McCanned

So, I have quite a lot to say, but I always like to start with the angry rants, so here goes. As I was watching McCain's speech on the Georgia conflict this morning, three things stood out to me, but one specifically. More important than the increasingly obvious toll this campaign is taking on Grandpa John, and his continued overuse of the phrase "my friends," (four times in the five minutes of speech I was able to stomach) was the incredibly canned quality of his words. I actually thought at one point, "It's like he's reading from an encyclopedia!" Well, as I discovered shortly afterward, he was almost reading from an encyclopedia, but in McDonald's style, he used the free internet version. For anyone who isn't in the know, www.politicalwire.com will give you a link to passages to compare from McCain's speech and Wikipedia. Some of the similarities are glaring, but more bothersome to me than the presumed plagiarism is that the possible (though highly improbable) next leader of our country crafts his speeches from noneother than Wikipedia, where, for one hour, I, Erin Horth, was the inventress of the lightbulb. In the words of Taegan Goddard, "Whether a presidential candidate should base policy speeches on material from Wikipedia is another question entirely."

To whichever one of Hillary's supporters blames the timing of the Edwards scandal for costing her the nomination, that's probably true, but get over yourselves. You lost, and if not to a better candidate, certainly to a more scrupulous one. Put his bumper sticker on your car already, and join the fight for change.

My last note is resounding praise for Taegan Goddard. Thanks for bringing to everyone's (or at least your readers') attention the Georgia issue, which, you are certainly correct, has been overshadowed by scandal and sport of late. I admit that I wasn't even entirely sure the nature or cause of the conflict until I did some research this morning. Cable news has been almost useless regarding the matter. MSNBC hasn't even had a regular show schedule of late as far as I can tell, instead devoting all of its airtime to gymnasts and pole vaulters. CNN has been slightly more useful, though admittedly paying much more attention to John Edwards than is necessary. I guess ignorance to the more material current events is a trend I should be used to, but I just don't expect to be let down by cable news stations, to whom I generally go when I need information. Too much faith in MSNBC I guess is never a good thing.