June 06, 2007
Pictorially Shorter Third Republican Primary Debate
[Remember, still plenty of caption opportunities below!]
Well, that's pretty much it. Just replace "children" with "the average GOP primary voter."
On a related note, this bizarre book (it actually exists) was subject to one of the funniest Photoshop contests ever. You can start here and navigate through 18 pages' worth, or simply click the links below for my favorites:
The Stanley Kubrick version. The Bad Dudes version. The doggie suicide version. The Crosby, Stills, and Nash version (I'll bet you can guess what this is). The extreme feline re-mix version. The fear and loathing version. The geometry nerd version. The real life version. The only funny recurring SNL sketch in the last 20 years version. The New Orleans version. The glorious rapture version. The Zucker-Abrams-Zucker version. And, finally, the I don't know what this references version.
Give me your own debate impressions or link to the gastrointestinally fortified souls who actually watched the thing in the comments. If this one excerpt dissected by James Fallows is any indication, I can't imagine watching it without instantaneously developing 30 peptic ulcers or losing faith in (a) the country and/or (b) humanity in general.
The last link is to the Halflife version. Freeman is the main character of the two Halflife games.
Posted by: crazynick at June 6, 2007 09:13 AMAspirated water with the doggie suicide version.
Oh, and I am so not watching ANY debates. I can pretty much anticipate what's going to be said and I don't need to be frothingly crazy this early in the game.
Posted by: Nancy in Detroit at June 6, 2007 09:45 AMDebates..now there's an artifact of Nineteenth Century politics. Who cares how well the candidates do at political oratory? And to even call this a debate is ludicrous. A debate has one topic and two sides, and the two sides are expected to offer contentions and rebuttals. Questions from the moderator and shows of hands just don't come into it.
Nonetheless, Rudy and the Rudettes managed to scare the shit out of me. It's bad enough to know they hold such barbaric positions on Iraq, immigration, the economy and so on, but it was truly frightening to see what points they jumped to make when given the opportunity. No one really answers the questions, but the things they choose to say when their turns come are probably more revealing than a direct answer. These are the things they think the voter wants to hear.
My favorite part was the defense of Scooter Libby. These are the same people who fucking impeached Bill Clinton, not for lying about sex, which is what everyone likes to say, but in actuality was for dodging a question on when he had briefed his staff about the matter. (Do you, dear reader, know the context of the "is is" statement?) But Libby didn't really DO anything wrong, they said. So why did he feel that it was necessary to lie under oath about it? And that one asshole (one of the Thompsons, I think) had to trot out that old line about Plame not really being undercover. That has been completely discredited and even Dick Cheney has stopped using that line, but our boy never got the message. And why should poor Scooter have to go to jail when Clinton 'only' got impeached? Maybe it's because Scooter undermined national security while Clinton just got a blowjob, you idiots.
Posted by: Charles Watkins at June 6, 2007 10:28 AMWhat? No "All your plane are belong to us!?"
Posted by: Stash at June 6, 2007 10:38 AMThe GOP debates aren't about who can lead our country. They're running to be the next Mr. Bill.
Posted by: Kevin Hayden at June 6, 2007 01:53 PMi watched. all two hours, yes indeed.
for what it's worth, i thought the dem thing was more a contest to see how many times in two hours of live television wolf blitzer can insult the viewers, whereas this was a far more fascinating scene: watching all these guys struggle to stay inside the ideological cereal box of blue diamonds and purple horseshoes the right's cooked up in the last fifteen years, and how many times a single person can mix up the same verbal cues and frames in order to get the 28-33%ers all wild and crazy.
Posted by: dex at June 6, 2007 02:26 PMOhhhhh noooooo Mr Billllll! I would like to crush them. Wouldn't that be great if they all got hit by a plane with snakes on board? That was funny, and it would be very good for the chi.
Happy now? Stole one bit from Saturday Night Live and one from Kids in the Hall. I could really go for a bit of Bass juice from the old Bass-o-matic. D'Oh!
D'Oh!