Style often trumps substance in debates, says MSNBC. It's very true, at least in terms of public opinion. We can see it illustrated in the extreme in the TV coverage of the crowds already forming in St Louis: wildly enthusiastic young women are waving "Palin Wins" signs hours before the event is to begin. To them it's a fait accompli. What actual words, what answers, what debate can change a mind like that?
I would go further and say prejudice trumps everything. Partisanship trumps everything. Reality means nothing. In a world where a truck can have the "soul of a sports car" it's about style, it's about fantasy, it's about self-delusion, it's about lunacy.
There is far too much speculation going on about tonight's Punch and Sarah show. Will she make a fool of herself? Will she demonstrate nearly total ignorance of all the things a chief executive is expected to have mastered even to be considered for office? It won't matter. If she breaks down and cries, if she begins to writhe on the floor, spouting glossolalia and moaning about witches, it won't really matter. If she thinks Bear Stearns is an Alaskan delicacy, they will love her for it. We'll be told that Joe Biden was condescending for knowing what the first amendment says or who the Chief Justice is and that will be that. Even though McCain got away with saying "Horseshit" twice during his debate with Obama, Biden will have been ungentlemanly, elitist, condescending, smug -- just for knowing the right stuff.
She will have shown attitude and edge and poise and style, or any number of nebulous and irrelevant attributes and that will be that. Palin Wins!
"You're darn right!"
ReplyDelete(as SP likes to say . . . over & over & over . . .)
Although I'm a committed misanthrope and I consider perhaps 2% of humanity to be anything like intelligent, I don't judge people by their intelligence -- except when they seek positions of power over the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteSince most of us are also stupid and would love to think that with the right attitude and the right kind of seriousness, it doesn't matter, she may well achieve it.
Too bad folksy homilies aren't like wolves and you can't shoot them from airplanes.
Looks to this dinosaur as if humans pretty much shrugged. Yes, Palin did okey-dokey in terms of style: sort of like a chirpy high-school debater. No depth, but to Republicans, depth is overrated. Anyhow, what I gather from the news rags is that people just said, "yep--you betcha she can string together a few sentences, but what she said isn't very impressive. Biden knows his stuff. He wins."
ReplyDelete