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18 Mar 2008 05:06 pm
Comments (51)
Hells yeah!
'Elder' is gender neutral you dunderheads.
They seemed to play you off at the end there, Oscar-style.
You know, you might want to consider making do with fewer 'you knows', you know.
The Atlantic seriously needs to subsidize some gym memberships. At least McArdle looks like she is going to make it to somewhere near median longevity for her gender. Yglesias and Ambinder, not so much.
re: why the party elders (and Pelosi) haven't pushed her aside.
It's like Carcetti and Clay Davis in the Wire. When it looked like Davis was going down, Carcetti said something along the lines of "I'm not celebrating until I know he's dead."
Until they're patting Hillary in the face with a shovel they're not pushing her and Bill aside. She's going to have to be deader than a corpse.
"You all know where my gut is..."
All over the screen?
You should have one with you and Andrew Sullivan just yelling at each other for a while. Then he'll compliment you on your beard and compare you to a bear. Then it will get deliciously awkward, which is what the internet is for.
It probably can't be said enough how awesome the introduction is. Very serious people on the roof enjoying some eighties TV news theme music, truly awesome.
Were you in The Matrix?
Who was the dude with the gigantic head? And who was the guy doing the interview?
I think it's cute how the people in the video played dress up to look like their parents.
I like the look Matt. Very dapper. You were well lit. Poor Marc, however, was in the shadows. Will Megan get to speak in the next episode? The opening was good, but I hope that if you have another episode with Ross that you keep the turning head intro, which is now a classic (web standards).
Interesting directorial decision to have Mark sitting in the novelty photo shot gigantic chair from the mall.
Megan McArdle is a total babe.
Megan McArdle is a total babe.
I would hit that politically.
"Special Olympics"
And not only is she a "babe," she's super-classy as well!
Now that Grace Kelly is dead (25 years and counting!), there is not a woman alive who can wear a scarf in that particular fashion and be "hot." MMcA looks like a bored middle-aged housewife waiting for the butler to bring her next martini and hoping her husband quits banging the maid before dinner.
Everyone in that video is trying too hard. Cool comes naturally. Losing weight does not, however. You guys should make it a point of walking around the perimeter of the flophouse at least once a day.
I think Ambinder was my 9th grade Social Studies teacher.
Comportment for pundits 101. No gum chewing in public. Leave your arms at your side. Don't rest your head in your hand. White shirt and blue or red tie. Get some contacts or eye glasses that make you look wise and serious. Keep working on it, you'll be on Bill Mayer one of these days. If Jonah Goldberg can do it, so can you.
Ms. McArdle says that Hillary supporters will (of course) support Obama but Obama supporters will (of course) NOT support Hillary.
This is a meme that Obama supporters hope will be true but there is no evidence to support it.
In fact, exit polling at the Mississippi primary shows the opposite to be true. I work with a woman a few years younger than Hillary. A few months ago she said that she wanted a woman to be president within her lifetime but would vote for the whoever won the Democratic nomination. Now she says she will never vote for Obama and at least McCain won't raise her taxes. It was dis-heartening to hear but not really a surprise.
I will still vote for the nominee but I've been dismayed by all the anti-Clinton vitriol coming from Obama's fans. The vitriol has also been directed at Clinton supporters. Do you really think it will all be forgotten? Obama need to work to get the party united for the general or he (and his supporters and anyone who wants a Democrat to win) will be in for a surprise in November.
(Also why does Ms. McArdle sound like Jeff Spicoli? Fur shur, dude!)
Ms. McArdle says that Hillary supporters will (of course) support Obama but Obama supporters will (of course) NOT support Hillary.
This is a meme that Obama supporters hope will be true but there is no evidence to support it.
In fact, exit polling at the Mississippi primary shows the opposite to be true. I work with a woman a few years younger than Hillary. A few months ago she said that she wanted a woman to be president within her lifetime but would vote for the whoever won the Democratic nomination. Now she says she will never vote for Obama and at least McCain won't raise her taxes. It was dis-heartening to hear but not really a surprise.
I will still vote for the nominee but I've been dismayed by all the anti-Clinton vitriol coming from Obama's fans. The vitriol has also been directed at Clinton supporters. Do you really think it will all be forgotten? Obama need to work to get the party united for the general or he (and his supporters and anyone who wants a Democrat to win) will be in for a surprise in November.
(Also why does Ms. McArdle sound like Jeff Spicoli? Fur shur, dude!)
Ms. McArdle says that Hillary supporters will (of course) support Obama but Obama supporters will (of course) NOT support Hillary.
This is a meme that Obama supporters hope will be true but there is no evidence to support it.
In fact, exit polling at the Mississippi primary shows the opposite to be true. I work with a woman a few years younger than Hillary. A few months ago she said that she wanted a woman to be president within her lifetime but would vote for the whoever won the Democratic nomination. Now she says she will never vote for Obama and at least McCain won't raise her taxes. It was dis-heartening to hear but not really a surprise.
I will still vote for the nominee but I've been dismayed by all the anti-Clinton vitriol coming from Obama's fans. The vitriol has also been directed at Clinton supporters. Do you really think it will all be forgotten? Obama need to work to get the party united for the general or he (and his supporters and anyone who wants a Democrat to win) will be in for a surprise in November.
(Also why does Ms. McArdle sound like Jeff Spicoli? Fur shur, dude!)
Not to be cheap and superficial...
...but as a former TV news director, I'm afraid I have to endorse the unkind comments above re: production values, comportment and even appearance.
The video is the most unintentionally hilarious thing I've seem since I received "The Encylopedia of Jews in Sports" as a bar mitzvah gift. (They counted chess. But I digress.)
The video is so bad that it's simply impossible to focus on what's being said.
gregnsf, you should ask her how McCain intends on extending the Bush tax cuts and bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb bombing Iran without raising taxes for anyone. Oh wait, we'll just make our grandkids pay for it.
Moreover, why would anyone ever, ever, ever let anonymous internet commenters influence their vote for President of the United States of America???
Guess what, gregnsf? Here's my experience these past many weeks:
I will still vote for the nominee but I've been dismayed by all the anti-Obama vitriol coming from Clinton's fans. The vitriol has also been directed at Obama supporters. Do you really think it will all be forgotten? Clinton need to work to get the party united for the general or she (and her supporters and anyone who wants a Democrat to win) will be in for a surprise in November.
McArdle started out with an awkward, nonsensical Special Olympics joke and then proceeded to make some other strange comments. Mississippi and a certain former VP candidate seem to indicate that yes, Hillary supporters are at least as mad at Obama as Obama people are mad at Hillary. There is serious Obama hate out there.
I also reject this line about the Clintons being psychologically incapable of letting go. As an Obama person I admit that almost any candidate in the race would not have quit by now, were they in HRC's position. Mathematically she has little chance. But opinion polls and primary returns are not showing this. Her supporters would be completely bewildered if she dropped out. In polls they still believe she has a great chance.
Granted, she doesn't need to engage in these tactics. She herself knows that her chances are almost nil, and could revert to a slow-burn campaign, attacking McCain and playing nice with Obama until it really is over. But I don't think any political adviser alive and not working for Obama would be telling Hillary to drop out right now, with the support and the delegates that she still has.
I'm not even sure that dropping out would be the best thing for the party. She's already a kind of martyr for women 60 and over. To lose without actually losing, with thousands of people still fighting, would not exactly endear everyone to Obama. Step one in winning over Hillary's voters is demonstrating finally that the party has chosen him and not her.
My Morning Jacket as the intro music...nice. Whose choice was that?
Matt looks dapper in the way that deputy ambassadors from former Soviet Central Asian republics do.
Sorry, it had to be said.
Hey Woody, guess what?
Clinton doesn't need to win anyone over because she won't be the nominee, Obama has a 90% plus chance of getting it now.
And I don't think the vitriol has been quite the same. Hillary has been called a monster and a c**t. I haven't heard that directed at Obama.
(You could also come up with something original instead of copying me. Is that the way you did your homework?)
"Will Megan get to speak in the next episode? "
Not if Matt's there.
For a guy trying to get over with Megan, he's going about it all the wrong way.
You're supposed to LISTEN to women, you sap!
And fix the goddamn lighting! Doesn't anybody have more than a 40-watt bulb in that room? There's a reason people sweat on TV shows - they have LIGHTING! 1,000-watt infrared heat lamps! (Which would also help you lose weight - or at least shed water...)
Let's see: Fat, fat, and vapid.
Christ, that I've spent any time reading your misspelled dreck at all, and considering you a compatriot, I consider to be yet again, another major mistake in my life.
And the kicker is, you're proud of this.
The progressive cause is in very inept and inapt hands.
I'm kind of amazed at all the comments about body shapes. Who cares? Give people the anonymity of the internets tubes and the fatsos with keyboards attack like piranhas. Yeah, you're all fat..probably..since 90% of America is fat. So there. This is fat-on-fat crime if I've ever seen it. And, no, I'm not fat, so I can say whatever the hell I want, you fatsos. (is there an 'e' in fatsos?)
Instead of attacking Matt for being fat, let's attack McMuddle for her Valley Girl routine.
The clueless among us have still not confronted the reality that HRC cannot win the nomination by the numbers. Her only route to success is to batter Obama until he's bloody and looking unelectable against McCain, and then hope that the superdelegates cave in and hand her the nomination. The consequences of that scenario are too awful to contemplate. That's why, if I were an superdel, I would pull the trigger now and spare the Party a bloodbath. I fear that there isn't sufficient understanding of just how close to the edge of crisis we are treading by letting this game go on....
"And I don't think the vitriol has been quite the same. Hillary has been called a monster and a c**t. I haven't heard that directed at Obama."
No, they've only said that people are only voting for him because he's black (Ferraro), tried to paint him as just the black candidate (Bill's SC Jesse Jackson moment) and accused him of dealing drugs (Robert Johnson). Who in the Obama team actually called her a cunt? Bill now has net negatives nationwide for the first time since Bush took office because they both lost African-American support with this type of race-baiting. The crossover Republicans and independents that voted for Obama would never vote for Clinton, who they are convinced is a socialist. If Clinton is the nominee, you will likely see African-American turnout drop in protest. Besides, your anecdote rests on your experience in MS, where no Democrat is going to win anyway.
Reality man, I'm not talking about who in the official campaign uses slurs. Most people in that position are too smart and too composed to go in the gutter. (Johnson and Powers are among the exceptions. There is an anti-Clinton PAC that goes by the acronym C.U.N.T. but I think that's run by Republicans not Democrats.)
And this gets back to my original point. If Clinton were to win she would have a hard time uniting the party. That was a point McArdle made which I didn't disagree with. I'm saying that since Obama is almost sure to win the nomination it's really a moot point. Obama, the presumptive nominee, has to deal with this problem and since he's said he'll get her supporters and she might not get his, I'm not sure he's aware of it.
A little less than half of the Democrats who've voted so far have voted for Clinton. If Obama is to win in the Fall he has to win them over, plain and simple. Whoever gets the nod will have a divided party to deal with and it looks like "whoever" will be Obama.
I looked again. C.U.N.T. is a "527" not a PAC. It stands for Citizens United Not Timid and it appears to have Democratic supporters as well as Repuplican. Can you imagine an anti-Obama 527 called N*****?
greg,
At the point in the thread you've really muddied the waters. (Why you hold Obama and his supporters responsible for C.U.N.T., for example, I'll never know - and yes, OF COURSE, it's run by Republicans. Sheesh.)
BUT: Your first point was that those Obama people have been so mean to HRC and HRC's supporters. My point, of course, was that HRC's side has been every bit as nasty toward Obama and his supporters. And of course, that's true. (I tried to make that point by using your paragraph and transposing the names to show how silly your comment was. Sorry if that confused you.)
Your concern that you're "not sure he's aware of it" is severely misplaced. Of course Obama knows he has to win over HRC voters. You seem to be writing from some sort of Bizarro World where Obama has been the one using a scorched-earth, kitchen-sink, divide-and-conquer, anything-to-win strategy to get the nomination. Here on Planet Earth, that's been Hillary's schtick.
In fact, even if/when Obama is the nominee, it still should be up to HRC to do some fence-mending.
The comments about the body sizes of the speakers are appallingly insensitive, even when veiled as constructive criticism. When people put themselves out there, especially doing something new and challenging, the last thing they need to hear are boorish insults about their bodies or other confidence drains.
Confidence drains?
Cut back on the donuts to say 5 per day.
It was a relief to see an episode where Ambinder does not talk about sex.
Thank you.
Woody et al.,
I don't think you understood what I was saying.
I inend to vote for Obama inn the general.
The campaign has become a little bitter. That's too bad but I won't cry over it.
I want a Democrat to win and take the country back.
I think Obama will be the nominee. I want him to win against McCain. I want the Democratic majority in Congress to increase.
This can only happen if the Democratic nominee unites the party. That means Obama because he will probably be the nominee.
Clinton's die-hard supporters won't give up til she does. And that might be a while. But, if she loses (as I think likely), she loses.
Her reputation and future in the Senate depends on how she responds. And it could have an effect on the general.
BUT,-Obama-the-nominee should think about how to heal a divided party no matter what Clinton does. IT'S NOT ABOUT CLINTON ANYMORE, IT'S ABOUT HIM. And it's about his campaign. And if he can convince Hillary supporters that he is their candidate too.
There has been a lot of misogyny out there. Obama, (thankyou!) has not been in the muck. Yet, it's still there and it has disgusted a lot of people. And it's not only on the Republican side. I haven't seen crude, overt racism in this campaign. I didn't think I would. I didn't think I would see the crude sexism either but I have. And that does make me sad because I thought that wouldn't be winked at anymore.
It's not fair that Obama gets tainted with this. It's not fair that Obama got tainted with everything his clergyman said. But still, he's got to deal with realpolitik. I think he dealt with the clergyman issue effectively tonight. If you say that he knows that he knows he has to win over Clinton supporters, well, I hope you're right. I haven't heard him say anything like that yet.
It's important not to take these votes for granted.
BTW, there seems to be a little bitterness here. I feel the contempt in some of these responses, "sorry if that confuses you". Jeez, are we grownups here?
The comments about the body sizes of the speakers are appallingly insensitive, even when veiled as constructive criticism.
How about the fact that pundits don't get paid on the same basis as underwear models, i.e. their appearance, and, if their commentary is of high quality, it's absolutely frickin' irrelevant?
McArdle is growing on me though. 6'2" libertarian econobloggers = hot, hot, hot. Too bad she's a vegetarian, though. That's a deal-breaker.
Matt, can you give us a short post explaining what the reasoning is behind doing these videos? Is this The Atlantic's idea or yours?
In any case, you might want to give it some more thought, or push back, or something. You're all very smart, but unfortunately you have to pay someone to make you _look_ smart.
By doing videos like this you are at serious risk of undermining your credibility. The video medium is brutal as the comments can attest.
If you're really going to keep doing this please spend some money to do it right. Good production quality is expensive. By doing it cheaply you put your reputations at great risk.
I get it. The video is a diabolically evil plot to get on "The Daily Show"
All Jon Stewart has to do is introduce it as "a compelling reason wonky magazine writers shouldn't do web videos". He can then play a few clips, making funny faces in between. The studio audience will laugh cruelly.
great insights! (and My Morning Jacket to-boot!)
What a bunch of vicious comments. Yeah, so they could stand to lose a couple of pounds--who couldn't.
Let's knock them instead for the commentary. "Special Olympics"???!! WTF? Try thinking through your comments a little bit in advance, so you don't blurt out something stupid and insensitive.
greg,
I wasn't confused at all in what you said. Your subsequent responses have been all over the map, so that - indeed - has been a little confusing. But still: In your initial post you said that Obama supporters have been so mean to HRC and her supporters.(You even hinted lated on that his supporters could be behind the GOP 527 that uses the C-word.) I pointed out that, in my experience anyway, it's been the exact opposite. Now you're saying Obama hasn't done any of this, but I assume your point about Obama supporters still stands. Again, my point is that, in my experience, HRC's fans have flung a lot more more mud.
If you say that he knows that he knows he has to win over Clinton supporters, well, I hope you're right. I haven't heard him say anything like that yet.
Well, first off he's the one out there talking about pie-in-the-sky "come together" stuff. Maybe he needs to start naming HRC supporters by name? Second, why would he be making this type of comment at this point? HRC and Clinton supporters are trying to take the nomination away, fighting him at every turn even though the numbers say it's over and her only chance is to smear him up good and dirty. Hillary certainly never suggested that she wanted to win me, an Obama supporter, over. She just called me a stupid, naive idealist who thinks problems get solved when the skies open and light pours down from Heaven.
(Also: My "sorry to confuse you" comment was sincere, not bitter. You indicated you didn't know why I 'plagiarized' your paragraph when I thought it was pretty obvious. It didn't go over. You were confused. I apologized. Please don't look go looking for fights.)
I wasn't confused. I know why you cut and pasted my words. I thought it was lazy, that's all. Just because I criticize you doesn't mean I didn't understand what you were doing.
Obama has said, and McArdle repeated, that her supporters would back him even if his would not support her. I think a lot of his supporters would not voter for her, true. But he can't assume that he will get all of her supporters.
I base his assuming he will get them on what he actually said, "No doubt I will get (her) supporters..." He has said it more than once.
All I was saying, and it was clear, is that he can't assume anything about Clinton supporters. I didn't say anything about Clinton being nice. Where did you see me writing that? You didn't.
Again, Clinton has only a slight chance of winning so it is up to Obama to unite the party when he's at the top of the ticket. What is so hard to understand? And don't attribute statements or opinions to me that I didn't make.
Comments closed April 01, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Why does this fade out in the middle of your sentence?
Posted by Antid Oto | March 18, 2008 5:23 PM