Month: August 2008

Invoking Race Helps Whom?

By Patrick Appel
Larison argued yesterday that Obama would benefit from charges of racism, as he did in the primary:

If [the media’s] response to the accusations against the Clintons is any indication, many will accept this idea [of racism], and Obama will profit from this sort of scurrilous charge.

I’m not sure that the comparison works, a point made by one of Ben Smith’s readers:

Comparing this to the Democratic Primary, without mentioning that this is a completely different electorate, is absurd.

Chuck Todd has similar feelings:

Let’s get something straight: Anytime race is THE topic du jour in the campaign, it’s a bad day for Obama… it’s worth knowing the Obama campaign is going to do their best to downplay race, and the McCain campaign is going to walk a line on the issue. They certainly know if they look like they are injecting it into the campaign, it’ll cost them with swing women voters — but they also know McCain could benefit from a backlash. The thing that galls McCain and many Republicans is what they believe is a double standard. They don’t understand how Obama and Dems in general get away with playing the race card to fire up black voters without getting called on it.

Can Real Life Sell?

by Chris Bodenner
Dan Zak explores the stereotypical bind of modern teen movies — even with documentaries like the upcoming "American Teen":

We see a basketball star gunning for a scholarship, a popular queen bee awaiting admittance to Notre Dame, a loner in pursuit of a girlfriend. There’s so much more to us, to the high school experience, than these conventions, and yet filmically we’re constantly reduced for easier digestion. Shouldn’t we expect more from such a powerful and imaginative art form?

Mark Olsen reported on suspicions that the film isn’t an authentic documentary.  Director Nanette Burstein responded:

"There’s accusations that it’s staged and scripted and that I went after the stereotypes, and it’s just not true. … I think it’s unusual to have a very narrative documentary, so people aren’t used to it.  I think people have a hard time believing teenagers are willing to be that intimate on camera. So sometimes I feel I’m being criticized for what the film’s achievements are. … [But] I want to entertain people, I want to move them in the same way a fiction film would."

(For anyone interested in genre-bending documentaries, I’d recommend "American Movie" and "Capturing The Friedmans.")

McCain’s Message Guy

By Patrick Appel
Laurence Lowe profiles McCain strategist Steve Schmidt:

Schmidt has certainly indulged in lowly Rove-like tactics over the years. Like the time, back in 1996, when he sent out 60,000 "sex surveys" that attempted to portray then-Congressman Tim Roemer as someone who was using health surveys to pry into the sex lives of adolescents. Schmidt has already proved in this campaign that he’s not above that kind of behavior. But he also has a parallel history of stressing decidedly moderate positions, and eschewing the dictates of Rove’s permanent conservative majority pipe dream. If his sudden ascendancy proves anything, it is that the Republican Party’s fortunes have changed so dramatically that it can no longer afford to have grand ideologues run its campaigns, but must instead turn to scrappier tacticians like Schmidt. 

Silly Season

By Patrick Appel
Amy Chozick argues in the WSJ that Obama is too skinny to be president:

In a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

(hat tip: Drum)

Dumb Luck

By Patrick Appel
Maria Farrell ponders winning the lottery:

But what it comes down to is this; the lottery fantasy starts off being about running away from the obligations and necessities of material life, but ends up more highly charged version of ‘what should I do with my life?’ . In the beginning of the daydream I go on holidays, pay off debts, make extravagant gifts and indulge in versions of my better self. But ultimately the money simply heightens the dilemma of how to live a virtuous life.