Impressions of the 2nd Presidential Debate
Last night's first impression...
The debate sounded like Obama laying out his policy plans and McCain telling us what's wrong with everything Obama said. McCain needed to do that, but a whole lot more. He needed to make Americans understand and like McCain's own policy plans. But McCain made the debate so much about Obama that Americans are unlikely to recall much of what McCain proposed himself. Advantage: Obama.
Brokaw did a lousy job. He said there'd be no followups, then he himself asked followups. It seemed like he mixed up the order of questions more than once and gave one candidate and not the other time to answer one of his own followups. He scolded Obama for asking time for rebuttal, then immediately asked another followup and excused his own breaking of rules by saying the rules were pretty loose.
For those at home playing the debate drinking game...
"My friends" was far and away the big winner. Drink to that and, as Rod Dreher predicted, "we'll all be under the table poleaxed and out of our misery, by the halfway point."
"Change" was a distant second (and a little surprisingly, not by McCain. Palin tried to own the term in her own debate, but McCain didn't make his own claim to the word tonight).
"Maverick" didn't get out of the starting gate. And Wright and Ayers didn't even saddle up. No winks, no "you betchas" or "doggoneits", either. No Sarahs at all. No Joes, either. One mom. One dad. One senior moment ("Wave your hands, I can't see the colored lights.")
Next day impression...
Obama was poised, fluent and deliberate. McCain was restless, aggressive and impulsive. No new ground covered here, except for McCain's proposal for the government to spend $300 billion buying up bad mortgages. He also promised to "stop the spending spree in Washington." WTF?!? Advantage still: Obama.
Religulous: Reviewing the Review
Disclaimer: I didn't see the movie, but I did read the review. This is a review of the review. ;-)
William Murchison, in an op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News, reviews Bill Maher's movie that looks at religion in a not so flattering light. Murchison describes Maher as "mocking, jesting, wise-guying to beat the band" ... as if this is a bad thing. Murchison recites many of the silly scenes in the movie, like the profile of the "entrepreneurial rabbi with the technological rationales for getting past Sabbath restrictions," without ever giving us a reason not to find these characters laughable. In Murchison's world, mocking silliness is self-evidently wrong.
Murchison makes one big mistake when he refers to Maher's "unshakeable grip on certainty." On his tour promoting the movie, Maher has adamantly described his own attitude as agnostic. He doesn't know. He doesn't pretend to know. He finds those who do pretend to know and gives them the stage and microphone and lets them make fools of themselves.
Murchison ridicules Maher for his presentation of fundamentalist Christians, end-timers, orthodox rabbis, new-age spiritualists. Maybe most tellingly, without a trace of irony, Murchison finds common cause with Maher in his presentation of Muslim extremists. Maher has no respect for their deadly certainty, either. Apparently, Murchison can see the folly of at least this sect of religious absolutists, but not the folly of his own brand of religious absolutism.
I can't say whether or not to see the movie, but I can recommend that you skip the review.
2 comments:
Maher is not exempt from his own "making fun of."
On an episode of Politically Incorrect Maher insisted that ghosts were a reasonable explanation for some things. Penn Gillette was on the show and insisted he tell him why ghosts were the most reasonable or even a reasonable explanation. Maher sort of hemmed about it being the only explanation left. (Where have we heard that sort of argument before? hmmmmm...)
Maher is just as capable of some of the same sort of magical beliefs he ridicules.
If Maher believes in ghosts, then indeed he could have cast himself in Religulous.
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