October 6
Last night's combative vice-presidential debate was, in common with the opening presidential session last week, often more telling for the nuance, poise and attitude of the participants than for any one unexpected thing they specifically said.
Tom Shales in the Post calls it a "tea party for pit bulls", while Walter Shapiro notes in USA Today:
...with the possible exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Woody Allen, it is difficult to imagine two men in North America who have less in common as adults than [Dick] Cheney and [John] Edwards.
Cheney, despite coming across at various times as gruff, schoolmasterly or curmudgeonly, did well not to be thrown by the rumblings surrounding the Bremer and Rumsfeld statements on Iraq. (Some blog postings also expressed concern for the vice-president's health...)
For his part, Edwards dutifully hammered away at the lack of connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11, and used the word Halliburton every chance he got.
In what the New York Daily News reports was an effort to "spook" Cheney, the Kerry team reserved a front row seat for Senator Patrick Leahy, whom the vice-president had famously sworn at in the chamber.
Jim Rutenberg in The Times has a piece showing how the spin cycle has now officially overtaken the news cycle, while another paper reported that it had received four emails saying Edwards had won the debate before it even aired.
In a similar vein, there was a nice piece by Warren St John in Sunday's New York Times on the popularity of "fake news" and why it's filling a void.
On the legitimate news side, according to the AP, last week's Bush-Kerry debate attracted 62.5m viewers, up a staggering 34 per cent on the first Bush-Gore encounter four years ago.
Finally; how could you?
Last night's combative vice-presidential debate was, in common with the opening presidential session last week, often more telling for the nuance, poise and attitude of the participants than for any one unexpected thing they specifically said.
Tom Shales in the Post calls it a "tea party for pit bulls", while Walter Shapiro notes in USA Today:
...with the possible exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Woody Allen, it is difficult to imagine two men in North America who have less in common as adults than [Dick] Cheney and [John] Edwards.
Cheney, despite coming across at various times as gruff, schoolmasterly or curmudgeonly, did well not to be thrown by the rumblings surrounding the Bremer and Rumsfeld statements on Iraq. (Some blog postings also expressed concern for the vice-president's health...)
For his part, Edwards dutifully hammered away at the lack of connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11, and used the word Halliburton every chance he got.
In what the New York Daily News reports was an effort to "spook" Cheney, the Kerry team reserved a front row seat for Senator Patrick Leahy, whom the vice-president had famously sworn at in the chamber.
Jim Rutenberg in The Times has a piece showing how the spin cycle has now officially overtaken the news cycle, while another paper reported that it had received four emails saying Edwards had won the debate before it even aired.
In a similar vein, there was a nice piece by Warren St John in Sunday's New York Times on the popularity of "fake news" and why it's filling a void.
On the legitimate news side, according to the AP, last week's Bush-Kerry debate attracted 62.5m viewers, up a staggering 34 per cent on the first Bush-Gore encounter four years ago.
Finally; how could you?
posted by Steve at 5:08 PM
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