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Parents
"So whaddaya think of your buddy Obama now?" asks dad.
He's clearly implying that Obama has recently done something horrible, but since I don't hate myself enough to keep up on myrightwingdad.net, I don't have any guesses what the new hotness is in that arena. So I say, "I don't know, what do I think of my buddy Obama now?"
"Heh heh heh", says dad, but mom says, "Hey, let's not talk about politics on vacation." And this is interesting because usually I'm the one to make that suggestion.
They're visiting on Sunday for a time period somewhat longer than the three-hour maximum exposure that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
classicaljunkie has identified, through repeated observation, as my personal limit. Whee. We'll see how it goes.
He's clearly implying that Obama has recently done something horrible, but since I don't hate myself enough to keep up on myrightwingdad.net, I don't have any guesses what the new hotness is in that arena. So I say, "I don't know, what do I think of my buddy Obama now?"
"Heh heh heh", says dad, but mom says, "Hey, let's not talk about politics on vacation." And this is interesting because usually I'm the one to make that suggestion.
They're visiting on Sunday for a time period somewhat longer than the three-hour maximum exposure that
classicaljunkie has identified, through repeated observation, as my personal limit. Whee. We'll see how it goes.
no subject
In the primary season they won by keeping the focus strictly on delegate count, rather than who was winning state races and seemed to have "momentum" in the media; there was a long period when the papers kept asking "why can't he close the deal?" when by any reasonable metric he had. I assume the campaign can similarly adapt strategy to conditions now.
no subject
There are three types of political story, as I see it:
1) "Horse race" stories in which the journalist is nothing but a race-track caller. In the case of "reporting" on national polls the caller is looking at the track through a fun-house mirror.
2) "Party A Tells the Following Lies... Party B Responds With Lies of Their Own." These are essentially celebrity stories, telling us what the Skank-of-the-Moment is wearing (or not). They aren't totally irrelevant because the lies a person tells will reveal a little bit about them, but at this stage we can all pretty much predict what lies any given person or party is going to tell, so it is depressing that the bulk of the nominal political news coverage is stories of this type.
3) "Party A Announces/Discusses/Clarifies Policy X". These are stories on what a person or party is actually planning to do if elected, either in broad philosophical terms or more specifically. If the serious media were responsible these would be the only stories they would report, leaving the rest to the tabloids where they belong.
Unfortunately, when the topic changes to politics almost every news outlet in America suddenly becomes The National Enquirer. Compare this to business news in the U.S. and you'll see just what a huge free ride the political class and the private organizations known as political parties are getting.