"Wow, over a third of your readers who responded seem to be rabid Obama-phobes."

"How do you manage to attract so many readers who don’t align with you politically? My theory is that right-wingers want to hear what non-doctrinaire Democrats (for instance you and Mickey Kaus) have to say and will listen to them just because they appear to be so sane when compared to the lefty flamethrowers. I wonder if David Brooks (if he didn’t have the NYT bullhorn) and similar non-doctrinaire Republicans attract the same attention from hardcore Obama supporters? If so, why are there not more mainstream voices and if not, why the difference between the leftys and rightys?"

Email from a reader. (He was referring to the poll in this post, where 38% of you answered the question "Should Althouse go to the Michelle Obama rally?" with the option "No, because Michelle Obama hates America.")

I said I'd ask you.

My instinctive response, which may say more about me than about you, is that "No, because Michelle Obama hates America" is funny, and that's a natural vote-getter that doesn't reflect true opinion. Look at any poll on Television Without Pity or Go Fug Yourself, and you'll see.

"Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

Looking for a link for that old George Burns joke -- I needed to add it to the "in the comments" update to the first post of today -- I turned up this old Ask Metafilter page looking for the most intellectual jokes:

Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French café, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, Monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?"

Much more at the link, of course, and, if we're lucky, in the comments.

"If you are a great orator ... and you don't use your skills to surprise people or stake out a position that's a little risky..."

"... and really do the work of convincing people that that's the right position -- if you take your great oratorical skills and just keep repeating 'I'm a uniter, not a divider,' plus several boilerplate predictions that are totally poll-driven -- you look like an empty suit!"

Said Bob Wright about Barack Obama, a couple months ago:



That clip is highlighted in Part 2 of Jac's "How Obama lost me," under the heading "As much as I hate to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the 'He's all about speeches, not ideas' critique," which is #7 on a to-be-continued list that now has 8 items. (Excellent items, in my view, which is biased, Jac being my son.)

UPDATE: Here's Part 3.

In anticipation of Friday's debate, the NYT sizes up Obama and McCain.

John M. Broder on Obama:

Some of his chief strengths — his facility with words, his wry detachment, his reasoning skills, his youthful cool — have not always served him well and may pose significant vulnerabilities....

Mr. Obama has a tendency to overintellectualize and to lecture, befitting his training as a lawyer and law professor. He exudes disdain for the quips and sound bites that some deride as trivializing political debates but that have become a central part of scoring them. He tends to the earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality. He frequently rises above the mire of political combat when the battle calls for engagement.

He's just too good for these lowly debate-like exercises those feeble Middle Americans depend on to formulate their pathetic little opinions... sayeth the some who deride this awful trivia.

This was seen most starkly at last month’s forum at Saddleback Church, where... Obama gave long, discursive answers to questions on loaded topics like abortion and personal moral failings, while Mr. McCain stole the show with earthy anecdotes and humor.

“Obama clearly knows how to float like a butterfly,” said Alan Schroeder, who studies media and the presidency at Northeastern University, “but he needs to work on the sting-like-a-bee part.”

Because you know how deadly dull those discursive butterflies are. If only he could spice things up with a few strong one-liners? I disagree. I think Obama needs to make what is his natural style more coherent. He shouldn't flutter and then sting. He should speak in strong, well-structured sentences that are always comprehensible and devoid of "you know" and "uh" filler. Let Obama be Obama, but make it excellent Obamatude.

Katharine Q. Seelye has the matching piece on John McCain:

He has used fairly consistent techniques during his roughly 30 debates on the national stage: he is an aggressive competitor who scolds his opponents, grins when he scores and is handy with the rhetorical shiv....

He uses short, active verbs that project strength, and he can connect with audiences on a visceral level using down-to-earth language....

“McCain’s major weakness is looking wooden, and when he’s out of his comfort zone, his sound bites become weaker and his evasions of questions become more obvious,” said David Lanoue, a political scientist at the University of Alabama and an expert in presidential debates.

... [D]epending on his level of contempt for his opponent, he can drip with condescension, even as he sits calmly with his hands folded in front of him, smiling....

David S. Birdsell, who specializes in political communication and presidential debates at Baruch College, said Mr. McCain could be “irascible and pugnacious and clearly stoked by personal animosity.” It will be a challenge for him to keep that side in check, Mr. Birdsell said, especially toward Mr. Obama, who is 25 years Mr. McCain’s junior and who Mr. McCain believes has not paid his dues.

“Can McCain restrain himself?” Mr. Birdsell asked. “And will Obama have the ability to place the pinpricks at the right moment to elicit that negative, slashing, awkwardly grinning McCain?”

Pinpricks... bee stings... Will McCain get irascible?

It's funny. By these 2 descriptions, both men sound like they're at their worst when they display disdain, and both have a way of trying to smile their way into looking like nice guys in spite of that disdain. That might be quite amusing to watch, and there's a danger that America will tune in to be turned off by both of these men.

Anyway, the articles, taken together, make it seem as though McCain has a big advantage. He only needs to do his usual thing and not act like a jerk. Obama will need to struggle to prove his gravitas without boring us to tears.

Or am I falling prey to a nefarious NYT effort to structure expectations for the benefit of Obama? Does the NYT reach anyone who isn't already for Obama?

IN THE COMMENTS: The wonderful Bissage says:

America craves authenticity.

That’s why McCain and Obama should work fast to perfect the techniques of method acting.

Sure, there might be some off-putting red-faced veiny neck stuff going on.

And maybe some mumbling.

But America doesn’t want a President who will pantomime gravitas to us.

America wants a President who will feel his gravitas at us!

I added the links in service to Bissage's awesome allusiveness.

"I haven't liked a candidate enough to be actually disillusioned by one in . . . "

"... well, ever, really."

Ha ha. Me neither. But this is self-flattery, isn't it? We were never illusioned.

5 of these 9 will go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I got the list at the WaPo, where they are asking readers which nominee is most deserving, but I'm going to repeat that question, to get a special Althouse blog result. So answer here before you go there and see what the WaPo readers are coming up with. It's not easy!

Who's most deserving of a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
	The Stooges
	Jeff Beck
	Bobby Womack
	Chic
	War
	Metallica
	Run-D.M.C.
	Little Anthony and the Imperials
	Wanda Jackson
pollcode.com free polls

Forget the gender gap in wages. The real gap is between traditional men and everyone else.

This study indicates that focus on the gender gap in wages is wrong:

If you divide workers into four groups -- men with traditional attitudes, men with egalitarian attitudes, women with traditional attitudes and women with egalitarian attitudes -- men with traditional attitudes earn far more for the same work than those in any of the other groups. There are small disparities among the three disadvantaged groups, but the bulk of the income inequality is between the first group and the rest.

"When we think of the gender wage gap, most of our focus goes to the women side of things," said Beth A. Livingston, co-author of the study. "This article says a lot of the difference may be in men's salaries."

Livingston said she was taken aback by the results.

"We actually thought maybe men with traditional attitudes work in more complex jobs that pay more or select higher-paying occupations," she said. "Regardless of the jobs people chose, or how long they worked at them, there was still a significant effect of gender role attitudes on income."

I'm taken aback by these results. Not really. Assuming the results are accurate, it could be either that a particular type of man has traditional values or that the traditional lifestyle gives a man more opportunity and incentive to compete, put in long hours, and make money a priority.

A petite crowd collects for the Michelle Obama rally in Madison.

One of my favorite commenters, Madison Man, just happens to have an office window overlooking the scene:



The time is 10:30 a.m. Notices for the event said that the "doors" would open at 9:00 and the event would begin at 10.

Not quite a hotbed of Michelle-love, is it?

AND: MM tells me that is the same sized crowd that was there at 10 and that the event actually started right after the shot was taken. So this is, presumably, as large as it got, i.e., much smaller than I would have thought.

ADDED: Wow!



(Thanks, Palladian.)

2 new ads, one from Obama, one from McCain.

Both ads are very negative and ominous, and both are very effective. Can I be against both of them?

There hasn't been a single Obama-McCain debate yet, but many people -- in key states -- are already voting.

Something like a third of the electorate will vote early this time, and the voting starts today in some places.

If Michelle Obama were doing a rally 5 blocks from your house, would you go?

This is a non-hypothetical question for me.

Should Althouse go to the Michelle Obama rally?
	Yes, because it's so easy.
	Yes, because it's an important rally.
	Yes, to get descriptions and photographs for the blog.
	No, she's got more important things to do.
	No, because it's not important and not that bloggable.
	No, because Michelle Obama hates America.
pollcode.com free polls

"McCain — more of a gambler than Obama — could take a big risk."

"While assuring the public and the financial markets that his administration will act forcefully and swiftly to deal with the crisis, he could decide that he must oppose the bailout as the panicked product of a discredited administration, an irresponsible Congress, and a feckless financial establishment, all of which got us into this fine mess."

William Kristol, stirring things up.

Read the whole thing. Who do you think was calling him on the telephone in paragraph 1?

A friend serving in the Bush administration called Sunday to try to talk me out of my doubts about the $700 billion financial bailout the administration was asking Congress to approve.

Paulson?

On the left-side column on the same page of the NYT, we have Paul Krugman, also sounding the alarm about the bailout, and Krugman has name "Paulson" 8 times. How many times does "Paulson" appear in Kristol's column? Zero!

The conclusion is obvious: Paulson was the friend of the phone, personally begging Kristol to support the plan, and he didn't. Shouldn't we be very worried?

Emmy winners.

The list.

A lot easier to read the list than to watch the damned show. Did you watch? Do you care about anything on this list? I guess it's mildly interesting that Paul Giamatti won a best actor award "John Adams." I still haven't been able to plow through to the end of that thing, and I have the DVD set (which HBO sent me for free). I found it so alienating, the way everything seemed so small -- as if Abigail ran the farm without any help and President Adams ran the country through various one-on-one arguments with petulant egotists. And now I see that Giamatti won over Ricky Gervais in "Extras." That's just stupid.

Now, this is funny:

INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE IN A VARIETY OR MUSIC PROGRAM

Jon Stewart, “80th Annual Academy Awards” (ABC)
David Letterman, “Late Show With David Letterman” (CBS)
* Don Rickles, “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project” (HBO)
Tina Fey “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
Stephen Colbert, “The Colbert Report” (Comedy Central)

Stewart and Colbert will likely be hilarious on the subject of losing to Rickles. And Tina Fey, otherwise the darling of the night -- she won 3 Emmys -- lost to him too. Ha ha.

"How Obama lost me" -- by an Obama supporter who's still going to vote for Obama.

You may remember that back in September 2004, I wrote a post called "How Kerry lost me." I mined my blog archive in an effort to figure out -- for my own purposes -- the origin of the antagonism I had come to feel for Kerry. I ended up voting for Bush in 2004, and I had only voted for a Republican for President once before, and that was way back in 1976, the second time I voted for a presidential candidate, when I decided -- on the way to the polling place -- that there was something amiss about Jimmy Carter.

Now, today, Jac has a post modeled after "How Kerry lost me." (Jac is the one of my 2 sons who was always big on Obama. The other son, Chris, was a huge Hillary Clinton supporter, who I think may snub Obama in November. Perhaps he'll arrive in the comments and tell us what he's going to do. He doesn't blog anymore.)

Jac is making a list of the things that have happened over the months that have caused him to develop the opinion that Obama is "not good enough." Today, he's got a to-be-continued list of 5 things, and I see that this post is very different from "How Kerry lost me," because Jac is mostly seeing that Obama hasn't done well enough at getting and keeping American voters on his side.

"How Kerry lost me" was actually about how Kerry lost me, whereas "How Obama lost me" is really about how Obama lost the giant landslide of Americans his most enamored supporters envisioned.

Autumn arrives today.

I got the feeling it was coming...



... yesterday.

Mayor Bloomberg: "There is a partisanship that has paralyzed our country."

"Both parties have redistricted themselves such that they don't have to worry about a challenge across the aisle, but they have to have -- they worry about a challenge from their flanks, so the conservatives are less willing to move to the middle, and the liberals are less willing to move to the middle, and we've got to get over that, and we've got to understand that we're all in this together. Unless we have bipartisan legislation and bipartisan governing at the federal, state, and city level, we're just going to have one problem after another, and the future's not as bright as I think it should be for America."

That was on "Meet the Press" this morning. Here's the whole transcript.

A poll (you might want to read the transcript first):

If this were the presidential ballot, who would you vote for?
	Barack Obama
	John McCain
	Michael Bloomberg
pollcode.com free polls