Joeydee's Headline News

In an effort to shore up his ratings among the Angry White Male demographic, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama re-aired his half-hour political message in certain target markets to coincide with the end of Sunday 1 p.m. NFL football games. The move backfired, however, when the game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs went into overtime, and Florida bay area fans watched their placekicker line up for the game-winning field goal only to see the game preempted by "I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message." "Who is this Barack Obama guy anyway?" lamented Charlie O'Keefe, a Buccaneers fan filmed outside a St. Petersburg sports bar burning an Obama doll in effigy. "This is the biggest outrage since the Heidi Bowl!" "If Barack Obama is going to be an effective president, he's going to have to learn the hierarchy of things," observed Washington lobbyist Brian Forthofer, coincidentally dressed in a Redskins jersey, lipstick, jewelry, and pig snout.
"In this town, it's football first, presidency second."

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate John McCain potentially closed the gap in the polls among America's working moms when he announced a deal with Playskool for the upcoming holiday season. Inspired by McCain's thought-provoking campaign theme, the company is marketing its "Little Working People" figurine set, which includes Joe the Plumber, Mike the Mechanic, Jim the Grocer, and Sally the Nurse. In related news, PBS announced a tentative contractual agreement with Senator McCain should he fail to win the presidency. "We see John McCain as filling a vital role with America's youth that's been missing since the death of Fred Rogers," said John Wilson, Senior Vice President and Chief TV Programming Executive for PBS. "Senator McCain understands neighborhood, and he has a special bond with butchers and bakers and bankers and mailmen alike. They're the people that you meet, when you're walking down the street, they're the people that you meet each daaaay!"

Palling Around With Palin

NBC Nightly News, which I am a scoop reporter of, ran a story this week saying Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin has confirmed what has been speculated for weeks by the RNC and the media in general, that she is on the national scene to stay. Quite the turnaround for the Alaskan governor, who only a few short weeks ago was not even permitted by her own team to speak openly with the media, now has stars in her eyes and is stepping on the puffy head of John McCain to reach for them. It's not clear if her career aspirations include seeking Ted Stevens' (presumably) vacating Senate seat, aspiring for the crown of Miss America Mom, or--gasp--heading the 2012 Republican ticket for the conservative right, but she is certainly on tap to carry the torch for the conservative right when they scramble to pick up the pieces following Tuesday's election. Ahh, if she only had a brain. I'd love to hear a reporter slip through the McCain defenses before election day and ask her w
hat she thinks of the job President Bush has done for the past 8 years, because that would juxtapose her role on the McCain ticket with her budding alliances with the neo-conservatives who make up the majority of the 27% who still adore the Dubya. My guess is, after her public spontaneous human combustion, all we would have left is a pile of hair and a pair of $3,000 shoes from Saks that would be rendered useless for the much-anticipated charitable clothing auction. As Election Day draws near and McCain goes down in flames one last time, he must be secretly ruing the decision to bring such a self-serving neophyte onto his ticket. A McCain-Ridge or a McCain-Huckabee or even a McCain-Leiberman ticket might not have been as sexy, but at least he would have known where their loyalties stood.

Conspiracy Theory?

It certainly would have been a bust for Obama to spend millions on tonight's prime time infomercial if no one was watching it. Strategically, his campaign scheduled the event for what was to be just before Game 6 of the World Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. But with the Phillies up 3 games to 1 on Monday night and threatening to close out their championship drive, Obama would have been stating his case primarily to a whole bunch of Deal or No Deal and Old Christine fans, and there probably aren't enough of those people to make Rhode Island swing a tenth of a percent. Luckily, the baseball game was called off in the middle of the sixth inning Monday night by the officiating crew, skipped over on Tuesday night thanks to Commissioner Bud Selig, and rescheduled for tonight. So instead of pandering to all the Tom Twelve-Packs watching Game 6 of the series, Obama gets to appeal to them with all of their kids who might finally get to watch a game clinching finish to the World Series without staying up past midnight. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. How do we know Bud Selig isn't an Obama supporter and delayed the game until tonight for just that reason? How do we know the umpires weren't just waiting for Tampa Bay to tie the game in the 6th inning before suspending the game, knowing that the weather forecast for Tuesday was also bleak? How do we know Cole Hamels, the Phillies pitcher, wasn't in on it, and didn't serve up a meatball to Carlos Pena, a batter who had only one measly hit before tying the game? And maybe the weathermen were in on it too, scaring the commissioner into postponing the game until tonight with an overzealous forecast. We know Obama has ties to Bill Ayers, and Bill Ayers was once associated with the weathermen, so what exactly is Obama's relationship with meteorologists, anyway?Hmmm. It begs one to wonder. If this infomercial proves to be the death knoll for McCain's campaign and propels Obama to the White House, maybe it's time to call for a congressional inquiry into "Phillie-gate"...

Diary of a Rogue Agent

In case you're wondering why Sarah Palin is getting ready to push the old geezer McCain down the stairs, this article by Politico's Jonathan Martin might help explain it. 

Subtraction by Division

I guess I'm a little frustrated with this week's subject, because coming to some kind of conclusion about political TV ads seems kind of nondescript and fuzzy to me. I mean, I've watched the ads that Courtney posted on her blog and I know the few that I've seen on TV in our market. I know there's an entire marketing strategy behind who gets to see what, and it's based upon polling and the shaping of the electoral college map. Maybe that's the reason why we as a country don't do away with the whole notion of the Electoral College, because it makes it easier for the media and the campaigns to focus on certain areas with their advertising dollars than as a country as a whole. We're in a clear Obama state so all we get to see are the national ads from both campaigns, we don't necessarily get exposed to the real sniping that occurs in the battleground states. When I was in New Hampshire in September for the races, I was amazed at how many ads were clogging the airways, but not s
o back here in CT. Once a campaign knows they have your state in their back pocket, or that they don't have a chance, it's, "Fuhgeddaboudit, let's move on to a battleground state." What's interesting this year is that Obama has challenged that perspective and gone after traditionally Republican strongholds with some success.

The other thing that kind of bugs me is the notion from one of Colin's post (and I can't find which one, most links don't work for me here at work), but the talk was that the RNC is gearing up their next "swift-boat" campaign to be spewed (and I think that's the most accurate word) upon the American public with just 8 days remaining in the election. I got an email from a co-worker last week from an organization called The Republican National Trust PAC. It wails about Obama's "dirty little secret" to include 12 million illegal aliens in the social security system and give them drivers licenses. This email also attacks Obama not only as a liberal but "the most radical leftist ever nominated by the Democratic Party". The Republican National Trust PAC then goes on to tout the great John McCain before asking for contribution dollars to help its cause, before issuing a disclaimer at the end: "Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee." Uh-huh. It's pure Swift Boat st
uff and it doesn't necessarily contain an ounce of truth, but it makes its rounds an it comes out at a time when there's little or no time to dispute its accuracy. Misinformation was a key to the 2004 election so no doubt there are going to be attempts at the same this time around. Unfortunately, our archaic legal system doesn't provide for prosecution or litigation against blatant attempts to spread memes through lies. We trust so much to the Internet theses days while doing nothing to ensure any type of credibility, from biases bloggers to viral e-mailers right on down the line.