Nixon's feverish lip, Bush's rectangular box
"While it's refreshing to see a story like the "box" go mainstream ("Technical Expert: Bush Was Wired"), there is so much more that hasn't, and won't. For instance, what the hell was wrong with his face?
Draw a line down the middle, and you could see two different Bushes. The left corner of his mouth was drooping egregiously, and his right eye was screwed up in a perpetual squint."
Rigorous Intuition 14.Oct.04
That "Hardball" guy was in Tempe just before the debates, talking to a bunch of college kids, preening, his adult male power building in contrast to the exuberant sports-team enthusiasm of the kids and their simple opinions. He went into this kind of non-hortatory non-exhortation, an evangelical urge toward nothing much, about the candidates' completely symmetrical opposition, saying repeatedly they had and have nothing in common.
Nothing in common, so how can there be "undecided" voters? That was Mr. Hardball's rhetorical question.
Then about twenty minutes later the computer gave me this quote from Kerry, addressing the Floridian electorate, or a subset of it.
So there is agreement, fundamental agreement, a unity of purpose and policy, when it comes to Israel.
And since Israel is a kind of positive taboo now, not because it's profane but because it is so sacred to the cause of both candidates and the media, Mr. Hardball is able to make his absurd claim.
If there is a disagreement between them about Israel generally - about shipping bombs and billions of dollars to Israel, about "pre-emptive" strikes in the Middle East, about the daily sacrifice of Palestinian lives, about Gaza, about Syria, about Iran, about Israeli involvement in planning and carrying out the invasion and occupation of Iraq, including the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the worse crimes still hidden in the shadows of that burning land - there is no mention of it.
They're like two sons competing for a father's praise, each trying to outdo the other in obedience to their father's wishes.
