rod Dreher, who blogs as Crunchy Con, writes, “If she can't answer questions like any normal politician, what business does she have on the ticket?” Daniel Larison writes on the American Conservative that the strategy “confirms not only that Palin is not ready for the VP spot but that the presidential nominee himself regards his running mate as little more than window dressing.”

McCain may view her as “window dressing.” He may also view her as “a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment," which is how Campbell Brown described Palin’s treatment on CNN (video below). Brown eloquently attacked the McCain campaign from a feminist perspective, calling on them to “free Sarah Palin,” and allow her to talk to reporters. “You claim she is ready to be one heart beat away from the presidency,” Brown declared. “If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now.”

The Left has voiced plenty of criticism of McCain and Palin’s policies, but one facet of the Republican ticket that has been tragically left alone is its anti-science stance, says MIT researcher John Tirman.

Tirman reiterates the Republican candidates’ resistance to stem-cell research and evolution, and their support for offshore and ANWR drilling. But he takes things one step further, going beyond the moral implications of these policies to look at the problem from an economic point of view.

First of all, in order to compete with flourishing markets like those in Asia, the United States must continue its tradition of innovation and scientific excellence. Without it, “hopes for creating the new technologies and processes that fuel sustainable economic activity will surely decline.” Secondly, scientific research offers solutions to crucial problems such as disease and fossil-fuel dependency, and without the necessary funding for advances in technology, our ability to solve these problems would come to a standstill (a dilemma about which Utne.com has previously blogged). Lastly, scientists from other countries would eschew an anti-science United States in favor of a more tolerant community in which to conduct their research, circling back to the author’s first point about scientific excellence being “the font of prosperity.”

We ignore these issues at our own peril, insists Tirman. “The McCain/Palin shakiness on science issues is not just another occasion for SNL skits or jokes about the U.S. being the laughing stick [sic] of the world. They're life-and-death issues for global health and ecology, as well as our own well being.”

Now that Sarah Palin’s meet-and-greet with the media is almost a distant memory, McCain aides are taking their turn in the ring, and the gloves are off. In the second big McCain-media tussle of the fall campaign, McCain strategist Steve Schmidt unleashed fiery attacks against the New York Times, calling the venerable paper “a pro-Obama advocacy organization” and claiming that “it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.”

Schmidt's fury was sparked by a story about McCain campaign manager Rick Davis’s ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Times reported that Fannie and Freddie paid Davis almost $2 million while he served as president of an advocacy group the companies formed to fight increased regulation, and that Davis held the position primarily because of his close relationship with John McCain.

Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor, responded to the campaign’s accusations in an email to Politico:

It's our job to ask hard questions, fact-check their statements and their advertising, examine their programs, positions, biographies and advisors. Candidates and their campaign operatives are not always comfortable with that level of scrutiny, but it's what our readers expect and deserve.   

According to Politico, McCain aides also held a conference call encouraging reporters to hit Obama harder. “But,” writes Ben Smith, “the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.” (Are we sensing a pattern here?)

When Politico pressed the campaign about the inaccuracies, they got this response:

One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”

Another, Brian Rogers, responded more directly:

“You are in the tank,” he e-mailed.

Of course, it is a reporter's job to identify such "small" falsehoods. But, no matter, the media-bashing continues. Until next time. . .

Image by soggydan, licensed under Creative Commons.

Sarah Palin’s performance on ABC last week has been extensively analyzed, but as the only journalist allowed access to the candidate since her announcement, how did Charles Gibson do?

Before the interview, speculation swirled about whether Gibson would go easy on Palin, and pundits and voters from around the country advised him on what to ask. Was he tough enough, too tough, and were your questions answered?

Jack Shafer at Slate gives Gibson high marks: “At every point in the Q&A, Gibson had the right follow-up questions to elicit more from Palin, including after he asked the Bush Doctrine cringe-maker.”

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz liked Gibson’s work, too: “What the ABC newsman conducted yesterday was a serious, professional interview that went right at the heart of what we want and need to know about the governor: Could she be president? Does she understand the nuances of international affairs? Does she have a world view?” (Thanks, TVNewser.)

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics recaps reader responses as mixed: “Speaking of Gibson, some people thought he was fair, while others said he looked like set out to try and make Palin look bad. More than a few mentioned what they saw as his condescending attitude—a number described Gibson's demeanor in terms of a snobby professor delivering a pop quiz while looking down his nose at his subject.”

The conservative blog Newsbusters has no praise for Gibson: “But there was more than Charlie's sneering condescending tone, looking down over the rim of his glasses like some snobby intellectual that bothered me. Twisting her words into a fabrication feeding the fear of theocracy was utterly insulting.”

The liberal blog Crooks and Liars thinks Gibson did fine: “To his credit, Charlie Gibson actually did a pretty good job of grilling Sarah Palin in her first interview since accepting the Republican nomination.”

My two cents: I was glad to see him push her, but also thought he missed some follow-up questions. One that stuck out: When asked what special insight into Russia Alaska’s proximity to the country gave her, Palin responded that you can actually see Russia from Alaska. Gibson moved on.

According to Google Trends, web searches for Sarah Palin have recently begun to exceed those for gossip darlings Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. What were so many curious citizens digging for? Mostly pictures, internet-search analyst Bill Tancer told Future Tense, especially “compromising” or “hot” ones. Tancer revealed the top 100 Palin search terms to Future Tense. Inquiries into Palin’s positions on issues barely make the list. Here are the top 15:

1. sarah palin
2. palin
3. bristol palin
4. sara palin
5. sarah palin biography
6. sarah palin vogue magazine
7. sarah palin pictures
8. sarah palin photos
9. sarah palin beauty pageant
10. sarah palin bio
11. sarah palin scandal
12. sarah palin hot
13. sarah palin nude
14. sarah palin wiki
15. sarah palin speech

Photo by Sgt. Karima Turner, Alaska National Guard Public Affairs.

We all know how much fun it is to gather around a television with like-minded friends and shout snide things at the unpalatable speeches being broadcast. Now imagine doing that in a theater filled with 300 drunk liberals. 

That’s precisely what I did last Thursday, at the tail end of Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead’s multimedia satire, Shoot the Messenger. The show holds weekly performances in New York City, where Winstead and her ensemble spoof the week’s headlines during a parodic morning news show called Wake Up World (“America’s only 6-hour morning show!”)

But last week, in dubious honor of the RNC, Winstead’s troupe brought their show to her native Minneapolis for three nights at the Parkway Theater. Each evening’s events went beyond mere theater to include live feeds from the RNC and musical performances from revered protest singer Billy Bragg and local legends Dan Wilson, Jim Walsh, and Grant Hart.

Before the show, the Parkway’s seats were mostly full of chatty people munching popcorn as the onstage screen showed eminently believable ads for the “24/7 Infonewsment Network’s” fake shows, such as Poll Dancing with sexy anchorwoman Emily Rackcheck and MedicAsian with Dr. Vijay Jay.

Winstead and her co-star Baron Vaughn starred as Wake Up World’s chipper, clueless hosts Hope Jean Paul and Davis Miles. Hope Jean Paul is, like her creator, from the Twin Cities area: “I’m originally from Coon Rapids,” she chirped, to which Vaughn (who is African American) replied, “Wow! Sounds like my kind of place!” Naughty laughter erupted and Winstead replied, “Now, Davis, try not to be offended by the name, just because it contains the word Rapids.”

That joke set the tone for the show, whose mix of absurdity and topical satire has made Winstead’s more famous brainchild the Daily Show a media phenomenon for over a decade. Wake Up World, even more so than the Daily Show or its cousin the Colbert Report, is an acerbic and overtly partisan takedown of our leaders’ hypocrisies and the 24-hour news cycle’s vapid excesses.

In true morning-show form, Winstead and Vaughn hyped insipid segments like Lumpy the Cancer-Sniffing Dog, who they promised would find the one lucky audience member with a malignant tumor. A pro–big oil energy “expert” was brought in to discuss his new book The Town Pump: Alternatives to Alternative Energy. And a member of private security contractor Blackwater sat down with the hosts to discuss his new miracle fitness regimen: “Extreme Waterboard Abs.”

Pulchritudinous newsgal Emily Rackcheck delivered hourly news updates in a low-cut sweater and miniskirt. Bloviators Hunter Carlsbad (wearing a bowtie) and Daniels Midland (host of the Complication Room) shouted at each other during a Crossfire-style segment touted as “a debate between both sides of the political spectrum: the Far Right and the Right of Center!”

Winstead also tailored the show to the region with pre-taped biographical puff pieces on Laurie Coleman and Michelle Bachman subtitled “Behind the Taut Canvas.” There were ads for “a 31-part investigative series” called White in America and a gauzy video appeal from Sarah Silverman for charitable donations to private contracting firms.

After Wake Up World concluded, the evening shifted gears for its second segment, where Winstead reappeared as herself and sat down with liberal talk-radio host Ed Schultz to discuss the RNC—specifically Palin, whose fur-coat photo Winstead captioned “Wasilla DeVille.” Schultz was witty and affable, assuring us that McCain’s campaign would buckle under the weight of its own hypocrisy: “Look, everything’s going to be fine. And if it’s not, then we get another vice president who might shoot someone in the face!”

This marathon mix of political discourse, satire, and campy theatre was only a prelude, however, for the evening’s main event: a massive group viewing of John McCain’s speech. The audience, now well-lubricated and ready to laugh not so much with satirical glee as incredulous derision, filed back into the theater as McCain’s hagiographic video was playing on the giant screen, which had been tuned to MSNBC’s live feed from the convention.

As the man himself took the stage, the theater audience erupted with boos and squeals. The people around me gladly obeyed the rules of a drinking game Winstead had announced earlier: that we hoist our glasses every time the word maverick was used. Genuine cheers burst forth when MSNBC’s cameras zoomed in on the IVAW and Code Pink protestors who had infiltrated the hall.

As the speech dragged on and John McCain’s smiling rictus became increasingly creepy, the Parkway crowd got rowdier and my convention fatigue peaked. Around the moment when the last poorly programmed image appeared behind the penis-shaped stage, I fled the theater for some fresh air. When I went back inside a few minutes later, I encountered a completely different scene which cleared my head, the perfect antidote to the televised nightmare we’d just seen: Dan Wilson was playing his ubiquitous and charming hit single “Closing Time” to a much smaller crowd gathered near the front of the theater, kicking off one of Jim Walsh’s famous Hootenannies. Then Grant Hart took the stage, and the aging avatars of the Minneapolis counterculture settled further into their seats to watch their heroes perform, resting after a long evening—and week—of politicized sensory overload.

Sarah Palin’s religious rhetoric has managed to both rankle progressives and thrill conservatives. While Palin's nomination may have seemed foolish based on her lack of experience, George Lakoff at Tikkun articulates why McCain’s choice is a shrewdly political move that—in a cultural climate that places family values ahead of issues or experience—will appease culturally conservative voters.

“Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse,” Lakoff writes. “The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity—not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.” In this political climate, where religious style trumps political substance and the “external realities” of a candidate’s voting record and job experience are nearly immaterial, Lakoff concludes that Sarah Palin is the perfect choice for VP.

Palin is not, however, the perfect choice for advocates of the separation between church and state—people like Rob Boston of Americans United. “I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches,” Boston told the Associated Press. “The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God.”

On his blog at the Wall of Separation, Boston explains that he is not opposed to a candidate who makes references to God. He is opposed to candidates who would let faith do the governing. Referring to a speech Palin made at her former church in which she stated that the people of Alaska should “get right with God,” and that the war in Iraq reflects God’s will, Boston chafed at the idea that public officials might hope to mandate the faith of their constituency:

“I don’t want the president, governor, or mayor worrying about the state of my soul and whether my neighbors and I are ‘right with God.’ He or she would do better building the economy, creating jobs and filling potholes. We have great religious freedom in this nation. If any American feels that his or her soul needs a tune-up, there is no shortage of religious leaders willing to help out with that.”

Image by  wellohorld , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

After lavishing praise on John McCain for his military service, Republicans took the opportunity to ridicule Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer on day three of the GOP convention.

Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, and Sarah Palin all took turns kicking dirt on Obama’s early days on Chicago’s South Side. Pataki said, “What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.” Giuliani chimed in, “He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the resume.” And Palin drove home the point, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, expect that you have actual responsibilities.”

These were sharp jabs at Obama meant to stoke doubt about his readiness to be president. But the comments left any details about what Obama actually did as an organizer to the imagination. So what in God’s name did Obama do on the South Side and does it matter?

Writing for the New Republic, John B. Judis argues that the important thing to understand about Obama’s time as an organizer is not what he did, but why he quit. Judis describes Obama as “a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it.” His essay details how Obama’s organizing work led him to believe politics, not organizing, was his best opportunity to produce broad-based change. An article published last year by the Nation and another at the New Republic also take stabs at fleshing out Obama’s organizing days.

In response to the convention speeches, the Nation quotes Obama as saying, “I would argue that doing work in the community to try and create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job-training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed, that that's relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from, who I believe in, who I'm fighting for and why I'm in this race.”

Weigh in: How is Obama's community organizing experience relevant in this election?

Image by Ari Levinson, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

Hello? Barack? Are you still out there?

I was a bit skeptical that John McCain would be able to completely steal the media spotlight from Barack Obama last week. But on that account, he hit a home run by giving Sarah Palin the VP nod. (Unfortunately for McCain, she’s doing a pretty good job of stealing the limelight from him, too.)

So what was Barack up to while the country turned their attention away from the Democrats to buzz about teen pregnancy, mommy wars, Republican disdain for the media, and experience versus narrative? After some digging, here’s what I came up with:

Entered enemy territory: Obama appeared on the O’Reilly Factor Thursday night (more of the interview to air this week), and he sent troops into the Republican trenches of St. Paul for the RNC.

Took a swing through Pennsylvania. Obama and Biden attempted to court a state they believe could win them the election.

Asked supporters to help Hurricane Gustav victims.

Told reporters to leave Bristol Palin alone.

Kept mum on Sarah Palin.

Raised $10 million after Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Stood up for community organizers.

Repeated the refrain: “With John McCain, it’s more of the same.”

In the wake of John McCain's surprising VP pick, the media's rush to answer the question “Who is Sarah Palin?” was quick and intense.

But when news broke that her 17-year old unwed daughter was pregnant, the scrutiny became both personal and political, sparking intense debate about what’s fair and foul in campaign coverage.

Palin has dominated the headlines of nearly every major news outlet and many minor ones for the last week. You might think the McCain campaign would welcome the spotlight shining on someone other than Barack Obama, but instead, they're outraged. They claim the media's treatment of Palin—which has included stories about her pregnant daughter, questions about her qualifications for the job and the McCain campaign’s vetting process, inquiries into ethics scandals under investigation in Alaska, and examinations of her record—is sexist, liberally biased, and out of line. The campaign is even now refusing to answer further questions about Palin's vetting.

Surely the McCain campaign can't be surprised that voters and reporters want to know more about a woman whose name few outside of Alaska even recognized two weeks ago. But would the questions being asked of Sarah Palin be asked of a male candidate? And has the media gone too far?

Here's a round-up of opinions on the key fronts in the Palin media wars. What's your take?

Palin and John McCain and the Republicans deserve every column inch, every broadcast second of scrutiny they're getting. I believe—unlike Barack Obama—that members of a candidate's family are fair game once a candidate thrusts them onto the public stage—as did Palin when McCain presented her as his pick for vice president in Dayton, Ohio, last Friday. The eagerness with which politicians deploy their children as campaign props stands as an open invitation to the press to write about them. —Jack Shafer at Slate

The spin du jour is that her choice reflects poorly on Candidate McCain because she wasn't properly vetted. Yet this seems to be false. . . . On Monday, Time magazine's Nathan Thornburgh wrote from Wasilla, Alaska, that Bristol Palin's pregnancy had been known by virtually everyone there, with little made of it. But what do these private family matters have to do with Mrs. Palin's credentials to be Vice President in any case? —Wall Street Journal, Review & Outlook

They have said this was Bristol’s decision and we should honor that. . . . The reason why I think it’s fair game is Sarah Palin is on record saying she would veto abortions for women even in the event of being raped. So what she is in essence saying: Respect my family’s ability to make this decision and elect me so that I can keep your family from having the same opportunities. —Jon Stewart, September 3, on the Daily Show

What we’re dealing with now, there’s nothing subtle about it. We’re dealing with the assumption that child-rearing is the job of women and not men. Is it sexist? Yes. —Georgetown professor Deborah Tannen, quoted by Politico, responding to questions about whether Palin's maternal responsibilities are compatible with the VP job.

Palin is simply not known. McCain's staff says the press is punishing her because pundits so desperately want to be in the know. But leaking has its benefits, one of which is that her flaws might have been scrutinized and even dismissed ahead of time by the press. —David Folkenflik at Media Circus, NPR

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice? Bad questions. Bad media. Bad. —A sarcastic Roger Simon at Politico

Image by buddhakiwi, licensed under Creative Commons.

Balloons and confetti couldn’t save John McCain from the letdown of the Republican National Convention’s final night. Sarah Palin’s introduction to the American public last night left delegates buzzing with excitement. Even before she went on stage, a countdown created anticipation for her appearance. Tonight, delegates were drinking coffee minutes before Senator McCain’s speech, trying to stay awake for their chosen candidate.

I asked a few delegates to compare the two nights, and most agreed that this evening was more subdued. “Wait until Cindy gets on,” said a delegate from Georgia. A delegate from Iowa said, “I think we have to wait until for the man himself.”

That promised excitement never came. After McCain’s speech, delegates used words like “sober” and “on message” to describe the proceedings. Even the ultra-conservative blog Powerline called the talk, “a little flat and unstructured.” Words like “personal responsibility” garnered huge applause at the Ron Paul rally yesterday, but the Republicans tonight couldn’t get quite as excited.

Many in the crowd tried to interject some enthusiasm to the speech. One man behind me yelled “Wooo, John” after nearly every applause line. When McCain mentioned Senator Obama, one person in the crowd started to boo, anticipating a harsh attack. Senator McCain, however, wouldn’t oblige.

The only real excitement came when two separate groups of protesters were dragged out of the hall. The crowd tried to chant down the protesters by yelling, “U.S.A., U.S.A..” After the second group was subdued, Senator McCain pleaded with the crowd saying, “please don’t be diverted from the ground noise and the static.” That ended up being one of the biggest applause lines of the night.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

Tensions run high at the party nominating conventions, especially when the speeches are filled with as much vitriol as Rudy Giuliani’s and Sarah Palin’s last night. People get pushed, views are blocked, harsh words are exchanged, and deep-seated resentments tend to be exposed. I ended up stuck inside a throng of people taking photos of Sarah Palin’s family, which also happened to be where the US Virgin Islands were supposed to sit. One of the delegates from the Virgin Islands had some harsh words for the organizers of the convention. You can watch a video of that below:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

Sarah Palin delivered a rousing convention speech that will no doubt add to her likability quotient among the not-yet-saved. Plus, she’s really good with a sarcastic flourish. So what’s a jittery Democrat to do? Here are four strategies the Democrats should take away from last night:

1. Ignore the condescending impulse to go easy on a woman. Unleash Joe Biden on the self-proclaimed hockey-mom pitbull in the VP debates.

2. Repeat the following over and over: “Parents: If your daughter is raped, Sarah Palin wants to force her to give birth to her assailants’ child.” Another rendition goes like this: “Sarah Palin wants to force victims of incest to give birth to their sibling/child.”

3. Last night showed that the Republican strategy for dealing with the country’s woes is to rail against big government, blast taxes on the rich, and wave signs reading “Prosperity.” On the Palin front: Remind voters that her state’s economy runs on two things: federal funding largesse and record oil prices that are draining Americans wallets at the pump.

4. Remind voters what happened the last time they went for the likable, folksy option with a sarcastic jab behind every smirk, a wedge issue to dodge every policy discussion, and the right wing of the Republican party in pocket. George W. Bush may have been nixed from the Republican National Convention’s stage, but his spirit (and Rove’s) was alive and well in the presence of Sarah Palin.

Watch Palin's speech:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

With rumor and scandal dominating political coverage lately, publications known for celebrity gossip are honing their political beats. The National Enquirer recently made headlines after breaking the news of the John Edwards affair. Now Michael Calderone of Politico reports that the gossip magazine is also taking credit for influencing the story that Bristol Palin—daughter of VP nominee Sarah Palin—is pregnant. National Enquirer editor David Perel said, “I definitely think we triggered the announcement.” The magazine has three reporters in Alaska right now, uncovering more news of the Palin family. 

Not content to let all the political gossip go to the National Enquirer, the new issue of US Weekly features Sarah Palin on the cover with the headline, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.” The celebrity blog Jossip comments, “All that's missing? ‘Sex.’ But it's implied.”

Also missing from the US Weekly story are the aliens, a beat that has gone virtually uncovered since the Weekly World News stopped publishing earlier this year.

(Thanks, mediabistro.com.)

Yesterday’s rejiggered line-up at the Republican National Convention delivered a meek improvement over the energy level of Monday's kickoff. The attack level, on the other hand, was amped up.

In keeping with the finely honed messaging tack of saying one thing, repeatedly, and doing another, the Republican speakers worked in their patriotic jabs at Barack Obama, despite earlier talking points about ditching partisan attacks at the convention to put on their “American hats” and support those weathering Gustav in the Gulf Coast.

Michele Bachmann—the Minnesota U.S. representative best known for ogling George W. Bush at his 2007 State of the Union and, more recently, explaining that we don’t need to save the environment from global warming because Jesus already saved the world—grinned big as she told the delegates:

Service isn’t a political trait—although some Presidential nominees certainly know more about service than others.

Joe Lieberman woke up from his keynote to call Obama a scaredy cat:

When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would have been a disaster for the U.S.A. When colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield, John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion, advocate the surge, support the surge, and because of that, today, America’s troops are coming home, thousands of them, and they’re coming home in honor.

And, perhaps most indicative of the Republican line of attack to come, former Senator Fred Thompson noted:

It’s pretty clear there are two questions we'll never have to ask ourselves [about John McCain], “Who is this man?” and “Can we trust this man with the presidency?” 

Translation: Do we really know who this Barack Hussein Obama character is?

Tonight promises a higher energy level. The Republicans will get their own version of the “What will she do?” moment that buzzed the Democratic convention with dramatic anticipation before Hillary Clinton took the stage. In the Republicans’ rendition, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will step up to the podium amidst a swirl of recently unearthed backstories. How will she address her daughter’s pregnancy? Any word about sitting through a sermon about how Israeli Jews bring terrorist attacks on themselves for not accepting the Christian path? Or her own take that the United State’s escapade in Iraq was “God’s plan”? Or her affiliation with the Alaska Independence Party, whose founder hates America? And then there’s that Bridge to Nowhere she supported before she rejected it... and her status as a crusader against earmarks who brought in $27 million in earmarks for the town of 6,700 she governed? 

In his convention speech, Obama plucked off each of the Republican talking points against him in rapid fire succession. But he had the time to craft that strategy. Given Palin’s hasty vetting process, it’s unlikely the Republicans will be able to put together such a comprehensive counter-offense. We’ll see tonight. 

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

The internet is buzzing with news about John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin. Bloggers are struggling to figure out who the Alaskan governor really is. Twitter user Eamon 1916 claims that, “Sarah Palin taught MacGuyver [sic] everything he knows.”  Twitter user Dabolos writes, “Sarah Palin isn't qualified for VP, but she did stay in a Holiday Inn last night.

The posts aren’t true, but they’re part of a “Little Known Facts” meme jetting around Twitter. Other favorites from CNetNews include: “Sarah Palin wants more cowbell” and “Sarah Palin knows who was on the grassy knoll.” Michael Turk, another Twitter user, is credited with starting the trend. 

Fake Sarah Palin news can also be found on the blog Welcome to the PalinDrome, where the authors poke fun at “liberels [sic]” and have asked readers to contribute money for a new snowmobile. The site seems to be taking cues from the fake Harriet Meiers blog that appeared when Meiers was nominated as a potential Supreme Court justice.

The real battle ground in the fight for Palin information was her Wikipedia page, even before her nomination was announced. NPR News reports that a pseudonymous user known as “Young Trigg” began editing Palin’s Wikipedia page hours before the nomination was made public. The user, whose name may be a reference to Palin’s youngest child Trig, made some 30 edits, all of which cast Palin in a positive light. Young Trigg chose to deemphasize Palin’s experience in a beauty pageant and focused the entry on her governing prowess and tenacity as a high school basketball player.

Image by  Thomas Roche , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The Republican National Convention lumbered to a start Monday with a business-only agenda, a Hurricane Gustav damper, raucous demonstrations, and fresh family drama from Sarah Palin.

St. Paul’s Xcel center was none-too-densely populated, but the delegates who showed up for the quorum wore their happy faces. If some folks were disappointed that Bush & Cheney were tending to Gustav and weren’t going to speak as planned, party leaders probably heaved a sigh of relief. (If only the RNC was held in 2005, maybe New Orleans would have gotten their attention. Three years later, things are much more attuned to looming natural disaster tragedy: The convention even opened with an appeal for everyone to donate to those affected by Gustav via text message, a tack the Obama team scooped by minutes via a text message appeal of their own.)

And the business about Palin's pregnant, 17-year-old, unmarried daughter was not going to get delegates down. In fact, these party loyalists saw nothing but the bright side:

“As a grandmother, I can tell you the governor is excited,” said Texas delegate Kathie Whitford-Freeman. “The most exciting thing in this world is to be called granny.”

As for the protests, things got rowdy and messy. Utne.com’s Bennett Gordon and Chelsey Perkins has some great video dispatches from the frontlines, as does the UpTake. For some of the finest coverage of the weekend’s preemptive raids and Monday’s ongoing shenanigans, check out the Minnesota Independent.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here.

Here’s what the Republicans have mustered this week: A DNC counteroffensive that mocked the Democrats' stage and blather about how 80,000-plus people showing up for a political speech is somehow a bad thing. And now there’s this: A seemingly last-minute, hail-mary VP pick driven by the now-stale strategy of luring disgruntled Hillary supporters.

Word broke this morning that Sarah Palin is McCain’s pick. The first-term Alaska governor is so unknown on the national stage that CNN’s breaking coverage of the nod was basically a rewrite of the governor’s web bio.

She’s got ethics reform on her short resume (and an ethics investigation) and some green credentials. But most importantly and most obviously she is a woman. Why else would McCain throw his experience mantra under the bus? To paraphrase Josh Marshall, If you’re a 72-year-old cancer survivor running for president you better pick someone who’s ready to step up, especially if your entire campaign is based on your EXPERIENCE.

Here in Minnesota, we’re all buzzing about what doomed Governor Tim Pawlenty’s chances. (Our office pool was a boring failure, since everyone picked Pawlenty.) He was the frontrunner in chatter yesterday, had canceled his week’s schedule, and then suddenly broke the Republicans’ tightly controlled message management and—not sounding too happy about things—told a local radio station that it was a “fair assumption” that he wasn’t going to be the veep. That leaves the impression of a last-minute decision, one forced by the unexpected strength of Obama’s performance last night.

While Democrats—egged on by Republican teasing—stewed in doubts about Obama not hitting back hard enough, or Obama leaving himself open for sucker punches by going on vacation, or their ranks not being unified, the Obama team clearly had a plan. They let McCain’s people play in the mud for the whole of August. And in one fell swoop of a speech, dispatched with each and every tactic in the Pubs’ playbook. The speech was smart, and, given the Republican response to it last night, it was clearly unexpected.

Now, it’s not even September, and the McCain team has been forced to chisel away at their best card—the experience card. It’s time Democrats—particularly the pundits out chattering to the media—stop letting Republicans get their goat and leave the self-doubt thing behind.

Image by  Ryan McFarland , licensed under  Creative Commons .