October 06, 2004
At Least a Tie
Things got nasty last night, but most pleasantly. I thought Cheney's tactic was to devalue Edwards -- ie I never met that man before, even though I run the Senate and he's a senator-- he has an undistinguished record, whereas I am modest about my many years in government service, planning and implementing the neocon takeover of the government. I thought his protestations about growing up poor , like Edwards, were gratuitous.
Statistics were flying. Both parties had figures at their fingertips, even if all were not accurate. Let us thank Dick Cheney for mistakenly referring us to George Soros' site Factcheck.com .
Here's Cameron Marlowe's noun-phrase analysis of the VPs. I did think that Edwards linked himself with Kerry a bit incessantly, (36 times), but you will notice that George W, the noun, did not register on the phraseometer. Doesn't that tell you something?
To a certain extent, it was refreshing not to have to worry about inarticulate bumbling on the part of national leaders. Cheney was smooth as jambonied ice last night. He didn't grimace and look peevish, just condescending and tolerant toward the screw off whippersnapper. Edwards gave it right back to him, blow for blow - Cheney's own legislative record, his lies about Iraq, his lies about the economy, his conflict of interest in the no bid contracts with Halliburton. Edwards graciously mentioned the Cheneys' love for their lesbian daughter, which did not seem to please Cheney in spite of his thanks . Was that meant for the red states?
Cuteness counts on national TV, and John has it all over Dick in that area.
So it was at least a tie for the verbals, and an all out win for Edwards on the visuals. .
Photo note: You are left to extrapolate the photosymbolism for yourself, heavy handed that it is.
Just a little something from the linguists at Penn, slightly unrelated, but nonetheless interesting.
Posted by Dakota at October 6, 2004 06:45 AM