The New Republic

"White lady kill a moose!" I'm dyin' here!

Love the 29 seconds the McCain campaign allowed CNN to shoot Palin in her visit with Karsai. Just enough to talk about his baby son. Then CNN gets the boot. Basically CNN got set up to give McCain enough footage for a couple of free spots on CNN.

McCain better start granting access to Palin pretty soon or he's gonna look back at the Newsweek story on his 13 cars vs. Obama's 1 as a puff piece. Hell hath no fury like the media jerked around.

All Bill Clinton's churlish grudge has reaped its possessor is white women moving toward Obama. Bill's helping Barack after all, it seems.

- williamyard

September 23, 2008 at 2:19pm

I like Chris Rock but he tends to over play the black/white jokes a bit. And shooting wild Moose is legal but killing mans-best-friend in a barbaric and cruel manner is just f*cking sick.

- The Ignorant Populist

September 23, 2008 at 2:45pm

that was some homage to McCain there Bill, way to help the team. "John McCain is a great American, I am saying I am going to vote for...you know...the other guy and I have to say I think he will win, but don't listen to me, vote for who you think is the best. By the way, ain't McCain just great?" November can't come soon enough.

- blackton

September 23, 2008 at 2:58pm

Iggy...ummm...it is a joke, not meant to elicit sympathy for dog killers, but you gotta admit, this fetish that only hunters are real Americans is bizarre. Humanity has domesticated animals like 20,000 years ago, but somehow hunting down a chicken in the back yard and killing it for dinner just ain't murkin enough, you have to kill an animal that will take a family a month of mooseburgers to get through.

I guarantee you, any subsistence farmer worldwide is far more genuine than these faux great white hunters.

- blackton

September 23, 2008 at 3:04pm

I'm still awaiting the explanation of how the Rock/Obama onstage appearance at the Apollo Theater wasn't "playing a race card" (I say "a" rather than "the" because I don't believe pro-black racism of blacks is on the same level as anti-black racism of whites, but it counts for something...)

- Lymon1

September 23, 2008 at 3:30pm

Yea, I know about jokes Black, and I usually get them and hate people who get on their high horses over nothing, but "it's a Black thang" joke is funny the first and maybe second time but his whole act is this. boring. And I guess I just miss me dog today.

- The Ignorant Populist

September 23, 2008 at 3:42pm

The is Bill doing everything he can to get Barack elected. At least that is what he claimed he'd do. He's out-and-about, I've seen a few appearances and this is it. As Disraeli described Gladstone, "He's inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination.". Say what you want about Rock, that was not the analysis Bill could have hoped for. And if these recent "objective comparisons" are the best he can pull off over the next month, he'll do his wife more harm. Letterman or The View were easy but someone will take his shtick and shove it back at him. But it will be grist for Fox though I doubt Hillary can count on their endorsement. A lesson on how a loser should not behave.

- michael

September 23, 2008 at 4:21pm

lymon1 wrote, "I'm still awaiting the explanation of how the Rock/Obama onstage appearance at the Apollo Theater wasn't "playing a race card"

I will tell you but I'm waiting in line. The guy ahead of me is going to explain the difference between a pertinent question and a cheap shot. Wait, someone in front of him will explain how attacking the Democratic candidate for POTUS in a TNR blog blows your cover. Good luck, the doors close at 5.

- michael

September 23, 2008 at 4:35pm

I would have preferred it if Rock had stayed away from the Michael Vick comparison, but his takedown of Bill was spot-on. Good Lard. Somebody had to do it.

- psantillana

September 23, 2008 at 4:38pm

Chris was funny. God help us if comedians can't let rip. Rock doesn't have to be 100% accurate to point to a grain of truth, and laugh.

On a more serious note, I really miss the politics and politicking that once was, when exaggeration, misinformation, innuendo, etc. were generally deemed ok. As long as you didn't make a habit of saying things that were outright false, i.e. lies, it was admissible. And, if the electorate bought an unethical or corupt campaign, they also had to deal with the reality that they had done it to themselves.

Politics can and should be fun, not grim and all dark. The latter is such a drag and doesn't get us anywhere nearer to good or competent government, and as we've seen, it can lead to more grim and dark words and deeds by the victors. America is unfortunately really hung up on good vs. evil. Save it for the big stuff. Otherwise, there is little or no perspective nor good judgment.

- tomeg

September 23, 2008 at 6:12pm

So I've just learned via Maureen Dowd that Bill C plans to give Sarah Palin an audience, this after bloviating about how it'd be perfectly understandable for women to vote for her even if it meant they were voting against their economic interests.

Bill really *needs* Obama to lose, doesn't he?  Like, needs it on a very deep, personal level. Many will argue that it's mainly pragmatic, keeping the path open for Hillary in 2012 before she gets too old.  Others will say that it's all about saving face, justifying Bill's primary performance when his most consistent case against Obama was that Obama couldn't win the general election.  But I wonder if in large part it isn't a black thang. Not that BC's a racist. Far from it. Rather, he's a jilted lover. Bill Clinton grooved on the whole "first black president" thing. He liked being an educated white man who can still hang with people of color. And why not? Black society can provide a tuned in white guy with a kind of sexy, raucous fun he'll find it hard to duplicate on his own side of the racial divide. This isn't even to mention how it must have fed his sense of himself as a broad-minded master talker as well as providing some context for his sense of himself as a persecuted minority of one.  But now Obama has stolen all of that away from Bill.  He came out of the primaries looking whiter than white, and it doesn't look like he'll be fully at his ease in the neighborhood of his Harlem offices anytime soon.  Surely that must sting.

And wasn't it Chris Rock who coined the "first black president" line? Now that the true first black president looks like he's about to be elected, it seems that even Chris Rock would be ready to admit that the first line, now a decade old, was just a joke. Poor Bill.

- aeromonas

September 24, 2008 at 10:53am

Bill Clinton is still at it. This morning he was on ABC pronouncing that McCain had acted in "good

- Anonymous

September 25, 2008 at 10:02am