Slate makes me lol

[MrAngryFace]

http://www.slate.com/id/2191704/

Prices have dropped below $1,000, and if your analog TV happens to get fried during an electrical storm (as happened to me last year), you may find that your local electronics store now sells digital only. This is great news for McCain the consumer champion but terrible news for McCain the presidential candidate.

Last year, when McCain's candidacy appeared to be in serious trouble, you heard a lot about how awful he looked. He'd gotten old, his face was scarred from melanoma surgery; no wonder his presidential run was headed south. Then McCain started racking up primary victories, and his telegenic deficit was forgotten. I don't watch TV news much—with two kids, who has the time?—and what news clips I see tend to be off the Web. On cable-news sites and YouTube, McCain looked fine to me.

Then, this past weekend, I watched Saturday Night Live with my kids. McCain appeared in close-up in a mildly amusing skit whose purpose (at least from McCain's perspective) was to remove the age issue from voters' minds by turning it into a joke. It worked for Ronald Reagan in 1984; why shouldn't it work for McCain in 2008? With me, though, it had the exact opposite effect. As someone who'd pooh-poohed the age issue, I found myself gasping at McCain's mug as transmitted in glorious HDTV. Wrinkles, blotches, liver spots, scarry tissue—none of these were hidden by McCain's makeup. As McCain cracked wise ("What do we want in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old."), I found myself thinking, Jeez, he doesn't look like a guy who'll turn 72 this August. He looks like a guy who'll turn 82. (Note to reader: The link I provide to the SNL skit won't give you any sense of what I'm talking about, because the clip isn't high-definition.)

[Fragamemnon]

I saw this last night. I think that it's a powerful, yet very subtle, way of injecting ageism to the campaign "under the radar" and I hope Democratic groups use close-ups and higher resolution images of McCain liberally this election season.

[MrAngryFace]

haha, he's so old

[MrAngryFace]

I liked the news articles saying 'if mccain drops anymore lobbyists from his campaign he's gonna be alone!'

[max_cool]

Silly electorate, old people belong in nursing homes not white houses.

TRIX