Forgive me, US bloggers, if American presidential politics and whose haircut’s the most expensive or which botoxed beltway journalist is the biggest bitch queen of all fails to hold my interest at the moment, amusingly presented though it is.
The sky is in fact falling on us in great quantity over here, which rather puts the self-referential, overheated, tiny world of bigtime progressive blogging into perspective. Just at the moment I’m heartily sick of it, as a whole swathe of progressive blogdom has gone all Salon on us and revealed itself as the talking shop supporting the (cosmetically altered so as to be palatable to soft liberals) status quo it is.
The YouTube debates? A new openness? Blech. A change at the top, my ass; this lot is different from Bushco only insofar as they’re not actively evil or if they are at least not in such a visible way.
They’re more sort of floundering in a hell of self-made good intentions, and triangulation, Clnton particularly. In one way I prefer the Republicans – they at least are more honest about the equation of money with power, whereas senior Democrat politicians always dissemble that they are somehow unsullied by filthy lucre despite being a] mostly iwealthy themselves b] funded by the very same interests as the GOP.
Let’s face, it it was CNN and clotheshorse Anderson Cooper anyway and bound to be bland, so it’s unsurprising that the questions were pre-chosen; the only thing vaguely unusual, given CNN’s performance so far, is that the whole shebang seemed made to frame Clinton and Obama as President and VP respectively.
Yes, the medium and format were more modern than the old, which appeared not to have been changed since the Continental Congress; yes, it was a little more off the cuff, yes there were some vaguely amusing gaffes; but on the whole it was hardly an inspiring lineup, when you consider it’s not just the US but world leadership they’re aspiring to.
5 of the 8 came in private jets, according toi the BBC.
You can see how, given the current catastrophic (and it’s now confirmed), human-caused weather conditions, this does not impress us overseas.
