Here's something fresh -- a politician rendered speechless, at least momentarily. Of course, few campaign conversations that involve Viagra and birth control can go anywhere good for a candidate.
In this video below, the questioner is our own Maeve Reston. The questionee -- John McCain, whom Reston asked for a reaction to a comment by McCain supporter-advisor Carly Fiorina about insurance companies that cover Viagra but not birth control. (And, yes, the image of a deer in the headlights comes to mind.)
Tony Schwartz, who made the famous Elect Lyndon Johnson "daisy ad" among many other political statements, died over the weekend at the age of 84.
The controversial ad -- which did not name, but was aimed at feeding war fears and uncertainty about, Johnson's opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona -- was, like the 1988 Willie Horton TV commercial for George H. W. Bush, only broadcast one time: during NBC's Monday Night Movies in 1964.
But that was enough to send shock waves through the election's politics at the time. Ironically, Johnson's alleged anti-war ad helped create a resounding election victory that led him to escalate the Vietnam War. The resulting social and political turmoil of the late '60s and a re-energizing of conservatives went on to produce seven Republican White House wins, to three for the Democrats.
A recluse in Manhattan, Schwartz produced thousands of commercials over the years with clients such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Coca-Cola and Chrysler as well as anti-smoking ads.
As the little girl counted daisy petals, the ominous loudspeaker voice of someone counting down to zero led to the terrifying blast sound of the nuclear bomb.
As the menacing sound rumbled through TV sets across the nation, the voice of President Johnson could be heard intoning, "These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."
Obviously, everyone didn't die. And everything worked out just swell after this ad. In 1968 internal Democratic Party strife forced Johnson to give up any hope of a second elected term. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, lost to Richard Nixon, who had no political problems except maybe becoming the first president ever forced to resign.
Goldwater never did reach the White House, but his political disciples reorganized around someone named Ronald Reagan, who had some electoral success.
And it took 44 more years for another Arizonan to make a serious bid to become president.
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
With all the sudden emergence of unity talk and who should be president at today's long-awaited endorsement of Barack Obama by Hillary Clinton, it's easy perhaps to forget that it wasn't so long ago that these two -- plus others involved in this historic Democratic nomination contest -- had some contrary, not-so-nice things to say about the party's new presumptive nominee.
Now here, like clockwork in the two-party political system, comes the Republican National Committee, which has cleverly assembled a series of film clips of both Clintons, John Edwards and Joe Biden talking about Obama in unflattering ways from the not-so-distant past. It has also created a lengthy web display of transcripts and videos here of Clinton's many criticisms of the man she now heartily endorses.
As these tit-for-tat political ploys go, this one packs a bit of a punch. Here's a little piece of timing to ponder. You remember how long it feels since that cold caucus night in Iowa when Obama took first and Clinton's third-place finish foretold fundamental troubles that ended with today's euthanasia of her flailing campaign?
Well, we're not quite halfway from that night until election day Nov. 4.
And in the remaining 21 weeks until then, we're pretty sure to see this video or pieces of it many more times.
By now you've all likely seen the "God sent Hitler" video that went viral and led John McCain to reject the support of the Rev. John Hagee, who had already sparked a massive controversy over his comments about the Catholic Church.
None of these videos that go viral crop up organically -- a little virtual rain, some virtual sun and voila! the seed germinates. The guy behind the dissemination of the Hagee video is named Bruce Wilson, and the folks at techPresident link up to his explanation of what happened, and when.
Reading it is a bit like watching sausage getting made, but for those with more than a basic consumer's interest in how some of this stuff works, it makes for interesting reading.
On any sane politician's don't-do list, being photographed with a porn star ranks right up there with crossing state lines for a rendezvous with a high-priced prostitute.
So with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's career-ending sexcapade fresh in everyone's memory, it was no surprise that there wasn't a member of Congress to be found when adult-film performer Stormy Daniels (at right, photographed at the Grammy Awards earlier this year) appeared in Washington on Thursday.
Although she came to the nation's capital to highlight the adult entertainment industry's efforts to protect children from inappropriate online content (e.g., the stuff the industry produces), and lawmakers love to tout anything that helps keep kids safe when surfing the Internet, appearing with Daniels at the National Press Club was rated NC-17, as in: No Chance a politician would get within 17 miles of it.
Daniels was showing off, as it were, two new public service announcements for the industry's Restricted to Adults website label. Unveiled last year by the Assn. of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) -- a group largely funded by the adult entertainment industry -- the label tags sites as inappropriate for anyone under 18 years old, allowing them to be blocked by filtering software.
"I do not want children viewing my site or adult-only content,'' said Daniels, who for this occasion was dressed like a politician ...
Does this Fox News contributor, Liz Trotta, really suggest what it sounds like she suggests -- the assassination of both Osama bin Laden and BarackObama? And then laughs!
Where is the outrage? And the apology?
(UPDATE: Finally, it came and abject it was. (See below, a good ways into the tape.)
(UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Over at WakeUp America, Susan makes a powerful point. Jeffrey Feldman of HuffingtonPost has a strong denunciation of the Trotta gaffe and a call for greater broadcast scrutiny and care about such language because the public does not want it. Though as of late Monday he had not posted Trotta's apology.
(Yet, on the same HuffPost site there's an apparently satirical piece by Guy Saperstein quoting a hopefully fictitious Clinton campaign strategy memo saying, "Assassination is still on the table, but it is still only one of many possibilities." This is funny stuff on one page but legitimate outrage on another?
This could be the ultimate merger of politics, the Web and entertainment. The Republican National Convention and John McCain's campaign have teamed up to solicit user videos of "someone in your neighborhood who goes above and beyond the call of duty to serve what Sen. McCain calls, 'a cause greater than their own self-interest.'" Then viewers get to vote on the best submission. The winner gets a pass to the convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Of course, the devil is in the details. When you look at the FAQs, the convention staff winnows down the submissions to five finalists, and then they'll open it up to a vote. Kind of like a private primary by the insiders to winnow down the list of acceptable candidates (now, that's democracy). So you can probably write off any chance of a talking snowman making the cut.
Still, the Republicans have generally lagged behind the Democrats in Web innovation. This might catch them up a bit. Meanwhile, we'll be watching for the Paulista backlash. Ron Paul's supporters have proven themselves to be adept at both the Web, and videos. And since they're still fighting for a bigger place at the St. Paul table, you can bet they'll be submitting.
And you can also bet that if they don't make the "final five," they'll be flaming (read any comments section on a blog post about Paul).
Even if things don't work out for Mitt Romney in Arizona this weekend, he signaled today that he intends to remain very involved in national politics -- as a financial rainmaker for Republican candidates.
Romney announced the formation of the Free and Strong America PAC and listed John McCain as the first beneficiary along with Dean Andal of Stockton, who is running for California's 11th Congressional District seat, and six other Republicans.
You might look at it as an avenue for Romney, former Massachusetts governor, to keep his staff employed. The executive director is Peter Flaherty, Romney's former deputy chief of staff and deputy campaign manager of Romney's presidential run. The press contact is Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's loyal press aide (see the end of this video).
Is this another Bosnian sniper incident, where a Democratic candidate for president describes a scene involving some personal courage, but later videotape shows that maybe perhaps it wasn't really quite all like that exactly?
Sen. Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate for his party's nomination, is very fond of telling receptive audiences the story about how last May he walked right into the automotive lion's den of Detroit and told those industrialists they were going to have to shape up, change the way they do things and start making more fuel-efficient vehicles to protect our environment.
"And I have to say," the straight-talking Obama tells his chuckling followers, "that when I delivered that speech, the room got really quiet. [Laughter] Nobody clapped."
Well, in honor of Obama's return campaign visit back to Michigan this week, someone -- perhaps Republicans, perhaps someone closer to home politically -- assembled videotape of Obama's oft-told tale and spliced it side by side with videotape of that actual Detroit speech.
You'll never guess what. The room wasn't quiet at all. Obama, in fact, got a loud round of applause. And at the end of his address the camera's view of him at the podium is partially blocked because the audience of local businesspeople and automotive executives was rising to give him a standing ovation.
(UPDATE:Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, has provided numerous contempoary independent news accounts of the candidate's Detroit speech. They describe the audience as presenting a standing ovation at his introduction but only delivering "polite" or "light" applause during it, along with selected quotes from some audience members praising his courage or consistency in delivering the message about better mileage.)
Below is a passage from a major speech given today in Columbus, Ohio by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. It's a fairly trenchant, and many would say accurate, description of the sometimes socially destructive synergy between politicians making charges and the media reporting on them.
"In his/her own words" is a regular feature of The Ticket in which we print some public remarks in total without interruption or comment.
"The hectic but repetitive routine of presidential campaigns often seems to consist entirely of back-and-forth charges between candidates, punctuated by photo ops, debates and the occasional policy speech, followed by another barrage of accusations and counter-accusations, formulated into the soundbites preferred by cable news producers.
"It is a little hypocritical for candidates or reporters to criticize these deficiencies. They are our creation. Campaigns and the media collaborated as architects of the modern presidential campaign, and we deserve equal blame for the regret we feel from time to time over its less than inspirational features.
"Voters, however, even in this revolutionary communications age, with its 24-hour news cycle, can be forgiven their uncertainty about what the candidates actually hope to achieve if they have the extraordinary privilege of being elected president of the United States. We spend too little time and offer too few specifics on that most important of questions.
"We make promises, of course, about what kind of policies we would pursue in office. But they often are obscured, mischaracterized and forgotten in the heat and fog of political battle."
A small but very surprising gaffe by the leading Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, Wednesday during a visit to an automotive plant in Michigan. These photo ops are staged by every presidential campaign for the precise purpose of having TV cameras film their candidate walking, looking and learning something somewhere.
But although the media are absolutely essential to the staged event's success, the campaigns really don't want them messing up their political plans with interruptions or questions. If the cameras only have pictures, that's all the stations can broadcast.
Answering reporters' questions distract from the pleasant photos and could change the subject away from the day's political message. What if they ask him/her about West Virginia or doing poorly among blue-collar Democratic workers like those waiting to shake his hand up the line?
Peggy Agar of Channel 7 TV news in Detroit was with her cameraman at the Sterling Heights, Mich., plant jockeying for position as Obama walked around the facility, trying like all the others in the invited press mob to lob a question in and get the candidate actually talking on-camera instead of merely looking.
Suddenly Obama was walking right toward her. "Senator," Agar addressed him, "how are you going to help the American auto worker?"
"Hold on one second, sweetie," the presidential candidate said, sticking out his right arm as if to ward her off. "We're gonna do a press avail."
Sweetie?
"This 'sweetie,'" Agar noted acidly in her broadcast report, "never did get an answer to that question."
Later, the station said Obama had left an apology on the reporter's phone, admitting he had a problem calling women "sweetie" and saying he intended no disrespect.
If there's no disrespect intended, why wouldn't he have used it during, say, one of his debates against Sen. Hillary Clinton? "Now, Sweetie, you're not describing my health care plan accurately." How would that go over?
Alas for Obama, his comment was already captured on tape. Here it is.
Yesterday The Ticket broke the stunning news of America's acquisition of seven, maybe eight, new states, according to future president Barack Obama.
He was speaking at the start of a two-day swoop through Oregon, which is already a state.
In Beaverton, which is not a state yet, the Democrat let it slip that during this marathon 16-month party presidential nomination struggle against a bunch of dropouts and this female political zombie from New York who won't surrender short of a silver stake, he had already visited 57 states with one more to go.
That's not counting the existing states of Alaska and Hawaii, he said, which his staff decided aren't important enough to visit. Unless maybe you're Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich, who weren't very important either, come to think of it.
Here's the spoof-proof Obama video as evidence:
Has this aging freshman senator -- he'll be almost 60 in 13 years -- lost his bearings? Are the eight new states caucus or primary? And will Howard Dean bar them from the convention too?
Besides trying to noodle out what the new states are, some clever campaign folks over at the phenomenal Suitably Flip blog got to thinking right away.
And they've now unveiled a new patriotic lapel pin that anyone can wear with pride even, say, a Harvard-educated senator from Illinois who's been trying to make a point about opposing a war before it even started.
Here is the new pin replete with all 57 stars:
You'll probably want to order several for friends and family. And any Chablis-sipping senators you might know.
The day Barack Obama first appeared in the church office of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., more than 20 years ago, the pastor warned him that getting involved with Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ might not be "a feather in your cap."
Obama was a community organizer then trying to build support for his group on the South Side of Chicago, and a friendly minister at another church had suggested that he'd have more luck with black clergy support if he actually joined a congregation himself.
"Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what we're about," Wright told him that day, as Obama would later recount it. "They feel like we're too radical. Others [think] we ain't radical enough."
Obama ended up joining, a story he tells in his memoirs, and later was influenced enough by Wright to derive the title of a subsequent book, "The Audacity of Hope," from one of the pastor's sermons.
Some have speculated that Wright became a father figure for Obama, whose father had left the family and returned to Africa. As The Ticket noted the other day, others believe Obama was attracted by Wright's cerebral nature, as opposed to other less-educated black ministers on Chicago's South Side.
But despite the warning, the association did not seem to be a terribly risky one for Obama, given the arc of the career he was beginning to craft even then.
He was carefully constructing his resume as a street-savvy community organizer while also applying for admission to law school. Within the walls of Trinity, he found a connection to the African American community he'd lacked as a child raised by his white mother and grandparents, an important cultural marker for a biracial candidate who later would try to appeal to black and white voters alike.
He'd share church membership with some of Chicago's influential thinkers and leaders, among them lawmakers, judges and Oprah Winfrey. And in Wright he would find ...
A few minutes of lighter political entertainment on a Saturday evening before we have to get into all the heavy stuff on those political talk shows tomorrow morning, leading up to Tuesday's crucial votes in North Carolina and Indiana:
He's got nothing to gain by accepting -- give in and give her more TV face time with voters when, frankly, debating hasn't been his strong suit, especially the last one when he got pressed harder. And now his good friend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is back on the scene talking trash and raising new questions for the media.
As a debate response, Obama says he wants to spend the remaining time until May 6 meeting real voters and hearing and addressing their genuine concerns. He says he recalls from school days that....
TV talk show host Bill Maher, who's gotten in some past controversy for comments on politics -- something about the 9/11 hijackers being brave or not cowards -- got going the other night about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright rejoining the public discussion after weeks of quiet.
In recent days Wright's given TV interviews and several public speeches including a defiant one (with video) earlier today at the National Press Club in Washington.
Maher (see video below) says what many people, most of them supporters of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who refused to disown Wright in his recent race speech, are saying to themselves about the impact of the pastor's reappearance and resulting news coverage just as the Democratic Party presidential primary comes down to crunch time and the last few primaries between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama, gets credit for understatement of the month with his comment on MSNBC this morning before theRev. Jeremiah Wright wrapped up his media blitzkrieg of the last few days with an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
To the extent that voters attribute to Obama statements and opinions that aren't his, Axelrod said, "it's obviously not helpful."
Now, in the wake of a feisty Q&A session that followed a speech Wright delivered (see video below), Obama and his top aides can only sit back and gauge how "obviously not helpful" the man who was the candidate's pastor for many years continues to be to his presidential hopes.
Our colleague Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune was among those covering Wright today, and she reports that in his address, he provided "a learned lecture on the black experience in America and on the African American faith tradition, an attempt to put into context the controversial sermon snippets that have been airing in recent weeks."
But, as he answered questions after his talk, Wright did nothing to quell the controversy ...
The God Gap may be turning against Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries.
Buried within the exit polls from Pennsylvania are some signs that Obama's appeal may be declining among culturally conservative regular churchgoers.
That may not be too surprising given the controversies Obama encountered in the six-week run-up to the primary. Despite Obama's later explanations, his comments at a San Francisco fundraiser that "bitter" small-town Americans "cling to" guns and religion are hardly likely to have endeared him to small-town churchgoers.
That followed circulation of well-publicized video highlights of his former pastor's incendiary sermons, including one in which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright declares blacks should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America," and another in which he explicitly accuses the federal government of causing the AIDS epidemic as genocide against people of color.
Not only Wright's comments but the African-style garb that the pastor is shown wearing every time the video clip is rerun no doubt feeds a suspicion that Obama's outlook on life is far removed from the moral certitudes of religious traditionalists.
And while that damaging controversy had started to fade, the reappearance of the forceful Wright on television last week and in ....
The Democratic National Committee has unveiled a new 30-second ad attacking Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.
Titled “100,” the ad -- which you can see below -- begins with footage of McCain, during a town-hall forum in New Hampshire in January, responding to a voter's comment about how long U.S. troops could be expected to remain in Iraq.
“President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years,” the audio of the voter says as his words appear on half of a split screen.
Barack Obama is off the clock with "Fox News Sunday," and -- 772 days after he first promised moderator Chris Wallace that he would chat on camera with him -- the result was a generally easygoing conversation notable mainly for the ability of the Democratic presidential candidate to avoid being pinned down.
Obama did give one direct answer, which Fox spotlighted on Saturday, saying that despite renewed requests from Hillary Clinton and her surrogates, he won't be sharing a stage with her for another debate before the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Instead, Obama said he wanted to concentrate on meeting voters in those states.
On several other topics, Obama artfully steered clear of specific answers to questions from Wallace.
He dodged saying whether he tried to personally discourage the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- whom he pointedly referred to as his "former" pastor -- from embarking on his current round of public appearances that culminates Monday with a sold-out address at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday.
While reiterating that he was not sitting in a pew when Wright uttered the inflammatory lines that caused the political headache for Obama in March when they gained wide circulation via YouTube, he was vague about the nature of other provocative comments he has said he heard the preacher utter from the pulpit.
In a rare interview, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.says media organizations that circulated controversial sound bites of his sermons wanted to paint him as "un-American" or "some sort of fanatic" to bring down Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
"I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ," Wright tells PBS host Bill Moyers, a member of the same denomination as Wright, the United Church of Christ.
It's Wright's first interview since his comments critical of U.S. policies surfaced on television and the Internet, raising questions about Obama's 20-year association with someone who suggests that the U.S. invited the 9/11 attacks and that the federal government inaugurated the AIDS epidemic to eradicate African Americans.
" 'And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint?' " Wright adds. "That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church."
Wright, who for four decades built his reputation on straight talk and imperviousness to politicians, has been atypically quiet in recent weeks -- canceling four appearances, declining all interview requests and bowing out of a news conference with other clergy. So controversial were his ...
Well, gee what are you going to do, eh? States are states and so are state parties.
And so the North Carolina Republican Party has decided for its own internal reasons to defy its presumptive presidential nominee and run an anti-Obama ad -- or at least say it's going to run the ad so the news media will run it endlessly for them for free-- that Sen. John McCain and RNC head Mike Duncan say should be killed.
They've both said they sent messages to the state party chair Linda Daves, a little old lady also shown in the ad who looks like she's sitting in a rocker about to serve tea instead of ignite a political controversy.
The 30-second ad is really a two-bank shot for state consumption aimed at the two Democrats vying for their party's gubernatorial nomination on May 6.
As The Ticket has noted previously, both Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore have endorsed Barack Obama who has a militant minister, therefore, according to the ad, they're not good. It doesn't involve McCain, who's says he hasn't seen the commercial but heard enough to dislike it.
It pictures, as shown here, Obama with his preacher of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with one clip of a now familiar infamous rant, saying, "No! No! No! Not God bless America. God bleep America!"
Referring to Perdue and Moore, it says, "They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina." (Obama, not Wright.)
You can watch the ad here if you really must. McCain and Duncan obviously feel the ad is too extreme for them.
But if the Democrats can't yet figure out who their nominee's gonna be come November, it looks like the little old lady chair of the North Carolina Republican Party thinks she has.
A spokesman for the presidential campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obamahas criticized The Ticket for making a "false and childish accusation" in an item Thursday that the candidate's one-fingered gesture during a speech that day might have been the finger aimed at his Democratic Party opponent instead of an innocent finger aimed at brushing his cheek or scratching a scratch.
As displayed in a video clip, Obama was criticizing Washington for its gotcha politics in general and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton specifically as being "in her element" there. As he mentions her name, he brushes his cheek twice with the middle finger of his right hand.
Ticket readers were invited to make their own interpretations of the gesture. Thousands read the item and viewed the video and a frame from it. And numerous other blogs and websites discussed the matter in the past day.
More than 500 readers left comments, a majority strongly criticizing the blog for asking the question. Those comments are available at the bottom of the previous item.
In an e-mail this afternoon Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, agreed with those commentors and said, in total:
"This is outrageous. The Ticket should be embarrassed for making this false and childish accusation. It's absurd and untrue."
Asked to elaborate, LaBolt said, "I think my comment covers it. There's nothing to explain."
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Fridays have many good qualities. Normal people with normal jobs get to look forward to two days off. Payday for a lot of folks. Happy hour. Remember, the phrase is NOT "Thank God It's Tuesday." But it's also the day that Joshua Levy over at techPresident posts his favorite YouTube videos of the week.
Which means you get to save a lot of surfing time during the week looking at political videos and let Levy do the heavy lifting for you. Our fave from today's list: Leave Ralph Nader Alone, (see below) which is fascinating in a "the metal-punk band just moved in next door" kind of way. And it also reminds us of this classic ad.
This is one of those political moments that really needs few words.
We'll no doubt hear much more about this incident in coming days.
Right now, we'll just leave this video for Ticket readers to view and judge for themselves. It's Sen. Barack Obama, according to the caption on YouTube posted just minutes ago, speaking to a friendly crowd in Raleigh, N.C., today.
He's talking critically about his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, and the kind of distasteful gotcha politics that occur in Washington. And he says, "That's all right. Sen. Clinton looked in her element."
Watch the video right then. The presidential candidate raises his right hand to seemingly scratch his cheek.
He doesn't use his whole hand though. Just one finger. Briefly. A couple of strokes.
He pauses. He smiles slyly as the crowd begins to mumble and then he tries, somewhat distracted, to continue his remarks, smiling as the buzz spreads through the crowd.
He'll no doubt deny it later, but that mischievous smile seems to confirm plenty. And the crowd sure sees something.
(UPDATE: A new item has been posted on the Obama campaign's reaction to this issue, calling it "absurd and untrue.")
A loyal Ticket reader named Christopher points out a humorous little sidelight to the rowdy political charges of recent days in the Democratic race for president.
As the voting nears in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the contest is rapidly coming down to which Ivy League-educated millionaire Democratic senator with seven-figure homes and around-the-clock Secret Service care can talk the most sincerely about their genuine concern for working people and look the most like a regular working Joe before the next Midwestern primaries.
It could be close. Barack Obama has gone bowling, though he was horrible at it. Hillary Clinton has talked about shooting a duck once.
Clinton was in Crown Point, Ind., over the weekend doing one of those staged photo ops that every campaign loves because....
Have you ever been at, say, a football game and you notice the TV camera turn toward the crowd in Section 14?
And suddenly what seemed like a fairly normal group of people -- except for the two fat guys with no shirts -- turns completely bonkers: waving, displaying ESPN signs, pointing to their sweatshirts, holding up one finger (no, the forefinger) and yelling things that no one will hear because there's no microphone within 50 yards?
That kind of disease must be spreading these days to those people who are handed a microphone. There's something about holding one of those electronic voice-amplifiers in your hand and looking out at a political crowd that turns on the stupid lobe in many a frontal cortex.
We've had so many examples this election season of folks whose egos seem to get amplified instead of their IQs. And they come out with amazing words that the immediate crowd might cheer. But pretty soon, thanks to the Internet and blogs like this, their words get read or heard by others.
And they find themselves apologizing in very embarrassing circumstances.
The latest is Geoff Davis, a Kentucky representative few beyond Paducah ever heard of until today, when his Saturday night....
Barack Obamamay have Oprah, but Hillary Clinton has Elton John, and tonight the British pop/rock star does his thing at a solo concert in New York that will funnel lots of cash into her presidential campaign coffers.
This morning, the clever people who crank out ABC's daily political review, The Note, offered some nominees for the least likely John hit his audience will hear. Their list included “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Candle in the Wind.” (It included another one, which we'll simply link to here.)
One sure bet for a rousing reception, given the must-win status of the looming Pennsylvania primary for Clinton: "Philadelphia Freedom" (a numero uno tune on the charts back in the mid-'70s).
This being the first presidential election cycle with viral videos and YouTube our fellow LATimes.com blogger, David Sarno, over at the new Web Scout blog has an instructive and entertaining look at the web video process and impact.
He's this site's Internet culture and online entertainment writer.
There are a lot of little tricks involved to getting thousands of web users to like your video and to voluntarily pass it on to thousands of others. They are especially powerful in this ongoing political season that will last 22 months before it's done. And Sen. Barack Obama and his supporters have been particularly successful.
Every e-mail that arrives these days from Laura Bush, or from John Kerry, it seems, carries a fundraising appeal with it.
So it is not surprising that the e-missive from Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama, should carry a plea for cash. Yet, wrapped as it is, in a commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on this anniversary of his assassination, there is a certain jarring aspect to this campaign dispatch.
"Today is the 40th anniversary of the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,'' Michelle Obama writes, "and I want to share a video that reveals how far we've come and how much this campaign owes to Dr. King's legacy. Students at a high school in the Bronx, who had no real interest in their government, have found new hope. They were surprised by their own excitement and engagement, but to me, they embody so many reasons why Barack and I decided to get into this campaign.''
At the bottom of this long letter from the Obama campaign sits a "Donate'' button. The e-mail also invites readers to share the inspirational video of the Bronx high schoolers speaking of race with friends. And, after the YouTube video is dispatched, another page appears on the computer screen, with an option for a monthly subscription in contributions to the Obama campaign.
-- Mark Silva
Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau writes for The Swamp.
Somebody once said words are important. So let's compile a list of words and phrases, new and old, that have emerged in this seemingly never-ending war of words in this seemingly never-ending presidential campaign that's still got seven whole months to go exactly from today. But who's counting?
Here's the list so far:
Jeremiad: A very angry sermon that calls for at least repentance, maybe more. Evoked in the outrage over some extreme sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and his family, who claimed to have missed or slept through the angriest ones for two decades.
Swiftboating: Left over from the 2004 campaign when a very fast boat hit a dock in rural Arkansas. Just kidding. It's really when one group unafilliated with but sympathetic to one candidates launches a smear campaign that the other candidate feels is unfair or untrue.
Red-phone: Hillary Clinton's famous television ad that asked if the Batphone rings, which candidate is best prepared to take the crisis call in the White House? The ad, which played on national security concerns, helped focus voter attention on the candidates' resumes and may have helped her win the popular vote in Ohio and Texas. It's become much-parodied since. Turns out the film was actually shot for a railroad commercial years ago and the little girl, now kinda grown up, doesn't support Clinton.
Superdelegate: America's new VIPs. This group of alleged dignitaries, usually elected Democrats, may help decide who gets their party's nomination for president by breaking the DD: Delegate Deadlock. Their influence could be compared to that of the judges on "Dancing with the Stars." Besides votes from the public, judges' scores play a prominent role in who wins on DWTS.
Spitzered: To be spitzered means to spend years prosecuting the nefarious doings of others in order to be elected governor of a populous state only to be exposed as a hypocritical philanderer who paid a prostitute named Kristen way, way too much money to meet him in Washington for some nefarious doings. Connected to presidential politics because the ensuing resignation by the original Spitzer cost Clinton one precious superdelegate vote (see above) and....
Well, this should be a fairly brief and easy item to write because we can't say so many of the words involved. Well, we can say them -- not that we ever have -- we just can't print them because no one has ever heard these awful words at work or in the street and, thus, the entire Republic would collapse if these words got out.
Because as some presidential candidate once said, "Words are important."
(And don't try to sneak words like ____ or _____ into the Comments section below either because, although we want to hear what you think of this ____ _____ controversy, we're watching very closely.)
It seems that another public broadcast personality -- this time a woman -- in the course of "entertaining" a benefit crowd for KKGN, the Air America outlet in San Francisco, called Sen. Hillary Clinton and ex-Rep. Geraldine Ferraro a whole lot of bad words having to do with prostitutes and what, we imagine, they're supposed to do for that money.
She said that Clinton is a _____ ______. She said Ferraro is also a ______ _________. She also called someone a _____ ________. They are the kind of words and images that get huge laughs when high-priced comedians use them on the _____ stage in Las Vegas, which is a _______ town.
The speaker's name is Randi Rhodes. (Spelling her first name that way makes her sound like a ____ _____, doesn't it?) She is -- or was -- the afternoon host on Air America, the "progressive" radio network that _______ and ______. It's designed to compete with the much larger array of _____ conservative talk-radio hosts and programs that are ______ and _____. Seriously, if you listen to any in that ______ crowd you must be a ______ ______.
In a statement released today, Charlie Kireker, who is the _____ chairman of Air America, said the _____ network "encourages strong opinions about public affairs." But apparently it does not condone words like ______, _______, or ______ when applied to public personalities, even if the speaker was _______ not on the _____ air.
Kireker did not use the words _____ or _______. Or even _______.
But the network did suspend that _____ Rhodes indefinitely. Now she can go to work fulltime to support her candidate that ____ ______.
If you need to hear words like ________ or ________, you can go to that _______ YouTube place and _______ watch and ______ listen until your ____ eyes fall out or you ______. Click here if you _____ must. We could give a _____ ____.
Yep -- New Mexico. Key battleground state, that, or at least it might be if it could actually count its votes. But this is where John McCain chose to air what the campaign ballyhooed as the first television ad of the general election.
That's right, we're a week into spring and Team McCain is bragging about being first on the air for the fall election. Call it a pre-emptive strike. But it's a curious time, and a curious place -- McCain, you'll recall, represents neighboring Arizona in the U.S. Senate -- to be spending limited cash that might be more useful in, say, October.
The thing is, the 60-second ad doesn't do much. It comes across as one of those introductory spots aimed at presenting McCain as experienced, and a military veteran. By now, one would hope that anyone planning to vote in November has been paying enough attention to know who McCain is, and that he was a Vietnam War POW -- the ad ends with footage of him in captivity.
No word from the campaign on how often they plan to air the ad. But don't count on the poll numbers changing over this one.
It's our policy here at The Ticket to admit when we make a mistake. And, boy, did we make a doozie the other day when we reported that CBS News videos contradicted Sen. Hillary Clinton's hair-raising account of her bullet-riddled arrival in Bosnia in 1996.
In numerous speeches during this campaign season she has described her party making a harrowing landing on the embattled airfield. Passengers, she recalled, were forced to run with their heads down for the safety of nearby vehicles, which apparently had to be kept a safe distance away in order for people to have to heroically run to them. "That is what happened," candidate Clinton said emphatically.
The news video, which we included in our Ticket item and you should probably review again here, to see how seemingly real film can be doctored so seamlessly, appeared to show the First Lady and her daughter Chelsea calmly walking across the tarmac at Tuzla Air Base, greeting a little girl reading a poem and bravely visiting with American troops near the front lines of that ethnic strife.
WARNING: Some of this war footage is graphic and may be disturbing to some readers.
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Some cynics suggested Clinton was exaggerating the danger and importance of her travels in order to bulk up her credentials of experience to be able to answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. And last night Jay Leno joked that Clinton was supposed to be his guest, but she got pinned down by sniper fire and couldn't make it.
But now we know that peaceful video, which also showed Sinbad trying to be funny in the face of imminent death and Sheryl Crow fearlessly strumming a guitar, had to have been doctored to mask the gunfire and excise the bloody carnage surrounding the brave Mrs. Clinton.
