October 31, 2008
Well that wasn't quite what I expected. I kinda figured it'd just be a half-hour address, like his racism speech 52 years ago. Instead it was an infomercial.
I honestly didn't watch much of it -- my attention span won't let me sit through a story about how much a mom in Ohio loves her kids -- but the parts I did see were noticeable in that they were all in swing states. And if I noticed, you can't say it was subtle.
The testimonials from his colleagues and some Dem governors seemed a bit much. I don't really need to hear how great the guy is. If he'd spent more time, made it more address-like and gone more into policy, I may have watched. Of course, I'm already voting for the guy. I'm not the intended audience.
It was noted just about everywhere that, aside from mentioning the failed policies of the last eight years, everything was positive, and about Obama. Nothing about McCain at all and only that oblique reference to Bush.
And... that was it, really. It felt as much like a ass-end-of-the-news puff piece as it did a campaign ad. Kinda meh, all told.
Just for shits and grins I checked a few news sites Thursday morning to see what the general consensus was. They all mentioned its unprecedented nature -- only Ross Perot bought a hunk of TV time like that, and his was earlier in the campaign -- and even Fox News's web site remarked that all McCain could do was to "snipe" back at Obama. Of course, then I read the first of 1400+ comments (why oh why did I click that link) and promptly wondered if /b/ had infiltrated foxnews.com. Nobody got called a fag or a nigger so it was probably just similar writing styles.
The BBC's web site conflated Fox News with the Fox network regarding the decision to preempt the World Series conclusion (which even Fox had to come out and defend Obama for -- they canceled the pre-game show but the game itself was not delayed by more than a minute or two, if at all).
To get the "they hate our freedom" reaction I hit the al-Jazeera web site. They had nothing on the ad, but there was an article announcing that the US president was effectively "king of the world" and pointing out the author's resulting interest in the election's results. The guy's endorsing Obama, by the way, for the reasons of backing America away from waging war with the entire Middle East at once and restoring America's standing in the world. Of course, there's another article on the front page decrying Israel's "non-stop aggression" against the Palestinians, so several grains of salt are in order.
So, it really seems that this was a non-event. And expensive and noteworthy non-event, but still. It'll be interesting to see if anything happens in the polls the rest of the week.
As a programming note, I'll probably have a post up on Tuesday, and may liveblog the election until I get tired and go to bed. Not sure about the last one, since I wouldn't exactly be contributing anything new, but what the heck, y'know?
