{"id":314,"date":"2004-01-25T08:27:34","date_gmt":"2004-01-25T12:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=314"},"modified":"2004-01-25T08:27:34","modified_gmt":"2004-01-25T12:27:34","slug":"it-was-a-rally-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":"It Was A Rally, Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw Dean’s infamous caucus speech<\/a> once on C-Span the night he delivered it. <\/p>\n

I’ve been very critical of Howard Dean but the attention being given this just seems stupid and contrived.<\/p>\n

My 19-year old, a college student who watches much more tv than I do, tells me she’s lost count of the people rebroadcasting it. She’s not as stumped as I am why it’s been getting so much play. In her opinion, desperate comedians just want something to talk about. The speech itself, she said, impressed her as “someone trying to rally a crowd.” Her opinion is noteworthy as she doesn’t follow politics closely yet hasn’t been able to escape this to the point she’s sick of seeing it. She also doesn’t have a favourite in the race and isn’t tainted by preconceived notions of how a politician is ‘supposed’ to act.<\/p>\n

That makes sense for the comedians looking for a laugh. But what excuse can be made for the media and others who ignore much bigger stories and focus on this instead?<\/p>\n

Desperate doesn’t fit their reasoning. Manipulative does.<\/p>\n

Exploitive<\/a> too, it seems:<\/p>\n

Iowa scream has Dean looking like a real doll<\/a><\/p>\n

Howard Dean’s infamous Iowa scream is being immortalized in plastic. A Connecticut company that specializes in celebrity action figures has just unveiled a howling Dean doll.<\/p>\n

The $36 “Mean Dean” action figure is the latest in a series of inspired-by-current-events dolls from Herobuilders.com. Other products include a captured Saddam Hussein doll (complete with long beard and ace of spades T-shirt), a talking Governator action figure (“I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house”), a miniature George W. Bush in Baghdad (“I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere”), Osama bin Laden and a Michael Jackson figurine dangling his child from a hotel balcony.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw Dean’s infamous caucus speech once on C-Span the night he delivered it. I’ve been very critical of Howard Dean but the attention being given this just seems stupid and contrived. My 19-year old, a college student who watches … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-54","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}