Let’s play a little analogy game. It’s simple, really: Just fill in the blank below. John McCain is to Sarah Palin as Barack Obama is to _____. A: Michelle ObamaB: Sasha ObamaC: Joe BidenD: Joe Lieberman The answer is (C). The answer, Chris Matthews, as you suggested repeatedly on Hardball last night, is not (A). […]

The Rachel Maddow Show: new, noteworthy, and nearly gimmick-free

The following ad, its sound bites spoken and flashing on-screen, just aired on MSNBC: “This election is the most important of my lifetime.” — Bill Bennett “Friends of Israel are asking who is going to stand up most effectively against Islamo-Nazi terror, John McCain or Barack Obama.” — Michael Medved “Hey, no other station has […]

In all the discussions I’ve heard and read about Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s heir apparent, the best word I’ve come across to characterize that choice is “cynical.” Cynical, not because Palin herself isn’t a remarkable politician–clearly, she is–but cynical because Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket suggests the McCain campaign’s calculation that Americans care […]

The political conventions and the "media elite"

Getting just a tad tired of seeing Barack Obama’s face on the covers of national magazines? Yeah, so are we. But we’ll make an exception for this particular exhibition of Obamartistry, which manages to be both relevant and–whew!–un-boring:

While the jury’s still out on whether McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate will prove, in the long run, politically beneficial to the GOP ticket, there’s been one clear winner following the announcement of his choice: Photoshop. Indeed, in the week since McCain revealed his pick, a cottage industry–Photoshopping Palin’s famously bespectacled […]

Sensations in both Denver and St. Paul, the “Missile-Dick Chicks” are a burlesque troupe with a social conscience, marching with their, um, costumes and singing satirical war songs. (To the McCain-esque tune of “Barbara Ann”: “Oh, bomb Ira-a-an…because we ca-a-an…let’s bomb Ira-a-an…”)

Hot flops–flip-flops that feature foam-rubber heads of McCain and Obama bursting, fungus-like, from their toes–have been all the rage among the media bait in Denver and St. Paul. We’re fairly certain that the existence of the footwear is an omen of impending apocalypse, but oh, well. Here they are anyway.