You Spin Me Right Round Like a Record Baby
Published August 29th, 2008 | 
I suppose it’s a given that any writer would be interested in language and how it’s used. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I was on the edge of me seat last night watch Barack Obama take it to McBush in his acceptance speech. My favorite line has to be: “You know, John McCain likes to tell people he’d follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell . . . but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.”
Yes, there was a lot of red meat in that speech (mostly McCain’s) and it’s hard to argue against the speech’s rhetorical power. Admittedly, Obama is my candidate so I’m more inclined to praise the speech, but listening to the commentary afterward only reinforces that Obama scored a home run with just the right language and the right cadence — that the speech was fucking poetry!
On MSNBC, I thought Keith Oberman and Chris Matthews were getting sexually excited. Even that right-wing sourpuss, Pat Buchannan seemed impressed. CNN gave Obama a slight less exuberant thumbs-up. But the most interesting response came from Fox News and McCain’s surrogates. Brit Hume kept calling the speech and the stage craft a “spectacle” — a decidedly negative connotation. Juan Williams (who always looks like he’s in need of some acne products) basically said that the speech was dull. Only Bill Kristol gave the speech relatively high marks which surprised me. McCain’s campaign surrogates looked like they were going to cry. They had almost nothing to say: “stammerstammer . . . no experience . . . blahblahblah . . . stammerstammer . . . blahblah . . . McCain POW . . . blahblahblah . . . stammer . . .” In fact, they sounded a lot like Kerry’s surrogates during the last presidential election, when the Bushies were sticking it to Kerry.
I’ll admit, until last night, I had my doubts about Obama — not about his intelligence and his character, but about whether he had the stuff to take on the Repugnican attack machine and still maintain his dignity. I think McCain and the idiots at Fox finally figured out what they are up against last night. Obama is a fucking ninja and I can’t wait for the debates!
