England for Obama

Good grief. Take a look at the new Fox News ad:

Talk about fear and loathing… And don’t you just love the way they’ve used the shot of Rahm Emanuel talking into Barack Obama’s ear? Like they’re planning some sort of evil conspiracy against the American people? Mwa-ha-haaa!

It reminds me of this slice of brilliance from The Day Today. It’s WAR!:

Ahem. Going back to the Fox News advert: someone on Huffington Post’s comments board said that this is exactly what liberal, intellectual America needs to do - to stoop to this level (actually, they said ’snoop’, but I’m pretty sure they meant ’stoop’) and start using some of Fox’s brilliant marketing tricks.

But here’s the thing: they don’t. Because Barack Obama won the election pretty tidily without stooping to such levels. Or, indeed, snooping to them.

Bob Cesca talks about the sheltered place that the Right inhabits -

“So the far-right needs to remain insulated from unfriendlies, which is why talk radio is a more comfortable format - calls can be screened and reality can be obfuscated. In other words, it’s a lot easier to suggest that the president-elect is a terrorist on a talk radio show where, you know, a tidal wave of facts won’t get in the way of the lies.”

- and he’s right. And this is one of the reasons why, as I told my friend Nick on election night, the Republicans’ choice of Sarah Palin pick went so horribly wrong for them. Why it was such a horrendously, massively, wrong choice.

And I’m not talking about favourability ratings here. Or about one’s own personal take on Palin.

I’m talking about the fact that, throughout the campaign, John McCain and his peeps were trying to attack Barack Obama on, well, anything that came to hand. He’s an elitist! He’s scary! His name sounds funny! He doesn’t know what he’s doing! He’s naive! He’s not like you and me!

And the thing is: all of these attacks simply didn’t marry up with the objective truth. The McCain camp spouted their ‘truths’, endlessly, and yet the American people saw something quite different. They saw a man who wasn’t scary. Who did appear to be just like them. Who was capable and who did seem to know what he was doing.

That’s why the attacks didn’t stick.

And yet: there was one line of attack that, in actual fact, was reasonable. That did have its basis in objective reality and not simply in the narrative that the Republicans wanted to carve out.

That line of attack was that Barack Obama was inexperienced.

And then they went and blew it all on choosing Sarah Palin.

‘Inexperience’ was the one line that McCain et al could have stuck to - and which could have worked withe public. Because it was the only line of attack against Obama that was reasonable and possibly valid.

People have been commenting on how Fox News and the right-wing shock jocks have contributed to the Republicans’ eventual demise because they have, in fact, been a massive sticking plaster over a gaping sore. A gaping sore that the Right have refused to acknowledge… partly because they’ve had the undying devotion of, yes, Fox News and the right-wing shock jocks.

The Right haven’t been living in our world. They’ve been living in theirs. And I don’t even mean that in a partisan way. They’ve been living in the bubble that they created, and not the real world, with all its changes, all its flaws, all its liberalism and all its, erm, reality.

One would like to think that the bubble will, now, finally burst. I’m sure that Fox will do its best to maintain it - and as Bob Cesca points out, post-election day, it doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of bursting - but it really isn’t in the GOP’s interest to remain in their parallel universe, no matter how cosy and safe it feels to them.

Like the Conservatives over here in 1997, they’re back in their cave, defeated, in-fighting, letting blood and licking their wounds (and it’s no mean feat to do all those things at once). But the Republicans will have to emerge from that cave/bubble/insert metaphor here in order to work out where they went wrong, and what they need to do to to regain ground with the average American voter.

And hopefully, like the Conservatives over here, it will take them at least 10 years to do so.

Ha!

Here’s the story.

And here’s my favourite response on the Huffington Post’s comments board:

“No news entity has done more to harm this country over the last 20 years than FOX news. They blurred the line between reporting and commentary and lowered the bar for both. They gleefully disseminated propaganda and misinformation for partisan political objectives. They substituted infantile shouting matches for civil discourse. A well-informed citizenry is necessary for democracy to function property. Fox viewers come away lacking a basic fund of information to make decisions affecting their lives and the country. Fox is a cancer that should be cut out.”

Most specifically, I heart him around 4:13:

Ah, yes - Sarah Palin is the gift that just keeps on giving:

Mind you, the man that’s reporting it also thinks that ‘knowledgeability’ is a word.

More on this story here. Read it - it’s a doozie. And imagine what America has just been spared. *Shudders*.

*UPDATE* Palin has attacked the report about Africa, but get this: she didn’t actually deny it! She said: “…I perhaps didn’t know an answer to a question”. She didn’t know that Africa is a continent. Watch for yourself:

I didn’t think it was possible for me to think that Sarah Palin was any stupider. I’ve just been proved wrong.

Staying in on November 4th? You eminently sensible people. Here’s who’s covering it when on British TV (or a combination of British TV and American TV being beamed into British homes):

Sky News: 11pm - 6am

BBC1: 11.45pm - 6am

ITV1: 11.45pm -6am

CNN: 12am - 6am

Fox News (if you must - well, it might be fun to watch Hannity and O’Reilly spitting blood): 10pm - uncertain. As in I’m uncertain, not them. According to Sky TV’s official listings, they’re showing Bill O’Reilly and Hannity & Colmes throughout the night - but clearly that can’t be right. Can it?

The wonderful Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are also doing a Daily Show election night special together - which I’m imagining will show as usual on More4, ie the day after it’s broadcast in the States. ie. The election night show will actually be shown in the UK on Wednesday night.

Oh, and here’s the lovely Carly on The Today Show with some “very fun” food, drink and games ideas for your election night party (doesn’t include ‘McCain Hard Cheese With Sour Grapes’ or ‘Pin the smear on the Democratic candidate’):

So, one thing I’m reeeeeeallly happy about is that hopefully, after next Tuesday, we’re not going to see very much of this any more:

Or at least: British people won’t be. Because even if Sarah Palin never runs for office again, you can be sure, dagnammit, that she’ll make it in the world of American television. Doh!

Indeed, it’s impossible not to speculate what Sarah will do next. Here are the thoughts of my close personal journalist chum Jane Murphy:

“Now I’ve never been one to tempt fate, but assuming the Democrats do romp to victory next week, what’s to become of the second biggest celebrity in the world, Sarah Palin?

Andrea and I were discussing this last night - and came up with a few ideas. I’ve got a feeling she’ll ditch full-time politics in favour of a daytime chat-show on Fox, possibly alongside her great mate Elisabeth Hasselbeck. I can see Sarah becoming a kind of ‘anti-Oprah’ - with her whooping audiences shedding tears of joy as she hands out free guns to each of them. (Well, you never know when a pesky moose is gonna come a-knocking do you?)

Alternatively, Sarah could always provide a valuable public service by becoming the world’s top Tina Fey impersonator. Just a thought…”

I think Jane’s onto something with the anti-Oprah thing. In fact, here’s a full list of real - no, really, real - possibilities for Sarah’s next move:

- The GOP throw her under the Straight Talk Express, and she returns to Alaska. Is reduced to being a footnote in history and spends the rest of her days in the wilderness. Literally.

- The GOP throw her under the Straight Talk Express, and she returns to Alaska - where she starts plotting her campaign to run for president in 2012.

- The GOP throw John McCain under the Straight Talk Express, and rally behind Sarah Palin as their presumptive presidential nominee for 2012.

- Sarah quits politics and gets her own daytime TV talk show/reality TV show/talking heads show on Fox. Possibly with the First Dude, Todd. The Palins never leave the limelight. Ever.

The latter option is in many ways the most likely, I think - because while Sarah clearly wants as much power as possible, I don’t think she’s actually that interested in politics (crazy, huh?!) and would much rather have the fame and trappings of vacuous celebdom.

Personally, I’m hoping she runs for president in 2012.

Partly because I don’t want the poor American people to suffer this woman screeching out of their television sets and grinning on the cover of their magazines, day in day out, for the forseeable future.

But mainly because I want the GOP to not get it. I want them to choose Palin and her ilk, because if they do, they will be left in the political wilderness for at least eight years - or as long as it takes for them to realise that the world has become more liberal, goddamit, and that the American people just don’t want nasty, divisive, fearful, hateful, self-serving, right wing governance any more. The Republicans didn’t get it during this election, and you know what? They probably won’t get it in four years’ time, either. And possibly not in eight years…

I’ve written before about the parallels between Obama’s likely victory and Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 - when, overnight, not just an old administration but an old way of thinking, of seeing the world, was swept away. Much blame and pain and bloodletting ensued in the Conservative party as a result, of course - and the Tories had to move to the centre to gain any political force, and real chance of governing, again.

The Republican party in America will have to do the same - plain and simple. But the good news, of course, is that the Republican party’s starting point is far to the right of the Tory’s. Its base - Sarah’s Army, the gun totin’, god lovin’, evangelical conservatives - simply will not move to the centre under any circumstance. Not even to gain power.

The result? Like Sarah herself, that base will have to be left in the wilderness in order for the GOP to win again (barring an all-mighty Obama screw-up). And quite how many years it will take for the Republican party to rip itself apart like this before being able to make itself electable… well, your guess is a good as mine.

But here’s the other piece of good news: it isn’t going to happen any time soon, folks. So in the meantime: just kick back and enjoy The Barack Obama And Joe Biden Show (’So real, it’s like they’re running the country!’) - and spare a thought for our poor American cousins. Because even if she doesn’t get elected Vice President, they’re probably going to have to put up with Sarah Palin on TV every day. If they watch Fox News, at least.

From the Jed Report. Love it:

And that, my friends, is a FOX NEWS headline. Cripes.

One question: if you can’t be bothered to make the effort to show up to your own rally - the last one you’re doing together before election day - how on earth can you, erm, rally other people to your cause?

So, I don’t watch Fox News. I don’t go to the Fox News website. I know I would just end up throwing my Macbook across the room, and it cost far too much for me to risk doing that.

But you know what? Maybe it’s confidence in what’s coming. Maybe it’s the GOP falling on its own sword. But whatever it is, I just went and had a look at the site - and saw this, its current headline, and I didn’t get angry. I just laughed:

Obama on Obama: Marxist Friends

Obama shrugs off charges of socialism, but notes in memoir that he carefully chose Marxist professors as friends in college

Absolutely. Love. It.

Man goes to college! Talks to people about political ideas!

(Oh, and I’ve read the book. And there’s no way any normal person would read it and come up with that headline about his college years.)

I’m not sure what’s more ridiculous: that the ’story’ above is considered to be a headline, or that it’s somehow evidence of Obama’s socialist/communist/Marxist beliefs. And funny how this is only Fox’s headline now that, erm, it’s the Republican party’s current tack on Obama, isn’t it? I mean, when that book’s been sitting there (with all its Marxist content) since 1995, an’ all.

Remember: this is the most popular news channel in America. Now I’m done laughing, and just want to weep. How has this situation been able to continue for so long?