11:19 any pundit who says that wasn't a miserable speech is a hack.
11:17 'america' is an abstraction a la 'horizon' by the time they're through with it. it's in every sentence. that's really what's wrong with strategic and incessantly repetitive discourse; the information decays every time it is re-transmitted.
11:15 balloon drop! dude that sucked. i mean the speech.
11:14 no one can be this white.
11:13 he grows even whinier as he builds to a crescendo. obama is an extremely fortunate man.
11:12 he's got them chanting 'no.' well, that's a clear contrast to the dems in 2008.
11:11 he just said he would return to the foreign policy of truman. ka-pow!!
11:10 straight up that's it: the voice is insufferable. i will not listen to it for years on end! that's why i'm voting for gary johnson.
11:09 'president obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans.' ok that's a good line.
11:06 oy the pandering. more women than men start businesses, they need an asshole who understands what they do.
11:04 he's bringing us a bright horizon. i'd like to cobble together phrases like that into a completely abstract, completely empty speech. maybe a single homeric metaphor: a horizon bright with the dawn of promise for america, as a new day breaks upon a future aflame with hogwash.
10:59 one problem is that romney has been definitively upstaged, by rubio and forgodsake eastwood. they'd have been better off switching rubio and christie, as it turns out. the contrast with eastwood, just completely comfortable in his own skin, is devastating.
10:50 mitt romney is a feminist.
10:48 i have had enough american exceptionalism. even though i might endorse a version. but no thought survives being expressed this incessantly.
10:46 romney's dad came from the mexican revolution. rode with villa.
10:45 gore's and kerry's convention speeches were miserable and meaningless. this too. 'the soles of neil armstrong's shoes touched our souls.' jesus christ, you couldn't afford a writer? 'if you asked anne and i' dude. 'me.'
10:42 'you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour': that got a standing o.
10:41 he has this kind of pseudo-emotive, just about to sob little whine in his voice. just a terribly unattractive person in my opinion.
10:40 you know the central theme of this convention is the immigrant experience. hmmmmm.
10:37 aww i thought he wasn't going to accept the nomination. too much humility. i wonder whether he and ryan actually do like each other. i wonder whether they will when it's over. mccain and palin want to gouge each others' eyes.
10:35 men's clothes really need to get more varied; everyone in the grey suit is kind of sad. we can do better!
10:30 romney's great-grandfather came from nothing. rubio at least isn't purveying the sheer narcissistic self-serving slop. he let his own sparkle be compelling.
10:24 rubio: 'faith in the creator is the most important american value of them all.' ok now play this through all the serious mormonism and catholicism we've seen among republican figures; gingrich and santorum, e.g.. first off, perhaps a pretty clear coalition is emerging, another wave of the theocratic right, which is always an element. but...romney is perhaps much more positioned to be central in that than he has expressed publicly. the whole romney public persona is obviously false. so, that leaves room for speculation.
10:24 i genuinely resonate to the individualist rhetoric, of course. it needs to have more than an economic form, and a more theorized frame for sophisticates. i wouldn't myself rest the whole thing on god, of course.
10:20 what worries me about mormonism is its too-americanness, its wonderbread served by stepford wives vibe. but, i've never actually known a mormon, i think. too busy hangin out with jews and mennonites.
10:17 uh oh marco rubio is going to tell his frigging story again. eastwood did loosen up the crowd and the mood. rubio is also quite the natural. marco rubio's father came from nothing.
10:12 this is the right tone from eastwood: "we own this country. politicians are our employees." the old perot tune. but not a favorite of contemporary pols.
10:03 think what you like. clint eastwood has a completely undeniable cool factor. plus he's actually a very fine artist. not like rolling out an ancient john wayne or charlton heston. plus he's actually kicking ass. he's beyond assured in this context. uh oh he better keep it reasonably brief though.
10:02 wolf really built up this video, calling it 'amazing' and saying AND NOW with considerable emphasis. that is incomprehensible. nobody can actually look forward to something like that.
10:00 and catholics too have flexed their muscles this year in this provisional inter-faith right coalition. but who among us non-mormons have really thought through the political implications of mormonism?
9:52 the stuff those mormon folks testified to was rather remarkable. they described him as their pastor. a guy who was once his assistant pastor said he spent '10, 15, or 20 hours' of time every week counseling and helping people, and a variety of people described quite above-and-beyond efforts to help specific people. now, i ain't got 20 hours of energy like that, and i have one of the least strictly demanding jobs in the world. this guy was rolling on an extremely high-powered business career. well, i think you have to take that seriously, and i also don't see any specific reason to think that he's not a principled person in his private life, which is not always what you get, and it bleeds into the public actions (cf. nixon, clinton).
but it's also emerging that he's an extremely religious person. well, huckabee was a baptist minister. but no one thinks about mitt in those terms, and 'the religious right' in our heads is southern evangelicals. i will note one thing: the mormon church is a church-state and brgham young ran a theocracy strict as iran's.
7:49 i got to be out and about for a cuple of hours, but i intend to get back to blog romney.
6:25 the common defense of romney from his 'unrelateableness' is that he's just so humble. he hates to talk about himself or brag. really? have you ever heard him talk? he touts his accomplishments. one of his favorite sentences is this: "i will lead." etc etc. he has never struck me as genuinely humble; quite the reverse. now maybe he does have a noblesse-type attitude where you don't talk about your actual specific good deeds. maybe.
