Maybe it's silly for me to rant about gasbags being gasbags, but this nonsense about Barack Obama being "cold" really smacks of another utterly manufactured problem.
Friedman:
Whoever slipped that Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee needs to be found and arrested by the Democrats because Obama has gone from cool to cold...I don’t think people are feeling it in their guts.
Oh no! Barack Obama's too cold to be felt in our guts??! BS. Maybe it's because I'm proactive, but I see Obama, Biden or a surrogate really taking it to McCain/Plain on a daily basis (see: our reclist at any given time).
What evidence, Mr. Friedman, might you point to?
I thought his convention speech contained no memorable lines or uplifting visions.
Oh, I see. So after the pundit class spent a week talking about how Obama had to get past soaring rhetoric and offer a detailed plan for change, its become a real problem that he offered a detailed plan for change. Got it. Not enough gut.
In a way, I would love to hear Obama say, just for shock value: "I am so eager to do whatever it takes to fix these problems that I am ready to be a one-term president.
And can we throw in a 4 day workweek and lollipops for all? Am I totally cynical to think that he's left reality with this one? In order for Barack Obama to really solve our problems, he has to commit to only working at those problems for four years. Nevermind that we're on the cusp of your "ET" revolution that requires us to totally re-invent ourselves for a new century. What would Freidman say if Obama did make great strides in four years? "Sorry buddy, no breaking that shock value pledge ya made!"
Complete and utter nonsense.
He sighs on that Barack Obama was the agent of change, but now John McCain says he is, and that means that talking about change is meaningless.
That's politics
Sigh. Too bad, cause I hear we could use some of that change. Apparently Obama needs to get his message across with another slogan.
If the media would do their flipping job and actually report what the candidates believed in and the policies they propose, it would become clear that the word "change" actually has a meaning. In my gut, it means something that is different from what's going on now. One candidate represents doing things the same way, the other represents doing things a different way. My gut says that's a fact, not an opinion for you to write 2000 words on. Obama doesn't need to change his message, the media needs to stop being afraid of McCains attack dogs and do their job. If they did, McCain's "change" would be expoised for the joke that it is.
I call this a rant because I know it will never happen. Chasing gaffes from soundbyte to soundbyte will always sell more papers or garner more ratings than a cold discussion of what's wrong with this country and what we need to do to fix it. It's a shame because for all that is fucked up right now, we deserve better.