Fiasco

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Thursday September 25, 2008 · 8:38 AM PDT

2008/09/25 · 08:38

Fans of the NPR radio show This American Life may remember their classic audio essay - Fiasco. The host, Ira Glass, chats with an amateur actor on the difference between a real fiasco and a bad night. Audiences, they decide, root for actors to have a great evening. A great evening for actors means a great evening for the theater-goer who has paid good money for a good time. Paradoxically, a glitch or two during a performance usually makes the audience root even harder for the actors to have a good show. But a certain point - a tipping point - enough goofs and the audience gives up on the show and they turn on the actors. The audience actively roots for the actors to goof up more. At that point, my friends, we have arrived at fiasco. Today's question - how far or near is the McCain campaign from fiasco. Go below the fold and discuss.

Personally I thought the McCain campaign jumped the shark back in August at the Sturgis motorcycle rally. He looked comical and desperate and sad by contrast to Obama's statesmanlike trip overseas. But Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal and most other MSM took he looked and sounded good. Like the roar of 50,000 motorcylces.

Then I thought McCain was down for the count after the Democratic convention when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Again I took he looked desperate by contrast with the Democratic ticket and its excellent Denver convention.

So imagine my surprise at the reaction of David Letterman and the MSM to his decision to suspend his campaign and halt the debates. As other diaries here have summarized, Letterman went on and on open mocking McCain and his campaign for leaving the battlefield during a crisis.

If Ira Glass is right about how a fiasco develops, McCain may be in reach of the fiasco tipping point. We'll know if the MSM openly root for more bad stuff to happen to him.

What's the verdict here? By the end of the weekend - Monday morning - do you expect McCain to be in fiasco land?

Poll
70 votes Show Results
Do McCain/Palin reach fiasco land this weekend?

Yes

No

can't figure it out

70 votes Vote Now!
Do McCain/Palin reach fiasco land this weekend?

Yes

59 votes

No

4%

3 votes

can't figure it out

8 votes

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