The Superficial

The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was all in the stance.

There was Obama, casually perched on the edge of the stool, all purple tie and grey-flecked hair and oh-so-Armani-cool. He laid his hands in his lap and listened intently as McCain spoke, every gesture saying “serious”, “respectful” and “how do you like this for presidential, Old Man?” When answering questions, he would glide across the floor, alternating his focus between the individual and the audience, giving the full Bill Clinton as he clenched his fist to hammer a point home.

And then there was McCain, supposedly in his chosen medium, hovering nervously in the background as Obama commanded the stage. McCain grimaced and smirked and butt-clenched his way through his answers. He was stiff, slow and awkward, thanks to his wartime injuries. His old man paunch and wiry comb-over did him no favours with the under 40s. He was Grandpa Simpson to Obama’s Cool Hand Luke.

Debates are won on style, not substance. Kennedy won in 1960 because he gave good camera. Reagan won in 1980 because he came off like your jolly old uncle. Bush 1.0 lost in 1992 because he glanced at his watch. Last night, Obama won because of how he looked and sounded, not because of what he said.

Top Five Veep Debate Moments

1. “Sarah Palin, Governor Palin”
 
Big up, respect! All night it was Governor Palin this, Governor Palin that. No way was Biden going to be tagged as 'disrespectful' or sexist or a bully. He attacked Palin's ideas but he never attacked her personally, and he kept his best shots firmly aimed at top of the ticket. He also shut the hell up when Palin messed up the name of the NATO general in Afghanistan. No points for looking like a smartass.

2. “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear …”

Nice one. Palin evaded questions all night but was never called on it by moderator Gwen Ifil, a sign that the GOP’s ‘bias’ attacks worked their magic. Palin was obviously coached to use this line whenever she came in for tough questioning, so Ifil could be cast as ‘biased’ in the post-debate spin. The tough questions never came, but Palin slipped the line in anyway.

3. “Um … um … Your strategy on Iraq is a white flag of surrender.”

The moment when hearts leapt into throats all over the country. After a fiery sermon from Biden, Palin hesitated for a good few seconds, her head cast down. Palin haters thought they had her. Republicans saw another Couric moment. But Palin rifled through her mind, found her talking points, raised her eyes and fired back. Crisis over.

4. “Hockey Moms and Joe Six Pack”

The winks, the waves, the Wasilla main street and the Todd and me and the doggone it and the you betcha; it was all out there. Palin pulled out all stops as she painted herself as the little Washington outsider that could. No cliche too hokey. No gesture too corny.

5. ”Just because I’m a man …”

Joe Biden wasn’t letting Sarah Palin claim that kitchen sink. His tears as he talked about raising two children on his own was either a rare, unscripted sight into his soul or a sign of a true political genius. You decide.

When Joe Met Sarah ... A Screwball Comedy

Joe Biden has everything going for him in Thursday’s debate, and that’s his biggest problem.

Show off his knowledge of foreign policy? Smartass!

Ask why Palin’s been shielded from the media? Bully!

Ask why she didn’t get a passport until two years ago? Elitist!

Question whether building ice-rinks and banning books in Wasila qualifies you to take the helm of the world’s economic and military superpower? Snooty Northwestern Establishment Liberal Arugalist!

In the battle for low expectations, Sarah Palin is so far ahead of the game she could show up and burp the debate and her fan club would still give her points for being “gutsy.”

The Palin Effect

Back in the day, in a far-off land named America, before the banks collapsed and markets plummeted and traders burned their portfolios for warmth, there was a young lass named Sarah Palin, and she was all anybody could talk about it.

She liked God and guns and she uttered four immortal words - “in what respect, Charlie?” - that threatened to become the “please explain" of the 2008 presidential campaign.

See, the American smart people loved that she didn’t know about this thing called the Bush Doctrine, just like the Australian smart people loved that Pauline Hanson had never heard this word, xenophobia. They slapped their knees and hooted in delight. “Gotcha!” they cried. Now the people would see that these women were silly and dangerous and in no way equipped to hold their exulted positions.

But it didn’t happen. The more the smart people scorned these women, the more the heartland loved them. Every time their hick accents were mocked, every time someone called them ‘white trash’, every time their big hair or tacky clothes or shopping mall sex appeal became the butt of a late-night talk show joke, their numbers went up.

And the smart people just couldn’t understand why.

Lopping the Poppies

No nation has perfected the art of the backlash quite like Australia. Sure, Russia had the gulags, France the guillotine and Britain the stocks, but falling out of public favour in Australia lands you the antipodean equivalent: the merciless floggings on talkback radio, the forced labour of tabloid appearances and the gruelling interrogations by glossy mags where you beg absolution for your illicit text messages/turkey-slapping/Best Western fling with David Oldfield. Then, once your spirit is broken and your mind reduced to mush and you’ve apologised for all four series of ‘Tonight Live’, you’ll be exiled to the E-list reality TV circuit of celebrity fat camp and karaoke specials.



John So seems to be the latest victim of the ever-turning worm of public opinion. Turns out he’s not our ‘bro’ but more the disgraced cousin who hocks Grandma’s antique wedding ring to pay off Fat Tony. The Age paints So as an out-of-control meglomaniac whose profligate spending is sending Melbourne broke. But what of the rapping, smiling, clapping, not-at-all-patronising image of the ‘diminutive China man’ the media’s been so mad on? And if So goes, what becomes of a thousand subeditors’ dreams of coming up with all the more creative ways to pun on his surname?



A Jet backlash? Please. The Jet backlash has been on ever since those boys set their pointy cowboy boots inside a recording studio. Their paint-by-numbers rock riffs and carefully-coiffed facial hair made them a target for scorn on sticky carpets the country over. Wearing thongs to the Arias? ‘Tex did it years ago,’ someone jeered. So what will become of Jet, once the supermodels leave and the coke dries up and the lights rise for the last time? Future, thy name is Roxus.

The Number 112

Hey there, big fella. Come, have a seat. My clenched forehead, tightly folded arms and determined stare out the tram window shouldn’t be taken as signs I want to be left alone. They’re in fact an open invitation to collapse next to me and let out a low groan in my ear. No, I don’t need much space, do take more. Speak, please. Roar at the top of your gravelly voice. I want nothing more than to hear about your latest ailment/run-in/conspiracy theory. Your hot, gin-soaked breath on my neck is a delight to me; your encrusted body odour a treat to the nasal passages. I love the way your spittle lands on my cheek as you lean ever closer. I love the way you throw your head back, slap your knees and launch into a tune - evidently self-composed and with such an unusual approach to pitch. Hey, I’ve as much middle-class guilt as the next frightened commuter. Now go on, scratch your balls and pass out on my shoulder.

Greed: like, so over

They’re making another Wall Street: the film that defined its era with pin-stripe-suits and cigars and lunch being for wimps and Darryl Hannah looking slightly confused throughout, like she wandered off the set of Splash and swapped her fin for Armani.

And yeah, it was all 'zeitgeist' and epoch-making and whatever but really, Wall Street was just one of a bunch of 80s films of the “dude gets filthy rich but it ain’t all that” variety. Except usually they were screwball comedies with a bawdy Bette Midler and a souped-up Richard Pryor and maybe a Tom Cruise flash of teeth. Course there were variations on the same theme. There was the “poor dude becomes rich dude” (Risky Business, Big, Brewster’s Millions); “poor dude moves in with rich dude” (The Toy, Outrageous Fortune, Down and Out in Beverly Hills) and my favourite, the always salutary “poor dude and rich dude swap lives” (Trading Places, Big Business).

And if the 80s were saturated with “dude gets corrupted by the system” films, so too has Hollywood always bent and swayed to the neuroses of each era. So the 70s had your “dude tries to beat the system” (The Graduate, Bonny and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, All the President’s Men) and the 90s your “dude says fuck the system” (Slacker, Suburbia, Reservoir Dogs) and lately, as war rages and the world warms, we’ve had a whole slay of totally-right-on “system, what system?” flicks, where snaggy Clooney-types stroke their beards and furrow their brows and curse at the inhumanity of it all (Syriana, Babel, etc).

So if Wall Street II has Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gecko getting out of jail twenty years later, his jowls mysteriously tighter and his eyelids pinned to his brows, having been deprived of life and liberty but not, evidently, the services of an expensive Beverly Hills surgeon, maybe we’ll see him forsake the corporate thievery of years gone by and ask not whether greed is good but whether it’s ecologically sustainable, non-GM and carbon-neutral.

Mr T Says:

Treat Your Mother Right.

Flick Tease

The Melbourne International Film Festival is on. It’s a big event. “World class”. Last year Willem Dafoe was here. That’s right, WILLEM DAFOE. The guy who shagged Madonna in Body of Evidence! The bad dude from Speed 2! What’s more, he like, totally loved our city. He dined in Flinders Lane. He entered through unmarked doors. He like, totally got it. And he’s from New York! And he loves us! WILLEM DAFOE!

Anyway.

It’s winter, it’s cold, and there are a heap of good films on in Melbourne.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic.

Part upper east side debutante, part acid-tongued wench, Sarah Silverman is hilarious. She delivers savage one-liners with all the ditz of a sorority girl. Think Sandra Bernhard meets Cher Horowitz. Those who call her racist prove that Americans don’t understand satire, irony or the value of a good Guatemalan midget joke. Or as the lady herself says, “I don’t care if you think I’m racist, as long as you think I’m thin.”

Sympathy for the Devil.

Jean-Luc Godard. The Rolling Stones. Counter culture. Black power. Women’s Lib. Fascism. Peace in Vietnam. Marianne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg chiming in with high-pitched ‘hoo hoos’. Bill Wyman in kick-arse cherry red boots.

A Scanner Darkly.

Richard Linklater takes his animation from Waking Life and cranks the geektastic factor up to eleven. Adapting a 70s sci-fi story with anti-drug themes, Linklater casts Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson. So you can bet they had a good stash on set.

An Inconvenient Truth.

Yeah, climate change is bad. But did you know Al Gore is an all-round great guy? With a big heart and a giving mind? Not to mention a helluva way with a dry quip? Did he remind you, in a poignant moment accompanied by lush violins and slo-mo footage, how the presidency was STOLEN from him? Did you know that family tragedies have spurred him on to be a better man? Is he running in 2008? Do ya reckon?

MoHawk Down

[Via Low Culture]