The old boys network? The old boys network? In the McCain campaign, that’s called a staff meeting.
Ridicule is a powerful tool when used correctly, and Barack Obama has shown time and again he knows how to do it deftly — not nasty like McCain, just light enough to make people laugh. Americans desperately want permission to laugh at John McCain, who they’ve been told too often — especially by Democrats — is all honorable and heroic and POW-y. When Barack Obama grants us permission to laugh at McCain’s lies, flip-flops, house-counting, lobbyist-loving and lipstick-pigging, Americans like him for it.
We respond.
Can we please have more good old-fashioned American ridicule at your opponent’s expense?
{YouTube courtesy of nuturefins, h/t Siun}
Related posts:
- How Dick Cheney Cowed Obama
- McCain Rediscovers His Passion for Screwing Us with Bad Telecom Policy
- Does Obama’s 2008 Campaign Have a Lesson for Saving Healthcare Reform?
- Surprise! Redux: AMA Folds Half-Way On Its Opposition to Public Plan Option; Obama Keeps Up Pressure
- Why We Need Genuine Campaign Finance Reform





Spotlight







Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search

Subtlety–thy name is Obama! Great job!
saw this Teddy P…it rocked
Laughter and ridicule are the most powerful responses to lies. Wonder how much of the poll decline for Ms. Palin can be attributed to Ms. Fey’s bravura performance?
More of this Mr. O.
Tweetie’s ripping ‘em apart tonight.
Hey Teddy
This was a great line. MSM is eating it up too
C’mon! Now we’re talking!
Thank heavens there’s some good news here. That, and what Joe B. said today.
And the headline at HuffPo is Campaign Momentum Shifts to Obama.
Whew…I was going to have a breakdown, but I think I’ll put it on hold.
Thank you, Teddy.
A little more good news – make sure to check pg 2
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…..ultpage=1&
People want permission to laugh at McCain. We’ve been told so many times how honorable he is and what a hero he is. But people find his campaign ludicrous, dishonest, smarmy, and distateful. We want to laugh, and Obama can give us that permission.
I’d sure like to see more of this. It’s a good direction: when people laugh, they remember why. And they associate the person who made them laugh with the good feelings they had when they laughed.
Barack seems comfortable and very himself when he makes these statements about McCain. The “c’mon now” seems very real. I hope he does it more. Folks like it. And we need to like the guy to vote for him.
We need to see more of this side of Obama occasionally along with the serious videos
like his recent 2 minute ad.
He’s perfect at slipping the shiv in with a smile while his delighted audience laughs and applauds.
I’d also like to see some serious ones with strong images and a few passionate Obama statements from his rallies. Something the reptile brain of the masses can absorb without any effort.
They don’t appreciate “subtlety”…it’s elitist!
It *was* a thing of great mirth and surely had to have had at least a little negative effect. *G* Must confess to having absolutely no idea who Fey is ’til this thing broke but the woman deserves some kind of award.
You mentioned on an earlier thread about being in NC; mind my asking what area of the state? Both eastern and western ends here.
Hear, hear! It is so right, and also gives us permission to laugh at McCain as an agent of change, which was terrible casting from the start.
People talking about being for Sarah because she doesn’t seem like a regular old politician and she has a special needs child.
Amen to that, Teddy.
Levity is good as long as he keeps his lines from sounding canned, which I’ve heard him do too much.
Ridicule is a French film which takes place in 1783, a few years before Louis XVI lost the ability to wear a hat; where “…in this country, vices are without consequence, but ridicule can kill.” The film is about the effect of wit and word play on people’s lives and careers. Malicious, mannered and highly enjoyable. Charles Berling, Jean Rochefort, Bernard Giraudeau and Fanny Ardant are excellent
Biden, on the other hand takes a paragraph to deliver a one line.
don’t forget that after McCain nukes Iran, Pakistan will border Iraq and who’ll be laughing then, huh?
You’ve never seen 30 Rock? OMG, it’s unreal. They had an episode where Baldwin was the chair of John Mc Cain’s “Committee for the Re-Invasion of Vietnam”!
ya gotta have a sense of humor with a name like Fanny…just sayin’!
Biden has been delivering some great attack lines this week.
The trouble with the French is they don’t have a word for ridicule.
True, but McCain can’t even remember what he was going to say.
Thanks Mike.
That is not the only trouble with the French
I think that’s part of the flick, I recall a scene where they discuss English “humor” with great disdain.
Preview of Palin on H&C
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/217651.php
I see her stylist has changed her hairdo.
Meow.
Have Palin supporters watch the Defense of Wildlife ad or ask them why they don’t support battered and raped women.
Palin is a woman who doesn’t support women. And the DFW ad did a good job of stamping her smiling face on the bodies of dead wolves.
Or what he has already said…
eastern…right up Hwy 17 in Washington
You got something agaist the French? Meet me out back after dinner and we’ll settle this one like men. *g*
Oh I think she is as just as cute as she can be.
double meow.
That’s the best ya got?
Being a great beauty and married to Truffaut proly helps.
Heym no plagarism. A couple of weeks ago I commented that it takes Biden 45 minutes to deliver a sound bite.
That’s a great line. It would be great if it turns into this year’s “Where’s the beef?”
Yup. New do. She’s so hip and modern now. (meow back)
But, wow, she learned a new word, “Verbage”. I find it hysterical how she grabs a word or sound bite and uses it over and over. I’m very careful not to use the same word in the same paragraph, here or in other writing.
And she’s there to protect and explain the top of the ticket? C’mon!
As a nice counter-weight to the Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild endorsement of John McCain, after she raised lotsa money for Hillary Clinton in the primary, we have this:
Verbage. I prefer Charlie Gibson’s “blizzard of words” to describe her verbage…
I could not agree more, Teddy.
In fact, last week when I was hearing yet more baloney about and from Mc/Palin, I started to hear in my mind’s ear how one might expose the lies and manipulations and hypocrisies. And the tone and idiolect I heard was Obama. He doesn’t so well, I feel I’ve learned from him how to do it in a less angry outraged tone than is my wont.
But, yes. I only wish I heard him doing it a bit more often (though I have no tv, so don’t see ads much; perhaps there is more of this than I realize).
Ha! I always laugh when I read a comment, word for word, copied from someone else in a previous thread. Oh well. I guess you can take it as flattery.
From dictionary.com
I think now the window is moving and we not only get to ridicule McCain, but can work toward ‘McCain used be to honorable…how sad he has changed so’, finally into ‘McCain is a dishonorable, lying panderer’.
10 was for you.
Bloody “reply” button. :-(
Well I’m guilty of that sometimes, but I do try to give credit even if I have the memory span of a gnat when trying to remember names. Hey, I could go work for what’s his-name, the guy with that young gal in the boy’s locker room…what was his name?
David Gregory vs. Lou Dobbs. Ugh. Going to make dinner.
I want to suggest a new feature for Countdown, or Rachel Maddow’s new show: “Lobbyist of the Week”. The idea would be to spend some time on national teevee focusing the spotlight on McCain’s extensive stable of lobbyists in high campaign positions– and if Obama has any, on his, too. Take time to detail who these people are really working for.
Bob in HI
Perfect. Do you think she has one of those New Word A Day Calendars?
Or, is whomever is coaching her just as dumb as she is?
That was such bullshit anyway, she has made those statements about Obama for months and they acted like it was some frickin news flash.
There’s an herb that is supposed to help you with your memory but I’ve forgotten what’s it’s called. (We did this one a couple of days ago, so let’s not repeat the whole back & forth. *g*)
OK, what is this 30 Rock thingie? Don’t have cable; is it on that?
[anal]I guess one of the hazards of having a mother who was an English teacher and librarian is a wish that folks like Palin would actually learn to pronounce words correctly – spelled Verbiage and pronounced Ver-be-ij. [/anal]
Wow, shoring up AIG sure helped, huh? Now it looks like Morgan Stanley is in merger talks with Wachovia (but I thought Wachovia was in trouble, too?) and WaMu is up for sale.
We’re nowhere near the end of this, “guys and gals”. The bleeding on Wall Street is just starting…
Beautiful area; have a cousin who’s only recently moved from there.
Not enough weeks left. Better make it lobbyist-of-the-day.
Excellent job!
But the corporate media and the McSame campaign are going to take it out of context, leave out all the setup to the punchline, and just play the “old” comments.
Just watch.
I resemble that comment. *g*
AMC’s got Fatal Attraction on.
I say: Thanks Phil Gramm and John McCain!!! Thanks a lot!
If you look at the voting on the Gramm (R – Pillage) bill to deregulate the financial world, it was a straight party vote: all except two of the majority R senators, including McCain, voted aye, one abstained, one absent. all dems nay.
And please don’t forget that everyone can email Rachel Maddow with ideas, suggestions, comments, and criticism at rachel@msnbc.com. I’m not sure it worked, but I’ve written every day that Pat Buchanan has appeared, with “Less Pat” in the subject line, along with other helpful ideas.
Yesterday, no Pat!
Rachel knows where the impetus for her show came from. She will listen to our ideas, I believe. Do share them!
TeddyP…think we’ve been laughing at McKrusty on the ProgBlogs for quite a while…there have been snarky articles and photoshopped art of McC since his before his nomination…Olberman was first to call McCain and openly scorn him…than Stewart and Colbert did mocking segments on him, Leno and Letterman joke about him on their nightly shows, and now even loyal BBQ press buddies like Brooks and Cohen are turning on McC and Palin. Even the public is in on the joke that is the McCain/Palin ticket these days. And when you’ve made it to the opening act of Sat Night Live, you’ve arrived center stage. Not to mention the political cartoonists who have done wonderful visual hits on him!
The McC campaign has never allowed press access to Palin, and McC cut off the folksy sessions with his press buddies because he could never remember what his position were from day to day. His press corps follows him around like trained pups and get only canned news sessions…apparently after McCain was closed off from them on a flight they started shouting “Bring Mac Back, Bring Mac Back!” from the coach section.
The “news dogs” may have turned on their masters.
Demi, not so modern and new. That was the first thing I noticed about her when she gave her “acceptance” speach. The first thing that her hair do reminded me of was what we in the South call a “southern baptist trio hairdo.” (No offense meant to Baptists, I was raised one, and converted.) You can spot one a mile away. All that haphazard do that was pulled back with a clamp, is now coiffed into controlled curls pasted by a ton of hairspray. In case you wonder, you can spot the men of the same hairdos a mile away, hairspray and all. Think Tom Delay. Bet it was meltdown in the hot tub.
Clothes? Outfits trying to make her look like a man. Contrast them with Michele Obama, or even Cindy McCain. Stark difference.
Wonder what the “first dude” will show up in as second dude wannabe.
There is a very good list of McShames lobbyists at thread #62 at C&L
http://www.crooksandliars.com/…..-meltdown/
Yep, we gotta keep hammering on that one. Of course, Big Dog did sign it into law and they probably didn’t have the votes to override a veto, so the Dems don’t get a completely free ride. Even with that, the fact that the bill was proposed and sponsored by Gramm, who came so close to being Sec Treasury in waiting, that our side should win this argument pretty well.
No, dear. Not that do. She’s got a new one. Watch the clip or tv today.
The old do, we call it the bigger the hair, the closer to God.
Why??????? does she feel the need to have the rat buchanan on her show? Just unforkin’believable! If she wants a righty foil, there are plenty of others with real depth vs. rat.
Other than him, she’s had some really great people on, including faces that don’t show up in other hours……but should.
Democracy Now is rerunning here Michael Islet talking about bailout – He was/is Kucinich econ advisor and Nomi Prins author “Other peoples Money”
Not heard that one. LMAO.
Can’t watch the clip. No high speed availability in my area.
What does it look like? Have wondered how long it would take her to get a Hillary hairdo.
Guess we’re gonna have to start calling Barack “Shecky.”
this is completely O/T but could I hear at least one Democratic spokesperson or one progressive media type say something along the line of: The government is saying AIG was too big to fail, the CNBC talking heads and financial types are saying the same thing, but it was OK for the Democrats of the DLC for the most recent past to allow the middle class to fail? We weren’t too big to allow us to fail? The dad and mom who worked their asses off to keep a family afloat against the Republican juggernaut of the past 27 years wasn’t good enough to bail out?
Not Hilary at all. Still long, but a more shagged cut. I’m not good with hair style descriptions. You’ll see it.
Write to her. I do. She listens.
rachel@msnbc.com
but your fundamentals are looking strong, james!
why didn’t McOld just pick Tina Fey for VP. She auditioned well on her American Express commercial. very decisive.
Done! Thanks for the reminder.
Bob in HI
Am so glad Obama is using lines like that. Once you become a joke in politics, it’s pretty much over. More of this, please.
I think Rach is great. The only comments I’ve had for her, she’s already corrected.
Like too much eyeshadow sometimes….fixed.
Sometimes she used to “sound” too much like Keith. I was wondering if it was because she had the same writers, but now, and with her own show, she seems to have found her own voice.
Whatever has gone wrong with AP? Didn’t they used to be a R mouthpiece?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/217663.php
Great line by Obama. McCain: He makes Pinnochio look honest.
by great line, I meant the one about the old boys network/staff meeting. The Pinocchio line is just something that’s been floating around on the internets.
“ridicule at your oponents expense”
excellant…I especially would love to see something along these lines;
“alaska contributes 20 percent of the nation’s oil?…palin said that so we can totally discount the accuracy”
man I would love to see that start happening
There it is, “not worry about raise taxes so we can redistribute wealth.” Answer: Both parties want to redistribute wealth thru the tax code; the difference is, Republics want to redistribute wealth up!
Why can’t they just say that!
Got to give it to Tweetie…”So it’s every man for himself now in your party, right?” to Congressman Cantor. The whole exchange was pretty funny!
French Fries are politically correct.
“Every move you make every breath you take we’ll be watching you” and it aint gonna be pretty for Sarah “Coathanger” Palin and her running mate.
Thw reason for “I was a prisoner of war” is do no one can point out his awful problems that disqualify him as a candidate.
Right on! (to all the above) More of the old boys network = McCain staff meeting from the Obama camp. Please!!! Ridicule like this resonates in a way preachiness can’t.