Thursday, October 2, 2008

Joe Six Pack

I have been thinking about the debate these past couple of days. I have many impressions. First, it wasn't a debate. Those who say Palin was a great debater are idiots. If this had been a college debate she would have flunked. It fact, I viewed it as offensive, rather than cute, when she said she would say what she wanted to say and not answer the questions. She would speak to the American people How presumptuous and disrespectful of the process.

Her voice is horrible. My daughter called me to say she couldn't stand to listen to Palin. The absence of anything approaching common diction,syntax and accepted grammatical standards of speech is appalling.

She had to look at her three by five cards to get the answers. She talked in sound bites. The format worked for her, because she didn't have to deal with follow up questions. That was her downfall in the TWO interviews she has had thus far that qualify as REAL interviews. The Fox interviews and those by "in the tank" commentators are bullshit. An example is the clarification interview on Fox yesterday where she identified three Supreme Court cases and named three news sources. It was unadulterated bullshit.

It was something to watch the likes of Giuliani do post debate spin and call her the best they have ever seen. Biden, by the way, did a first class job. I was anxious that he might talk too much or make a significant gaff. The only one I heard was Bosniak. That was actually kind of funny. I like Biden.

The Joe Six Pack reference of Palin is, however, what I want to focus on. The follow up question is, "Just who is Joe Six Pack." In my experience Joe Six Pack is a marginally educated white guy with a gut, and a propensity to over consume alcohol. He watches professional team sports and couldn't run a 10K or around the block to save his soul. Joe Six Pack is not a very attractive guy.

What is so interesting about Joe Six Pack and Palin's populist pitch to that demographic is the fact that the Republican's fundamentally don't give a shit about that guy. In fact, all the Republican positions are antithetical to Joe Six Pack, except he doesn't appreciate that fact. And, it is Joe Six Pack's sons and daughters who comprise the overwhelming number of young men and women who die in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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