The new oohing

Howard Kurtz is really documenting two different phenomena. The first is the crass merchandising of Obamaphoria by theoretically otherwise neutral media. Big surprise. But as I said last week, all these companies already made a lot of money off an election that people loved to love.

UPDATE: Amanda found lots of other people trying to make money. Especially amusing are the pseudo Cabbage Patch dolls, but more significant in the inauguration as rock concert meme.

The second issue is the oohing and aahing; and I confess that, watching the Os last night on 60 Minutes, it was difficult to know what to do about that. Because some of it seems warranted. I mean, they really are smart and personable and attractive and admorable. How do you not say tha.t?

Live-blogging Barack Obama on 60 Minutes

He evoked FDR with a version of "I see one third of a nation ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed"

"We go from shock to trance," about gas. That's a nice turn of phrase.

"America doesn't torture. And I'm going to make sure we don't torture." Somewhere Andrew Sullivan is smiling.

At a media studies level he's sort of interesting in the way he can hold a close-up. He's really interesting with NO ornamentation.

In (correctly) rejecting specific New Deal parallels, he's also rejecting the Time magazine cover that makes him look like FDR.

Michelle Obama ... has anybody EVER been so ready for this crazy, impossible job? And the aspirations for normality and domesticity -- they really are the Huxtables. Except that the Huxtables were always at home, right? These people are so good at this!! A First Family that might take some interest in the D.C. schools? And the problems of that city?

He can't go to the barbershop. A slice of African-American life we understand. We've seen the movie.

UPDATE: Here is Rich's take on 60 Min. I agree that Kroft seems like a comfortable match for the Os, which is interesting, given the fact that he was an unsatisfactory interviewer of the Eagles.
Maybe that's part of Kroft's style -- he's a mirrorer, rather than a digger.
Rich is right -- the choice of 60 Minutes kind of reaffirms its status. The media revolution of 2008 turns out -- like many other revolutions -- to be somewhat conservative in nature. Huffington Post is NOT more important. Yet. The code of 60 Minutes? Grown-ups!
He's also right that Obama has marketed himself, yet again, as the guy who puts the pin back in every grenade. That's part of the code, the brand. If he can figure out how to do it, he'll give an exclusive interview, by June of 2009, to Limbaugh or Hanity or O'Reilly or the Weekly Standard or the National Review.

UPDATE: I think Courtney gets at something really interesting, really McLuhanesque, right here. He really is somebody that people wanna look at. He's not only ready for his close up. He's ready for his HD close-up. In all the way Bill Clinton was ready for 1992 but not for 2008, Obama seems almost designed right into this moment.

Jurkowitz is doing our job for us

This is also from Pew.

I think the most important part is near the end, where Mark talks about "narratives."

Harry points out that most transitions are, in themselves, narratives -- or are framed that way.

Who likes what

This Pew study has maybe a couple of surprises.
Scroll down to the chart that contrast coverage with actual interest, and you'll see the public cares less about the insider stuff and more about economy and jobs.

Is the hate story being covered?

One question I have concerns the way the press is handled the question of negative reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Here Jack Shafer takes the press to task for inflating the importance ot the gun sales story.
UPDATE: Rich flagged this story early on. I tthink it sort of demonstrates the push and pull facing Fox: go a little more mainstream and emphasize its role in documenting the new era from slightly conservative perspective? Or play toward fear and opposition?

But I actually think the media may be erring in the other direction -- underplaying the scary people.
If you look around, there are stories like this backlash roundup in the Indianapolis Star.
Here's the AP version of the story about hate bubbling up.
In general, though, the press seems a little shy about the story -- notwithstanding Shafer.
I'm not sure how I would prove this.
UPDATE: Kasey seems to be wondering the same thing. So we need to talk about whether there's a reluctance and, if so, where it comes from.

UPDATE: Check out Lauren's post on the priest who won't give communion.
UPDATE: And Sarai caught the NPR story on racist reactions abroad.

Right as rain

Here's a piece about the challenges -- and benefits -- of being the loyal political opposition media right now.

There is, as this linked piece suggests, at the very least the problem of access. Maybe. What do you think Obama will do, should do, about the media that never liked him.

Cherchez la femme

So one of the questions we're asking ourselves this week is: How will the media go about extending the excitement and interest generated by the election. What are the story lines they're attracted to and what makes them attractive?

For example, the Hillary-as-SOS story is attractive and interesting. But why? What are the elements that make it spreadable?

UPDATE: Julia thinks the media does need a woman.

Make a list of four other stories the media are pushing right now.

One to watch

This move by NPR will be significant. Project this kind of thinking four years forward, and I think you can imagine -- if it's done right -- the transformation of NPR into an even bigger player. They have a lot of the elements in place already.

UPDATE: Kasey pondered the question in terms of the technology used by the campaigns. I would agree that the campaigns tend to be a microdot or two ahed of the media -- because they're smaller and can react faster.

Strange bedfellows

One thing you might see next time are former-rival media outlets collaborating.

What's black and white and maybe all over?

This item chronicles a little feud that erupted this week about the future of newspapers. Definitely click on all the links. And then ask yourself what newspapers will be doing four years from now.

Actually, as I think about it, the very fact that Rosenbaum's article is tagged for buzzing and digging near the bottom should tell us something.

UPDATE: Mike noticed that Andy Rooney talked about this. Which makes Andy Rooney seem like a weathered totem, a stone gargoyle standing watch iover a loost civilization (newspapers).

Impostor.com

Sorry to have neglected you all week.

Please read this and think about it. Does it have implications for how the press should operate in the next election cycle? What does it say about the state of things right now?

UPDATE: Mary's take on the story.

They told me to go to political rehab. I said no, no, no

Mary found this article. We're all junkies.

The other flag pin

I had forgotten McCain's complex relationship with this issue.

Among the many after-memes

Sarai detects the can he do it meme.

Lizza on Fresh Air

Ryan Lizza, interviewed today on Terry Gross's show, said there was a disconnect between the press's admiration for McCain as a rfefromer and the public's.

He also claims the "celebrity" ad scared the Obama campaign.

The World According to Harry

You gotta read Harry's posts from this week. He's got an interesting post on the Wright Stuff.
He's got the 60 Minutes Obama staff interview.
He's got a brief reflection on the "post-Imus" era. I never thought of it that way, but maybe that was an important turning point.

I don't really know what to say about this ...

...and it's not EXACTLY within the ourview of our seminar topic.
But's it's interesting.
h/t Cheyenne

Good question

Kasey has a good post on voter turnout.

After-the-newsweek

Here's a sum-up of Newsweek's sum-up of things they didn't tell us while the campaign was happening.

Actually, while we're looking at round-ups, this PEJ/PEW thing is pretty interesting.

Cheat Sheet

Howard Kurtz has a pretty good summation of where we are at the moment on race, Palin, Rahm, etc.

BTW

Those of you who occasionally look at the syllabus will boservethat I kind of combined two nights, pushing race up to this week. (It seemed to make sense.)

That means the 17th is wide open. Think about what you'd like to explore on that night. I'm open to suggestions.

Post Post Post

The ombudsman for the Wash Post says the paper leaned way, way toward Obama.

Not surprisingly, conservative pundits wonder why this came out AFTER the election.

Mutt in Chief

The first press conference (Friday) represented a lot of different things, but I agree that this little throwaway line was significant in terms of this week's discussion.

I also toss in this article from earlier in the campaign about the thorny issue of Obama's own obvious self-confidence. Most successful politicians are self confident. Is this another subtle way Obama was squeezed, because of his race?

Are those same attitudes somehow evident in this much-discussed post-election dialogue among Newsweek editors?

Stewart fizzles

The humor industry may face an early struggle in getting its audiences to laugh at Obama.

Sarah Gorgon

Courtney has a whole Palin section in her E. Night coverage, but what I noticed today was Fox News airing the Palin-is-a-diva-bitch-Medusa story. Interesting. Also the part about Africa.

Strictly for my anchors

So tonight I was watching all of the networks try to cover issues of race. At one point ABC, I think, pointed out how much the electorate had changed since 1976 when 90 percent of the voters were white. Now it's down to like 74 percent.
And suddenly it struck me that Katie was talking to Jeff Greenfield, Brian to Chuck Todd and Charlie to George Stephanopoulos. You know? There was this very keyed-up discussion of race being conducted entirely by white people

I have never liked the "well, why aren't more(or any) of you black?" question ... at least not in certain contexts. I faced it recently in a public setting and it irritated me.

But we have an African-American president, and still the face of network television DOES seem to lag behind. On cable...well, there are experts like Juan Williams and Eugene Robinson, but since the departure of Bernard Shaw, it's not THAT much better. It's one of the ways, I think, in which TV is pretty conservative. In fact, they were all sitting around talking aout how the Republican party has failed to show an inclusive picture of itself, and I kept thinking: you guys are just as far behind as they are.

What do you think about that?
Have the mass media failed, in certain ways, "to look like America?"

Hey!

It's Katie!

Oh, never mind.

Please listen

to this very interesting interview on race in the election.

And read this in Slate too.

OK, back to work

Slate reviews election night coverage.

And here's an insider tick-tock on Fox News.

PEJ's cable bias study

Nothing you didn't know.

E. Night -- what you trained for

A few last thoughts about E. Night!

To do so, the networks now follow strict rules that govern projections,
examining not only exit poll data but actual vote tabulation and turnout
information. NBC -- which keeps its decision desk isolated from the calls made
by competing networks -- will only call a winner once its statisticians conclude
that the chance of an error is less than 1 in 200. And no calls will be made
until all the polls have closed in a state.Extreme measures are taken to ensure
that early data from the exit poll does not leak out, as it did in 2004, when
the first wave of surveys showing John Kerry in the lead rocketed through
cyberspace.For much of the day, only a small group will have access to the exit
poll, which is being conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky
International for the National Election
Pool, a consortium of the networks and the Associated Press. Three members
from each outlet will be sequestered in an undisclosed location in New York,
where they will analyze the results of questionnaires filled out by 100,000
voters nationwide. Their cellphones and BlackBerries will be taken away until 5
p.m. ET, when they will be allowed to share the data with their newsrooms.It's
the same procedure that was used in the 2006 midterm elections and effectively
prevented the release of incomplete data, much to the relief of network
executives."Exit poll information in the hands of trained professionals is
perfectly fine," said Sam Feist, CNN's political director. "Exit poll
information in the hand of the general public, who may not understand what it
means or stands for, can be dangerous."That's because exit polls are designed to
provide a demographic portrait of voters, not to predict the winner of a close
race. The early waves of data can be especially misleading because they do not
necessarily reflect an accurate sample of the electorate

And a plea to the networks.
Why the exit polls get used.

I was told there would be no math

We need to make Rich explain this more.
Could be the week's most intriguing post!

Hope you had a nice weekend, Megan

I have all kinds of questions on this clip from Rich. But I'll let the class discuss it. We won't watch the whole seven minutes of bickering.

McComedy

I totally agree with Cheyenne that McCain seems more comfortable doing this kind of comedy than ...being a candidate. It sort of inspires recollections of Teddy in 1980.

Teddy got better when the pressure was off.

Sudden Death Overtime

Joe D. had an interesting week. (You should also check out his amusing post on the way Obama disrupted football priorities.) But I'm flagging this post not just because it mentions a developing story about Pslin, but also because it reminds us to talk specifically about the nightly newcasts. I've watched A LOT of them since September and -- setting aside my occasional, warm feeling that Katie is talking directly to me -- I can't realy see any obvious tilt in the three network 'casts. Am I wrong? I mean, Katie was kind of the undoing of Palin, but not in a way that seemed like bad journalism.

Jabba's Straight Talk Hovercraft

Providently, Kasey has framed one of the OTHER pressing questions: which is more important to reporters -- ideology or access/success?

I guess one of my problems here is the fallacy of treating all the reporters the same way. Age and pecking order come into play. Joe Klein can afford to develop biases. The struggling, relatively new beat reporter may want access a lot more.

When I was starting out in the business, I would have written up Jabba the Hutt's views if he gave me access.

Cheyenne looked at the question of McCain and reporter access here with CLIP.

Caveat Harry

Harry has a nice way of framing one the big questions in the bias debate.
I'm sticking his part of it up here because last week his plug-ins didn't work on the TC system.

We give up

Julia has a bunch of interesting posts on bias, but I was most drawn to this bizarre decision by a Colorado newspaper chain.

Welcome back Lauren

Here she delves into a kind of chicken and egg argument about media bias. In other words, do McCain problems engender bad coverage, or is it the other way around?

The clip is also from Lauren and, coming on the heels of devastating impersonation of Olbermann on SNL and coming in the context of our bias conversation, it kind of bears talking about.

Caroline on bias

She blogs about it here.

MSNBCFOXCNN

Seemingly aware of us and our mission, the Times tackled the subject of bias.

Yes we have no bias

This week we will consider, over-archingly, the question of media bias.
The accusations in this area have a way of canceling each other out.
Here is a left-leaning watchdog.
Here is a right-leaning one.
See what I mean? It's like off-setting penalties in football.

But please do click around on these watchdogs and consider the kinds of cases they make.

The Aunt Who Was a November Surprise

Here is how it was handled by a right-leaning blogger.

And by a left-leaning one.

Neal Conan's Rules of Debate

National Public Radio takes such pains, at times, to live down its reputation as a basically left-of-center forum that it chokes off reasonable debate.
I think that happened several times, on Thursday, in this program about white supremacist activity during the campaign season.
If you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, at least drag the cursor over to about 12:30, when a guy named Tom from Smithfield, R.I. phones in. Tom has a pretty reasonable question which has been asked many ways in recent weeks: is there anything about some of the recent Republican rallies that might give encouragement to hate groups? Note that host Conan treats the question almost as if it is out of bounds. He first insists that the caller can not possibly be suggesting that either McCain or Palin have ever said anything of this nature. He then insists that the only relevance of the question would be in the case of hate groups hearing something that's not really there in the rhetoric of these rallies.

The effect is one of intellectual cowardice. Tom's question is not at all exotic. A lot of us have wondered whther some of the rhetoric, especially Palin's, has implicitly invited the audiences to indulge their darkest and most sinister fantasies about who Barack Obama is and who he isn't. The talk about "real America" doesn't even seem that subtle at times. I don't mind saying that, watching some of those clips, I have found myself thinking: if some idiot shoots Obama some day, we're going to look back at these rallies and wonder whether if they gave encouragement and nourishment to the American monster of virulent racism. I think McCain has had the same thought, which is why he went through that stretch where he at least made an effort to cool down some of the hottest heads at his speeches (only to find himself getting booed by those hotheads).

Conan is clearly afraid of the whole topic. Seconds later, his guest from the Southern Poverty Law Center talks about nasty racist imagery including nooses around Obama's neck. "To be fair," Conan jumps in, there have been Sarah Palin nooses. Well, one, says the guest. But Conan's desire is pretty clear. We must at least pretend that these problems are roughly equivalent. One campaign can not possibly be more appealing to noose-sketchers than the other.

It seems to me that one of the most important questions in this whole story is the one Conan is determined to avoid. What's the overlap between the crazy, dangerous people and the people showing up and yelling back at these rallies? Do the crazy and vicious people feel emboldened when mainstream political figures say things that don't sound all that different from what the fringe groups say? Does the McCain campaign have some responsibility to worry about this? Does Palin, specifically, seem indifferent to the problem or is she now acknowledging that she might have to be a little more careful? (Even though Palin has apologized for any misunderstanding she might have created, I think we know the answer to that. Palin said last week that any criticism of her campaigning style infringes on her First Amendment rights.)

Anyway, we're apparently not going to find out on Talk of the Nation.

Nice weather for (devil) ducks

Election day weather is, indeed, something the media likes to talk about, as Amanda has discovered. It's a nice post, although I think it's the weather map for the wrong day.

Exit polls and stuff

We kind of need to geek out a little on exit polls and on Election Night coverage. Some/most of you will have an advantage over me, because I probably won't watch any. In fact, I've almost never watched any. The Goodwin Hotel in 2000, late into the night, is my only memory, and it is a VERY foggy one. But look at the fact that McCain was a question in 2000.

Now, I somehow know that Harry will click on EVERY link in this FAQ, but I encourage the rest of you to do so as well.

This story will give you a little context about the collapse of the VNS, although I don't really understand why we should feel better about what replaced it.

You might wanna watch the interview here with Rather and Silver. I don't really know how you watch Rather's network, but somebody oughta check it out on election night.

Why does a meme spread?

Mike asked for access to this. From the point of view of memetics, it's really interesting and extremely viral. Why? Because it's funny, portable, customizable (which gives the meme-spreader the sense that he is adding something), compact, direct (although it uses misdrection).
It allows the spreader to assume the illusion of a greater level of technical, information-sharing expertise than he really has. (Anybody can do this, but it looks complicated.) It concerns something that people care about. It makes a point. It uses familiar tropes. (I'm convinced that this is one of the keys to the viability and motility of a meme -- that it introduces new content using recognizable themes and tropes.) For a meme to spread, it must invite and permit the meme-spreader to look smart or clued-in, right? That's one reason you spread something is because it makes you look sharp. Another reason is that you think people need to know it.

Welcome to the useless cesspool

Some Old Media / New Media musings.

This was a good show on that topic.

ObamaTV

So, was it worth it?
Here's someone who thinks so.
Here's some ratings info.

This is NOT an invitation to rest on your laurels

...but tonight's class made me proud. Watching you guys pick apart the pluses and minuses of Obama's media buy, watching you push off from each other's perceptions made me proud. I could drop dead and you could teach other for the rest of the semester. Which is the whole idea.

Now get back to work.

Mike this week

Mike is blogging about endorsements and negative ads.

This guy claims endorsements matter. Maybe.

A different picture here.

A very interesting marriage

of big media and small.

This is not an ad

But Rich is right. It must be watched.

The Wild Card effect

Now that ANYBODY can make an ad that might go viral, there's a risk that an actual campaign ad can be stomped into ground by an outsider's response.



To a certain degree, that may have happened to McCain's "celebrity" ad, when this came out:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Courtney had better be ready

I can't think of a better fulcrum for starting our discusssion than her argument that campaign advertising really is about selling a product to consumers.
Fortunately, Guest Professor Wolfberg is a dead ringer for Don Draper.

Compare and contrast

If Harry hadn't already won the duck, he'd probably win it this week. (Particularly because blog posts such as this may my in-class job easy.)

Here he contrasts two 2008 tax ads.

Here he looks at two uses of the Oval Office as mise en scene.
(Both pretty unsuccessful, IMHO.)

Here he contrasts two approaches to a controversial Veep pick.

Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline,

I don't know you, but I got kind of excited about the very notion of a computer that doesn't take so long to turn on.

We're not as patient as we were back when this Kennedy ad (h/t Caroline) ran.

That's why a modern two-minute web ad has to stimulate us and cater to our ADD.

Who who who who?

The "who is he?" trope is not new.

Hotmessadvt.

Courtney has picked some ads to look at.

More resources

I thought this report was very germane to our 10/27 discussion.
It clued me in to the existence of these folks, who don't provide a lot of info for free, of course, but clicking on their "ïn the news" pdfs can be quite enlightening.

Pro Bono

There has been a major conflation of celebrity culture and politics. "The View" is regularly used as kind of a reality check. And now Bono is going to be a New York Times columnist.

Not that you care about this, but ...

Here's a level-headed explanation of the whole "likely voter" thing I was talking about last Monday.

Nate agrees with me

Remember how, last night, I said that each poll has a kind of personality?

The other key site

I'm not even sure Professor Wolfberg knows about this.

The Rosetta Stone for our 10/27 class

Just browse, browse, browse. Watch as many ads as you can. Blog about'em.

Pill issues

This is an example of how microtargeting is done.

More PaliSNL

I like Cheyenne's approach on this.

To kick off our poll discussion

This is just a great post by Kasey about how the media uses polls, feeds off them, kind of.

The other side of SNL

Nice catch by Mike -- Lorne Michaels is a maxed-out McCain supporter.

Still, this analysis argues that Palin didn't even get the usual breaks.

Amanda has some late-breaking coverage of the actual appearance.

Who is this gaucho, Amigo?

I'm glad Rich brings up PJ O'Rourke, although Í'm not glad he found a clip that shows how unattractively I've aged.
But PJ is kind of a rara avis. There just arent'that many funny people coming at this stuff from a stricly conservative angle ...although it's also interesting that the somewhat conservative satirist C. Buckley lost one of his gigs last week, for endoring Obama.

The poll-driven media

This sums up some of the folly in how the media use polls.

Lest we forget...Tina Fey directly urged Texas and Ohio voters to "get on board" for Clinton

It was a different time.

Microtargeting

You may not have time to read this today, but I'll try to talk a little bit about it during our discussion of polls and polling. Internally, campaigns often use polling very differently from the way the media use them. Increasingly, campaigns are buying quite a bit of information from the commercial/shopping sector and running it through complex algorithms to try to figure out who they should be talking to and who's a waste of their time.

We'll come back to this on the 27th with Wolfberg.

Onion Tears

Rich reminds us not to forget about The Onion.

To which CAROLINE would add Andy Borowtiz.

Real clear polls

This is the latest from Mary on polls. What I would say, especially thinking back to 1988, is that the public relationship with polls is changing. Even as recently as '88, it was more of a top-down one-way relationship. Gallup (or somebody) did the polls, and you read about them. But today there are more polling operations and -- more importantly -- several layers of poll analysis.
In fact, this clip on Kasey's site would have represented an unthinkable about of thinking about polls for the average person on 1988.
There's a lot of averaging, as with RCP.
There's a clearer understanding, after 2000, that state polls matter more.
There's more of an attempt to find out what campaign internals say.

Kevin on copyright

Indirectly related to our topic this week and very interesting is Kevin's catch on a problem the McCain campaign is having with YouTube. (You might wantto click through the Kos and from there to Wired) Kevin thinks it reveals a lack of sophistication on that campaign's partabout new media, although the campaign probably thinks it's a kind of sabotage.

In a separate post, Kevin also has the old media clip of McCain on Letterman, if you need to get it somewhere.

It's not always TV

Lauren reminds us about the Obama New Yorker cover. Mike and Joe chime in.

Hotmesstv

Courtney has lots humor videos. She says they're full of truth. Which ones are? And why?

How to eat a poll

Mary is investigating.

SP on SNL

Perefectly timed for our comedy week.

Equal time

McCain's night of comedy.

Even the candidates have to do comedy

Polls, polls, polls I

We're going to start geeking out a little bit on polls. Here's the big poll du jour. But the other sponsoring media entity framed it different way. Here's the first reaction by a conservative blog.
Here's a mild conservative response.
Here's Mr. Hip Poll analyzer.
Somehow they know about these polls before they're even released.

So a guys tells his psychiatrist, I keep dreaming I'm a chicken and ...

A study of The Daily Show.

So a duck walks into a bar

A study of jokes from the first seven months of the campaign.

Nasty media

This week we're going to be looking at the role satire and humor have played in the race.
We're also going to geek out about polls a little.
We're going to study the explicitly conservativ media a little later in the term, but just in the flow of looking at the week's events, I think it's worth noting how extreme Limbaugh is getting, particularly in his characterizaton of blacks and black movements.

What certain women want

Rich discovered this blog. It's kind of a nice window into the world of women who think Palin is getting a version of thge bad treatment Clinton got.

Oh, let's watch that AP thing on undecided voters.

She didn't get to cry

I'll cry if I want to

Who gets to cry and when.

Is everybody required to do something about Palin? Why?

This one was dug out by Mama.

The hotness thing

Amanda has some compelling stuff this week -- especially regarding the whole question of Palin's looks. I agree that a google search tells you a lot. (If the McCain campaign is smart, though, they'd be bombing down any negative stuff. But the number here might be too big for google-bombing.)
Make sure you read "triple dog standard" AND don;t miss Chysey's very interesting comment.

Mikey Mouse

Check out Mike's blog. He has an interesting analysis of Clinton/Palin. He has a very funky cartoon. He has a post about McCain doing and not dong the right thing -- linking to Harry. You get extra points when you link to each other.

The Palin Effect

You kind of have to get past the headline -- which was not used in the print version -- but this piece in today's Courant is nicely balanced and nuanced and detailed. The writer seems to have made a real effort to collect a lot of different points of view.

We know what you think -- before you do.

We talked once before about those TV subtitles that kind of summarize what has been said.
Here's a piece about the way TV may -- in real time -- alter your reactions.

Trinity Bloggers. Can they be trusted? Are they terrorists?

When we're not talking 'bout gender this week, one of the themes/memes we'll be following is the McCain campaign throttling back and forth on the aggressive rhetoric. Harry kept an eye on this one. So did Caroline.

Courtney has not let the duck go to her head

You should read her Yikes round-up, but I want to call you attention also to her post on Michelle Obama.

Let's watch this in class and discuss

I love this CNN video (top one) that Mary found laying out the Palin/Clinton differences, as voters process them.

The often overlooked Cindy McCain

The toughest person to discuss -- in this framework -- is Cindy McCain. I don't think the mass media quite know what to say about her. You can go from here to an interesting New York Times piece about her that does attempt to "frame her narrative." And we are told that her husband is not always nice to her. But what role does she REALLY play in the gender disputes that have characterized this campaign? And what happens when, as Gail Collins notes, she tries to change her profile?

I miss the old Cindy McCain. The one who used to go to rallies and sit
huddled in the corner looking as if she thought the audience had a communicable
disease. Now, she’s right up there on stage, standing behind her husband and
making disgusted faces when he rails on about the opposition. And she’s started
railing herself. (The family that rants together ...) Obama is waging “the
dirtiest campaign in American history.” His votes on Iraq were votes “not to
fund my son when he was serving.”
Remember when the McCains wouldn’t talk
about the fact that their son was in Iraq? Oh well.
Maybe Cindy is trying to
hold her own against Sarah, who is with John almost as much as she is. I miss
the old guy-guy McCain who had so many male pals around he looked like a walking
fraternity reunion. Now, he’s starting to resemble an ambulatory patient
accompanied by female attendants on an outing.
Palin has been pressing the
line that people don’t really know “the real Barack Obama,” and who could make
the argument better than a woman who we’ve already known for almost six weeks?
Really, she’s like one of the family.
We’ve gotten so close we’ve already
learned that she didn’t actually sell the plane on eBay, didn’t actually visit
the troops in Iraq and didn’t really have a talk with the British ambassador. As
soon as we get the Trooper thing and Alaska Independence Party thing and the tax
thing figured out, she’ll be an open book.

Other players

Dujring the Clinton nomination fight, it seemed as though lots of different women, from Nancy Pelosi to Maureen Dowd, became players in the arguments.

During the Palin period, it was Couric and Kathleen Parker.

Interestingly, Parker got quite a taste of the invective that some of us get pretty regularly from readers on the right.

Words that go together well

Lauren has an interesting post on Michelle Obama right at this moment.

It seems like she's come a long way from the early, crude, clumsy attempts to discredit her as kind of an Angela Davis figure.

Of course, she's had to play a certain game, right? What is that game?