Party Political

I saw a 3-week old episode of Saturday Night Live a couple days ago, featuring the Indiana Jones Shia LaBeouf (as opposed to the Transformers one).

In that episode, Amy Poehler again portrayed Hillary Clinton, and really slammed her pretty hard. Poehler, as Clinton, talked about how Obama simply wasn't up to her standards. The qualities that Obama lacks, but Clinton possesses are apparently those of a sore loser with no ethical standards, and racist supporters.

Poehler-Clinton said Hillary was spiteful enough that if she didn't win, she wouldn't be super gung-ho about helping Obama win the General Election. But if she did win, Obama would be glad to help her, according to Poehler. Also, Hillary apparently stops at nothing, like playing the Gender Card, while Obama refuses to play the Race Card. Lastly, people who support Clinton are all racist (according to Poehler), but those who support Obama aren't.

This was really weird. I didn't know SNL favored one candidate over another. I thought they'd make fun of all equally. Even the audience seemed to look past Poehler's jokes and see her speech for what it really was - an endorsement of Obama.

But what really struck me as interesting was how most of what she said could have been flipped around and applied in reverse direction. She could have said that all supporters of Obama are racist, that Obama has played the race card in some fashion, subtly or not, and that he would be a sore loser. After all, speculating about a candidate's potential future actions leaves room for any conclusion. You could argue, "Oh, Hillary's no good because if she was ever in a hostage situation, and a crocodile was pointing a gun at her, she'd use the nearest child as a human shield." The point is that just because Poehler says Hillary won't (future tense) support Obama, doesn't mean that would happen.

It's so weird. I see stuff in different places highlighting one aspect of one candidate, when the other candidate seems to have (or likely has) the same characteristic. And yet the article or story treats their issue as being incredibly important. Like Yahoo.

Yahoo said, "Oh, wow, look everybody, Obama planned for the long haul, but Hillary didn't!" I would assume both candidates did pretty much equal planning, and just because a reporter doesn't get answers, doesn't mean those answers don't exist.

Like, "Hillary and co., did you guys plan way far ahead?"

"No comment."

"Hey everybody, she said, 'No!'"

I'll bet Hillary had some guy somewhere working on a long-term plan just in case any short-term fast-win goals didn't get met.

I keep hearing about why Obama is better, but it's not really concrete stuff. It's more like, "He's better because the general consensus says so, and here's some soft evidence." I'd like some hard evidence, and that's rare. It really comes from hearing each candidate speak, and seeing their actions. But most of the stuff has all been hearsay. I'm kind of tired of it.

And SNL's point seemed to be, "Hey, Hillary's bad, so who you gonna vote for? Only 1 option..."

Oh, guess they mean I can't vote for McCain...

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