In their October 13 issue, the New Yorker Magazine endorses Barack Obama for president but, because it’s the New Yorker, it takes the editors around 4200 words to do so. (All of them very good words, though.)
Here’s how the endorsement opens:
Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?
(Right. Yes. Everything you guys say.)
4,100 words later, here’s how it ends:
At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.
In between, the New Yorker editors do everything but reach out and grab you by the shirt and scream, YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR HIM!!!! YOU HAVE TO!!! Except they say this in a really civilized, thoughtful way.
(Which is particularly admirable in that many of us are not feeling anything even approaching civilized, these days.)
Anyway, Read it.
PS: See you back here after the debate tonight.
The New Yorker ? Who knew ?
Cool.
Yeah, I almost lost my civilized demeanor yesterday as I drove home listening to the radio. Yikes.
Wish we had a west coast counterpart to the New Yorker. Girl can dream can’t she?
I’m voting for President of the U.s., not President of “the globe.” Let Obama run for President of the E.U., which is where his and his supporters loyalties lie.
Tonight’s debate should be very enlightening to all; I look for history being made and determined by the public’s reaction to the inevitable attack on Obama as a Muslim terrorist stooge by ol John McSame.
With the economy on the canvas and the count at about 7 or 8, with the wars in the Mideast not going so well, with the Republicans history of support for the trickle down theory of economics, deregulation and consequent raping of the American people by the Wall St “Masters of the Universe Robber Barons”, and the ineptness (or complicity), of the Republicans to do anything about the country’s downward spiral into history,
What the hell else can Master McCain do but start throwing mud-balls at Obama.
McSames own history as both a Republican and a member of the infamous “Keating Five” prevents him from climbing the soapbox on the issues of the economy and change.
Tonight I think we will hear instead about former “terrorist” William Ayers (Weather Underground), and the Obama Connection (Ayers once donated $200 bucks to his campaign for State Senator), and Obama’s middle name, and the Rev Wright and the Muslim mouth that roared, Minister Farrakhan, and maybe some new info about Black Panthers or Welfare Queens or Mrs. Obama’s second cousin from Poughkeepsie who was a Commie in 1936.
Could it be life will imitate art and McSame will star as an ex POW Manchurian Candidate plant like the Right Wing Nut blogs have said all along.
McCain as Raymond Shaw in front of a massive American flag invoking the military history of the USA, and himself, and leading the TV audience in a rousing chorus of “Faith Of Our Fathersâ€Â
“Faith of our fathers, living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;
Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene’er we hear that glorious Word!
o
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.
Faith of our fathers, we will strive
To win all nations unto thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
We all shall then be truly free.
Faith of our fathers, we will love
Both friend and foe in all our strife;
And preach thee, too, as love knows how
By kindly words and virtuous life.”
By the way “Faith of our Fathers†is also the title of Raymond Shaw’s, shit I mean John McCains Autobiography and Movie now available at Costco and Wal-Mart stores everywhere.
Well it’ll be fun to see how Obama maintains the “high road†philosophy of his campaign as the excrement flies around the stage tonight.
McCain forgot the words to the last verse…
How many times can you repeat the words, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons, Robber Barons,Robber Barons, Robber Barons ?
“”How many times can you repeat the words, Robber Barons?””
Well right now an estimated 700 Billion times,
But it’ll undoubtedly be more when all is said and done.