Friday, December 30, 2011

Peg Noon bores the shit out of everyone

Can anyone really be repeating the Lucille Ball slug besides Peg and Mitt? I'd need pay and prune juice supplies.
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2 comments:

Tecumseh said...

Actually, her article is not so bad, if you read to the end.

12/30/2011 11:55 AM
Mr roT said...

***
Debates arrived in a new way, with a new power. Candidates rose and fell depending on how they did in nationally televised forums. The whole primary season this year has been more wholesale than retail, more national than local.

In the past, state issues were important, but now only one issue—the nation's economy—is important. An hour with the Grand Rapids Rotary Club is still nice, but not as nice as an eight-minute, prime-time cable hit. This marks the continuation of a half century-long trend. National trumps local, federal squashes state, the force of national culture washes out local culture. Primaries are fully national now.

The most memorable line of the first phase? There's "9-9-9" and "Oops," but the best came from Mitt Romney when he was asked about the Gingrich campaign's failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot. Mr. Gingrich had compared it to Pearl Harbor, a setback, but we'll recover. Mr. Romney, breezily, to a reporter: "I think it's more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory."

It made people laugh. It made them want to repeat it, which is the best free media of all, the line people can't resist saying in the office. And they laughed because it pinged off a truth: Gingrich is ad hoc, disorganized.

The put-down underscored Romney's polite little zinger of a week before, that Mr. Gingrich was "zany." And it was a multi-generationally effective: People who are 70-years-old remember "I Love Lucy," but so do people who are 30 and grew up with its reruns. Mr. Romney's known for being organized but not for being deft. This was deft. It's an old commonplace in politics that if you're explaining you're losing, but it's also true that if they're laughing you're losing. The campaign trail has been pretty much a wit-free zone. It's odd that people who care so much about politics rarely use one of politics' biggest tools, humor. Mr. Romney did and scored. More please, from everyone.

Drivel: Less please. And from everyone.

12/30/2011 12:27 PM

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