Can Tina Fey get an Emmy just for this? I know, it's almost too easy. But she's flawless. I knew she was a terrific writer and comedian (er, "comedienne"?), especially from "30 Rock," but I don't think I ever fully realized what a brilliant actor (er, "actress") she is.
And now, conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times on a word familiar to "SNL" viewers: "prudent"...
From "Why Experience Matters":
It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events -- the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.
How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can't, what has worked and what hasn't. [...]
Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
The idea that "the people" will take on and destroy "the establishment" is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.
What must 43 think, assuming he notices, when a prominent conservative extolls the importance one of his father's guiding principles (and Dana Carvey's favorite expression) -- a notion he deliberately rejected for fear of being associated with 41's "wimp factor"? As for the "smug and condescending"... well, that's the heart of the current debate. Do those adjectives apply to the reaction, or to the choice itself? Neoconservatives are delightedly describing her as a candidate who is "a blank page." Could anything sound more 2000? Dick Cheney must be dancing in his (constitutionally mandated) political grave.
There's a mistake in the Telegraph UK article linked to in your post on the words "a blank page" - They use the words "William Kristol" and "thought" in the same sentence.
Rash decisions are often a sign of insecurity, as I believe our 43rd Executive has shown again and again. Of course so much of that decision making came from neo-conservative influences that 43 possibly didn't even understand. On the other hand, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were both enormously skilled and experienced politicians, experts at diplomacy and deliberation, and yet both had failed presidencies despite a smattering of high water marks.
In the end though, I believe lack of experience, as demonstrated by our current President, is the worse of the two because it opens up the party in question to control by extremist policy shapers. At least Nixon and Johnson were doing their own thing. Bush's simple, addled mind was under the firm control of the neo-cons from the start and it appears Palin would be more of the same should she ever assume office.
I guess to sum all this up:
Tina Fey for President! ;)
The idea that "the people" will take on and destroy "the establishment" is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right.
Can I get that made into a bump sticker?
And thank you for hosting a working stream of the SNL skit, as I have been unable to find it. Seems like NBC is determined to invalidate any positive press it receives.
Tina Fey deserves an award for the way she delivered the "I don't know what that is" line alone.
As for the Telegraph article you linked to, allow me to briefly wallow in partisan frustration: Why the hell isn't the Obama campaign hammering on this every day? Why does the Democratic party continue to allow neoconservatism to remain a near secret? I bet if you ask the average American what neoconservatism is and what it has to do with the war in Iraq, they wouldn't know. But if your entire campaign is centered on painting your opponent as "more of the same," is there a better way to do it than to directly link him and his running mate with the biggest shift in American foreign policy ideology in recent history? Bonus: Palin's being groomed to back the position, and as Fey so brilliantly pointed out, she doesn't even know what it is!
(/End rant.)
Why the hell isn't the Obama campaign hammering on this every day?
There are Neo-Cons in the democratic party as well. What many people seem to think is ideological is purely business. During war, the rich get richer. It's the way it's always been and it explains why this country has been at 'war' with one country or another virtually constantly for the last 50 years.
It strikes me many people throw around the word 'neo con' without actually knowing what it means. Let us not forget it used to be the liberal mindset that thought we should 'take action' in countries with oppressive regimes (Hell, how many liberals called for intervention in Darfuf while saying our troops should come home from Iraq?). "We should spread peace throughout the world" and so forth. This attitude slowly crept its way into a radical form of conservatism (and the Republican party) precisely because 'neo conservative' was once used to describe a 'reformed liberal' who became a conservative. There's your history.
Obama wouldn't mouth the word 'neo conservative', he wouldn't dare. Obama got where he is now by pandering to the special interests. All this 'change' nonsense is the same utopian fantasy the NY times author discusses. Only a much older tune.
I actually heard someone say on the radio today that the selection of Palin was a major break from McCain's connection to Bush." (or words to that effect) Let's see, one of them picked a gun-toting pit bull and the other picked Dick Cheney. Yeah, major break. Americans love their pit bulls but I think maybe a sheepdog would be more helpful about now.
I do like Brooks' use of the phrase "excessive decisiveness" since I am so tired of the cluelessly confident who are often admired, even by their foes, with the phrase "at least he knows what he believes," even if that confident belief is that jelly beans are yummy.
Also, how about that nationalization of the economy? A much smarter guy on NPR today said "we privatize profit and socialize debt". Exactly. Why not just go ahead and grab Exxon while we're at it? That would solve problems here at home and also help us cozy up to our new friend, Chavez. Viva la revolucion! We're America! We're too big to fail!
Seriously what the f*&^?
I wish David Brooks had expanded upon his thoughts about the utopian ideal of taking on the establishment. Namely that every revolution in history from the French to the Republican '94 one, stops because it eventually becomes the establishment. Which is why my blood boils every time Mccain/Palin talk about taking on Washington and the "Establishment." How can one take the nomination of a party and then run against the government it controlled for most of the past eight years.
Any Democratic or Independent woman who supports McCain/Palin should give some serious thought to the idea of carrying a rape pregnancy to term. If McCain gets elected, Roe v. Wade is gone. John Paul Stevens is almost 89 years young and I've heard Justice Ginsburg isn't in the best of health either.
I know, I know. Barack Obama treated Hillary Clinton like a (fill in something bad here). So in order to punish him and the party and the media for this great (sin,travesty, violation,etc.) you are going to outlaw abortion in this country. Talk about burning the village to save it or cutting off your nose to spite your face!
I think Amy Poehler does just as good a job here. That barely-contained resentment is perfectly played.
Palin- well, what's there to say? Except "this is the 21st century, nobody who still holds to young-Earth Creationism should be within a heartbeat of the Presidency", though I'm not sure that would be a change from who we have now. So far I can't point to a single policy change in the McCain/Palin platform that would really take us away from Bush and Cheney- they're claiming that they'll do some generic "reforming" and "cleaning up Washington" while Barack Obama has, almost ironically given how much he was criticized for being an image candidate, become the guy offering solid tangible policy.
Some of it funny, some of it not funny. Generally, Tina Fey not funny. I stopped watching SNL a long time ago because it stopped being funny.
And once again, it's hard to tell who's really running for President here: John McCain or Sarah Palin. Because I always though McCain was the more important of the two. But apparently the world does not agree.
Raymond: I think SNL's political humor has always been weak (except for some things Al Franken wrote). The material during the Gulf War in 1991 was just shameful. But I watch "30 Rock," which I think is very funny. As for McCain: We have no better indication of his priorities, and the kinds of decisions the present-day McCain makes, than his choice of Sarah Palin. It says everything about who he is now. (I felt the same way when Al Gore chose Joe Lieberman -- huge mistake -- and when GW Bush chose Dick Cheney.)
The more successes Tina Fey has the more confident she becomes with her talents. And the more brilliant she gets.
Let's hope Palin doesn't have the opportunity to become that confident.
SNL's political humor this cycle hasn't just been weak, it's been irresponsible to the point of being dangerous. I'll never forget how their sketch about the media fawning over Obama and ignoring/hating Clinton (when in fact the media had been doing nothing of the kind) reverberated and apparently made the mainstream media feel guilty- they spent the next few weeks bashing Obama, and the polls changed dramatically in Clinton's favor.
She could conceivably have won the nomination because of a skit written by some halfwit SNL writer who ten years ago was acting a bit part in Dirty Work.
The fault obviously isn't theirs alone, or even primarily theirs. But a fault is a fault.
Also, nice to know I can ignore Ryan Kelly's posts from here on out. Keep selling that neo-con crap, no one's buying it anymore. Anyone still waving that flag has nothing left to hide behind. If you defend it, it's a statement about what your values are.
Keep selling that neo-con crap, no one's buying it anymore.
Erm...did you even read my post? Do you have any comprehension skills whatsoever? Did you just see that I wasn't supporting your precious Obama and decide to lump me in with 'the enemy'?
If you had read what I wrote, you would have realized I was stating a plain truth. People that profit from war, people that essentially run the country, have just as many Democrats in their pockets as they do Republicans. Our politicians are corporately sponsored. These people control Obama too, and this is why Obama will never, ever in his political life utter the word 'neo-con'. He's a shill too. You have to be to get as far as he did.
But no, go on believing in the 'change' nonsense. Just another catchy marketing slogan that people without the ability for abstract thought to swallow and feel like they're a part of something. He's one of the most brilliantly marketed candidates in American history, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. So please, go on ignoring my posts, just to further prove that Obama fanatics and reality are never in the same place at the same time.
I was STARTING to regard McCain, if it weren't for the position in the world in which Bush is leaving the country, as more deserving of my confidence than Obama, but now with Palin, I lost some of that. The prospect of she having a possibility of being president if something were to happen to him is frightening.
The "it doesn't matter who wins, they're all the same" line of argument has been well refuted by the last 7 years or so of US policy. Would Al Gore or John Kerry have made bad decisions? Certainly. But Gore didn't have a hankering to run into Iraq, and Kerry probably wouldn't have wasted Congress' time dealing with a civil end-of-life dispute in Florida.
Obama's not a messiah, but he's the closest we've got to a step in the right direction.
Bush abandoned prudence? The Bush Doctrine is the definition of prudence.