Debate humor

4 Comments

I'm half-listening to the debate on Internet radio; so far, nobody's said "Pookie" or "Diddums," but I'm still hoping.

If you're watching or listening and want to play along at home, be sure to stop by the PlanetSocks Presidential Debate Bingo page and pick up a randomly generated bingo card. Some of the pictures are excellent, especially the ones for Evil (Emperor Palpatine), Bad Intelligence (a cute little girl whispering in Bush's ear), and Tony Blair (a poodle). I also like the one of Sharon, which makes him look to me vaguely like Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca.

Allogenes has a cute comment on the debate.

Best comment from chatting about the debate so far:

Wouldn't a dick-waving contest put Kerry at a disadvantage? Bush has a Dick, Kerry has a John....

—Will Q.

Finally, an amusing mistake in a headline at PolitInfo.com, though they may've fixed it by the time you see this:

Bush, Bush Make Final Preparations for First Presidential Debate

President Bush and his Democratic Party challenger John Bush are making final preparations for their first presidential debate....

Oh, okay, one more thing. I don't really believe that speech mistakes are indicative of anything serious, but that doesn't stop me from being amused by them. So my favorite line so far in the debate itself was Bush saying (approximate quote): "You cannot lead if you send mexed miss—uh, mixed messages."

4 Responses to “Debate humor”

  1. Celia

    I don’t really believe that speech mistakes are indicative of anything serious,

    See, I do and I don’t. I don’t believe that a slip up now and then means anything. Even Clinton would stumble from time to time. It’s not the existence of any errors that bothers me, it’s the sheer quantity of errors that scares me, and the type of errors–there are errors that indicate you just slipped up, like the mexed missages one, but so many of bush’s mistakes are simple grammar, things that shouldn’t have sounded right to him when he read them. And that’s when I am overwhelmed by an urge to kick him in the shins so hard he limps for a week.

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  2. Benjamin Rosenbaum

    I’m with Jed here. I don’t think there’s any correlation between malapropisms and the intelligence of the speaker. It’s the kind of idiotic thing that the media likes to jump on and make a big deal of it; one of those reasons a lot of people we’d probably be well served by having in politics stay out of it. Who needs the aggravation?

    It also seems like one of those things that it’s tactically very foolish for liberal intellectuals to make a big deal of. Shifting the debate from “Bush is balooning and bankrupting the federal government, eroding civil liberties, and involving us in an unnecessary and nationally suicidal land war in Asia” to “Bush talks dumb, and he probably didn’t really do all the national guard duty he was supposed to in the 1970s” is precisely how we’re managing to lose this election.

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  3. SarahP

    Are we losing this election?

    Watched the debate last night in super huge-screen format with about 50 undergrads from both political parties (45 Kerry supporters, 4 for Bush. One student is a member of the Iowa electoral college!). It was really…(weirdly)…fun. I enjoyed watching the Shrub squirm and smirk (check the NYTimes for an analysis of the physical rhetoric).

    And you wouldn’t believe the get-out-the-vote effort on this university campus! It’s very exciting!

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  4. David Schwartz

    Just this week on NPR–I can’t recall if it was Fresh Aire or Morning Edition–someone who’d been following Bush’s career since Texas was talking about how well-spoken he used to be. He played a clip from one of the Bush/Ann Richards debates in which he quite frankly eviscerated her. Apparently much of the malapropism has crept into his speech since he stepped onto the national stage. I used to really believe the guy was not that bright; now I just think he’s not smart about certain (crucial) things. He does know what he wants to accomplish, and he knows how to play to the public, and as Ben says, it’s a mistake to keep playing the “look how dumb he is” card.

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