Essayist and public radio regular Vowell revisits America’s Puritan roots in this witty exploration of the ways in which our country’s present predicaments are inextricably tied to its past. In a style less colloquial than her previous books, Vowell traces the 1630 journey of several key English colonists and members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Foremost among these men was John Winthrop, who would become governor of Massachusetts. While the Puritans who had earlier sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower were separatists, Winthrop’s followers remained loyal to England, spurred on by Puritan Reverend John Cotton’s proclamation that they were God’s chosen people. Vowell underscores that the seemingly minute differences between the Plymouth Puritans and the Massachusetts Puritans were as meaningful as the current Sunni/Shia Muslim rift. Gracefully interspersing her history lesson with personal anecdotes, Vowell offers reflections that are both amusing (colonial history lesson via The Brady Bunch) and tender (watching New Yorkers patiently waiting in line to donate blood after 9/11).
New Sarah Vowell, October 7! How did I not know about this? Thank you David Letterman, for letting me know via announcing that she’s going to be on your show Monday. My entire month of October just got 10 times better.
A very different sort of unanticipated moment took place during the debate. Biden said, “I know what it’s like to be a single parent raising two children.” He did not know if his sons would survive the auto accident that took his wife and daughter. For a moment, he lost his composure. I believe, as I did at the time, that it was genuine emotion, and not stagecraft.
It could not have been anticipated by Palin. The next camera angle was above and behind her. She paused. The silence seemed to anticipate words of sympathy and identification from her. But Biden had ended in a sentence using the word “change,” and her response, reflecting no emotion at all, cued off that word and became a talking point about McCain. This felt to me, at worst, insensitive and callous. At best, that she had not fully heard Biden. In either event, her response troubled me. If a man had responded in that way to such a statement from a women, he would be called a heartless brute.
“(via election08) (via robot-heart)
LSAT
Tomorrow.
Me.
Freaking Out.
The girl I’m doing an internship with is taking it tomorrow, too. Our legal studies professor told her the best thing she could do tonight was to relax and do something she enjoyed, like going to see a movie. And then get a good night’s sleep, of course.
Good luck!
Debate Highlights
MODERATOR: Governor Palin, since you clearly get uncomfortable when you don’t have a scripted answer for a given question, perhaps you’d like to take a moment to act like a condescending kindergarten teacher on nitrous oxide and treat the American people like a classroom full of rowdy 8-year-olds that won’t eat their vegetables.
PALIN: Ah, bless your heart! Y’know, doggone it, you’re darn right. And I’ll betcha, it’s the ol’ scamps there givin’ a straight-up shout-out to the whoop-de-diddly skidoo, *wink*, gosh darn it, what the heck, Main Street moms and hootenannies, and don’cha know it folks, if elephants could fly, you could make a fortune sellin’ steel umbrellas!
MODERATOR: Thank you, Governor.
(via: dangurewitch)
Josh Ritter - “Still Beating”
My favorite thing about Joe Biden?
He proves that you can be a normal person—one of those down-to-earth, next-door-neighbor types that so many people seem to think is the only way to judge a person’s ability to lead in a presidential election—and still sound intelligent. He didn’t have to speak in a bunch of hokey colloquialisms or repeat trite, forced stories of the common guy. When he talked about the so-called “Joe Six-Pack,” he talked about them as if they were people who warranted respect and understanding, not as if they were simplistic stereotypes who could be understood and identified by a handful of “darn right’s” and “you betcha’s.” When he talked to them, he was articulate and intelligent. He didn’t have to dumb down his ideas or his language to get his point across. He never once stooped to reducing his audience to a bunch of hillbillies with 8th grade educations who didn’t have the brains to figure out words with more than two syllables.
I like that Joe Biden can just be Joe Biden, and he doesn’t have to be the Great Alaskan Moose Hunter or the Rowdy Texas Cowboy or whatever other manufactured persona to be appealing to normal people. Joe Biden proves you can be smart, well-educated, and knowledgeable about the world and still be a regular person. And if you are a regular person in this country, you should be proud that there is finally someone out there who is smart, well-educated and knowledgeable about the world representing you on the national and international political playing fields. It’s very refreshing considering that for the last eight years, most of the world has been convinced we’re a bunch of toothless rednecks with the intellectual capacity of toddlers.
The CBS poll of undecideds had Biden winning the debate 46-21, with 33 percent calling it a tie. But few votes were moved as a result. Among the undecideds, 18 percent committed to Obama, and 10 percent committed to McCain, but 71 percent remained uncommitted.
Biden won the CNN and CBS focus groups. Palin won the Luntz focus group. The candidates tied in the Halperin focus group.
“FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right (via notthatkindagay)
This is about what I expected.
(via robot-heart)
The most human moment of this debate. Sarah reminded me too much of a robot.
Palin definitely took the girl approach.
I think the thing that bothered me the most was the “mean girls” way Palin had of debating, and for you girls out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was that, I’m going to smile and pretend to be self-deprecating and flatter you, but really I’m just being snide in a way that you can’t hit back at without looking like a jerk. Palin’s debate style was straight out of the Regina George School of Human Interaction. I’ve never been a fan of girls who played that kind of game.
