September 09, 2008

9/9: The Palin Effect

John McCain's decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate -- and his subsequent rise in national polls -- has clearly changed the mood in the political blogosphere. For the first time in a while, liberal bloggers are openly speculating about what a McCain presidency would look like. They are also intensifying their criticism of the Barack Obama campaign -- particularly its media strategy and its TV ads. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are delighting in McCain and Palin's momentum. Patrick Ruffini echoes the feelings of many righty bloggers when he writes: "Holy crap. We could actually win this thing."

That said, the netroots aren't letting up on Palin. Liberal bloggers are hammering her for repeating her debunked claim that she opposed federal funding for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. Palin shows no sign of backing down from her claim, however. At an Ohio rally earlier today, she repeated her line about telling Congress "thanks but no thanks" for the Bridge to Nowhere. One can be sure that the netroots will continue to argue that Palin is an "unapologetic liar", but will the public believe them?

PALIN: Netroots To Sarah: Stop Lying!

Liberal bloggers are hammering the McCain campaign for falsely claiming that Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere" or "told Congress 'thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere'". Liberal bloggers are annoyed that the McCain camp -- and Palin herself -- continue to push this claim even though it has been repeatedly debunked by various news organizations. Meanwhile, Think Progress "has put together a Lies To Nowhere report, documenting every time the McCain campaign repeats the myth that Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere":

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "[McCain] has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances -- this business with Palin and the bridge most notably -- keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they've gotten called on it repeatedly."
• Daily Kos' Hunter: "We know, for a fact, that Sarah Palin lied about being 'against' the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. I don't mean that she flip-flopped. I don't mean she waffled, or equivocated, or misled, or was disingenuous, or misspoke. I mean she lied outright. Period. She was, in fact, a supporter of the now-mocked symbol of pork and earmarks. She was a supporter during the entire process, up until the now-magical point when the entire thing had devolved into farce, and not even Republicans could attach themselves to such a boondoggle without paying a political price. Then, and only then, did she distance herself from it. And by 'distance herself', we mean 'kept the money'."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "[Palin]'s lying, repeatedly, to the American people. Read for yourself how big a supporter Palin was of the bridge. It's not just bizarre that she is making her 'opposition' to the bridge part of her daily stump speech, it's a flat-out lie, and scarily telling of the way the new McCain campaign, under Karl Rove's deputy, plans to pull a Bush-Cheney and simply lie their way into the White House."
• The Washington Independent's Ari Melber: "It is indeed striking that McCain picked this fight, touting his running mate's 'reform' record not through spin, or selective biography, but by flatly lying about her recent actions."
• Open Left's Daniel De Groot: "John McCain and Sarah Palin think Americans are stupid."

Several liberal bloggers are pointing out that Palin actually kept the federal money that had been earmarked for the bridge and "just allocated it elsewhere":

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Sarah Palin and John McCain are going all over the country saying how Sarah Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere (not true) and that she said 'No Thanks' to the Feds when presented with the money. Really? What happened to the $223 million Palin is saying she said 'No Thanks' to? She kept it. Once it was no longer earmarked for the Bridge, Palin kept it for other pork barrel projects of her own choosing."
• Sadly, No!'s D. Aristophanes: "Sarah Palin famously said "'thanks, but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere"...choosing instead to build a much more useful road to nowhere."

Meanwhile, Marshall wonders if a new "meme [is] taking hold" that Palin is a phony: "We've now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the 'Sarah Palin' we've heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions. The McCain camp has made her signature issue shutting down the Bridge to Nowhere. But as The New Republic put it today that's just 'a naked lie.' And pretty much the same thing has been written today in Newsweek, the Washington Post, the AP, the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday even Fox's Chris Wallace called out [McCain strategist] Rick Davis on it. [...] On earmarks she's an even bigger crock. On the trail with McCain they're telling everyone that she's some kind of earmark slayer when actually, when she was mayor and governor, in both offices, she requested and got more earmarks than virtually any city or state in the country. Think about that. On the stump, not a single word that comes out of her mouth -- or not a single word that the McCain folks put in her mouth -- is anything but a lie. I know that sounds like hyperbole. But just go down the list. None of them bear out."

PALIN II: The Rightroots Get Sarah's Back

Several conservative bloggers are defending Palin against charges that she's lying about the Bridge to Nowhere:

• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "I don't begrudge someone having an opinion I disagree with if they come around to a position I agree with. Yeah, McCain didn't want to drill offshore for a long time, until gas hit $4 a gallon and he reconsidered his position. Palin did support building that bridge, until the cost to the state -- both financially and in terms of ridicule -- became prohibitive."
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "Yes, Palin did indicate some support for a Ketchikan 'link' (which could be a bridge or a ferry) while campaigning to become Governor. [...] 'Link' is the operative word. That can mean bridge, ferry or anything else that gets people from one location to another. She also said the 'scope' should be considered, which can mean size and cost. Regardless, as Governor, when it really counted, she opposed the bridge flat-out. Meanwhile, in the US Senate, Obama VOTED FOR the $400 million Bridge to Nowhere."
• NRO's Jonah Goldberg: "There doesn't seem to be that much there there. When [Palin] was campaigning for governor the bridge to nowhere was essentially a local project. When in office, she took a look at it and defied the entire Republican political establishment in Alaska and turned against it. Even the Democratic Party of Alaska credited her with killing the bridge (though now they won't admit it)."

Conservative bloggers are also arguing that Obama is in no position to criticize Palin's previous support of earmarks:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Lord, please have Obama continue to use that Bridge to Nowhere line. It has progressed from a dumb attack almost all the way to a Big Lie. Obama voted for that bridge -- twice! So did Joe Biden. Obama has requested almost a billion dollars in earmarks in just three years of being in the Senate; McCain doesn't earmark at all. Obama is flailing, because he's getting exposed."
• Geraghty: "It's a little rich for Obama-ites to criticize Palin for flip-flopping on the Bridge to Nowhere, considering how Obama and Biden voted to fund it, and against an amendment that would have shifted the funding to Hurricane Katrina relief."

PALIN III: Paying Herself To Live At Home?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about today's Washington Post article detailing how Palin "has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a 'per diem' allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business":

• Daily Kos' Kagro X: "Sarah Palin makes real stay-at-home Alaskan moms pay her extra for sleeping in her own bed and eating in her own kitchen. Most people would call that a benefit all by itself. Sarah Palin demands extra pay for it. Who knew she was charging taxpayers for those mooseburgers?"
• AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris: "What a brave and fearless, fiscal reformer. Palin regularly used the 'per diem' food expenses of eating at home as well as the travel expenses for the family, including the kids. Heck, why should they pay for anything when the state can foot the bill?"
• Michael O'Hare: "Well, if this isn't the damndest piece of small-time larceny: Sarah Palin has been gouging the taxpayers of Alaska out of a per diem allowance for days she's at home (about ten months worth). She also arranged that they pay to fly her husband and kids around on her junkets. The amounts involved total less than $100,000; I don't know whether I'm more outraged by the venality of her behavior or the petty sums she's nabbed; it reminds me of [AK Sen.] Ted Stevens..."
• Oliver Willis: "When you set yourself up as the maverickest maverick of ethics, you better hope you are squeaky clean. Along with her lies about the bridge to nowhere, looks like Palin took money from Alaskans she didn't need."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Living in Alaska, a geographically enormous state, and traveling between Wasilla and Juneau, is bound to produce some hefty travel costs. What's less understandable, though, are per-diem charges for nights in which the Palins were home, and charges for Todd Palin to go on 'information gathering' errands. When lining up the various Palin-related scandals, the questionable per-diem charges still fall well short of the ongoing abuse of power investigation, in terms of seriousness. She'll probably face some questions about 'paying herself to live at home,' but for my money, it's still a bigger deal that she lied about the circumstances surrounding her dubious dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner. That said, a story like this might be damaging, if for no other reason, because it interferes with the McCain campaign's narrative about Palin -- she looks a lot less like a fiscally-responsible maverick and careful steward of tax dollars when a story like this one lands on the front page."

PALIN IV: No Scandal Here

Conservative bloggers are arguing that the Washington Post article doesn't reveal anything damaging about Palin:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "So, the scandal here is supposed to be what exactly? That she actually collected expenses she was legally allowed to bill for? Again, where's the scandal? If anything, it looks like the WAPO buried the lede: that Sarah Palin is spending much less on travel than her predecessor and actually turned down thousands of dollars in per diem expenses from the state of Alaska that she could have collected. If that's a 'scandal,' the country would be fortunate to have all of our lawmakers engaging in that sort of 'scandalous behavior.'"
• NRO's John J. Miller: "Unless I'm missing something, Palin did absolutely nothing wrong. For travel and per diem purposes, the governor's home is technically in Juneau. Occasionally she would travel away from Juneau, spend the night in Wasilla, and bill in some expenses. Her family accrued some travel expenses as well. Altogether, the costs appear to be a fraction of what the previous governor billed in. I await a front-page story on how much taxpayers have spent so that Joe Biden can ride Amtrak between DC and Delaware whenever he feels like it."
• Goldberg: "So she cuts travel spending by like 80% but, ah yes, she's no fiscal conservative. Would that all government officials showed such profligacy! Another point. Alaska is two-and-half times the size of Texas with probably fewer paved roads than Dallas (that's a guess, but it wouldn't surprise me). The state capital, Juneau, (which is cut off from the rest of the state) is over 800 miles from Wasilla. I would very much like to see Democrats finger-wag at Palin's desire to maintain her family life while working."

PALIN V: Her First Gaffe?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about what The Huffington Post is describing as "[Palin's] first potentially major gaffe" -- her assertion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers" (in reality, Fannie and Freddie weren't taxpayer funded). McClatchy's Kevin G. Hall reports:

"...Palin, speaking in Colorado Springs, Colo., said Fannie and Freddie had 'gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.' The companies, however, aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

• Marshall: "I understand that the TV networks and the big papers feel like they're not allowed to criticize Gov. Palin. But we're in the middle of a housing and credit crisis and she doesn't even know what Fannie and Freddie are. It's an embarrassing level of ignorance that would sink a candidate for house or senate."
• The Huffington Post's Sam Stein: "The major concern about Palin's position on the ticket is that she lacks the economic and foreign policy wherewithal to serve as vice president. This certainly doesn't help on that front. At the same time, the remark went almost entirely unnoticed over the weekend and discussions on the developments of the housing market can be difficult to process for even the most attuned voter."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "...The reason this gaffe should be significant and should be pushed far and wide is that Palin's lack of understanding about these institutions plays into what should be the Obama campaign's central message: the McCain/Palin ticket can not be trusted to turn around the economy because they really just don't know that much about it."
• Ezra Klein: "HuffPo is trumpeting 'Palin's First Gaffe!' as if we should put it in bronze and tuck it in the keepsake box, but it's not a gaffe. [...] It's much simpler: Palin didn't know the answer. Amidst a housing crisis, she didn't know how the country's largest lenders operate, and wasn't aware that they weren't taxpayer funded."
• Daily Kos' SusanG: "Besides being dead wrong and ass backwards about how the corporations work, it's enlightening to see how instinctively wingnut talking points pop out when the hockey mom gets out of Alaskan territory. Ill-prepared, out of her depth, automatically falling back on 'taxes are bad' even when it makes not a lick of sense...no wonder Dick Cheney called her a good candidate this morning."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "It should be a pretty big deal that someone who might be president has no idea how the mortgage industry functions, despite being a 'genuine American' who ostensibly has some instinctual feel of these kinds of things by virtue of her distance from the Northeastern Elite. Not that this matters to our elite liberal media, who haven't given Palin's statement much attention. After all, why should a candidate have to know how much about the nature of little problems like the mortgage crisis when they're just so powerfully authentic?"

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias, sarcastically: "I think my colleague Satyam [Khanna]'s been bitten by the elitism bug and thinks it's a 'gaffe' for Sarah Palin to say that Fannie and Freddie had 'gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers' when, in fact, they weren't funded by the taxpayers at all. Palin doesn't understand the basic structure of the GSEs and neither do most Americans. All this liberal sneering at public officials for not having, you know, a in-depth knowledge of policy matters is exactly why we're seen as out of touch."

Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "A gaffe! But how does it measure up? [...] On artistic merit, however, the judges have to score this one for Palin. Nobody cares about the minutiae of how GSEs work, after all, and liberal attacks on this score are almost certain to backfire because (a) we're obviously harrassing her unfairly over trivia because she's a small town mom and (b) we're just trying to show off how smart we are. Besides, as Palin said, John McCain is in favor of 'reforming things,' so he's obviously the right guy to tackle whatever problem it is that Fannie and Freddie suffer from. For liberal critics, then, there's no there there."

PALIN VI: Gaffe? What Gaffe?

Conservative bloggers are denying that Palin committed a gaffe when she "said Fannie and Freddie had 'gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers'":

• Hawkins: "Over at the Huffington Post, they're breathlessly reporting that Sarah Palin made her first gaffe. [...] The problem with this is that what Palin said is absolutely correct. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are too big and the bailout is going to be far too expensive to taxpayers. [...] In other words, the HuffPo is desperately attempting to twist Palin's 100% accurate and in fact, not even controversial statement, into a gaffe."
• Michelle Malkin: "How desperate is the Huffington Post to point to an Obama/Biden-like rhetorical gaffe by Sarah Palin? [...] We are on the verge of bailing out these behemoths to the tune of $200 billion in taxpayer backing -- while potentially forking over untold millions in severance packages to Democrat cronies. That makes Palin in tune with reality -- and her critics flailing once again."
• Morrissey: "They operate as private companies, but they're not. Both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have government backing for their operations -- which puts taxpayers in the position of co-signer. They have never been a completely private enterprise. [...] I'm sure Palin will make a gaffe or two between now and Election Day, but this isn't it -- and every single dollar of those hundreds of billions of dollars we'll spend on a Fannie and Freddie bailout will prove it."

PALIN VII: The New Hillary?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about the new Washington Post/ABC News poll showing that McCain "has gained huge support among white women since naming Sarah Palin as his running mate":

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "What's the secret? In my view, Governor Palin is the first major female political figure in America that regular women -- particularly those at home raising their children -- don't see as someone who either secretly despises them for wanting to put their families first or who expects them to be victims. She is the first major female political figure who seems like 'one of us' (just, perhaps, smarter, tougher and more accomplished). And she seems to have been drawn into public service not because she had anything to prove, or because of overweening personal ambition...but because she actually wanted to make things better. It's no surprise that Hillary Clinton is refusing to attack Governor Palin. [...] She realizes that many, many American women of all political persuasions are rooting for the Governor, and how she handles Sarah Palin now will have ramifications for her own standing among women in years to come. My hope is that she can learn from the Governor how to be tough, smart, successful in her own right -- without playing the victim card."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "It isn't that women are agreeing with [Palin's] ideas, though many are. It is that many more are identifying with her experiences and value those experiences."
• The Next Right's Soren Dayton: "White women supporting McCain could be attributed to any number of factors. The most obvious is Palin's star appeal, but also McCain's focus on service. But another possibility is that white women are simply coming home to the Republican party. In CNN's 2004 exit poll, George W. Bush beat John Kerry 55-44 among white women. In other words, white women voters who should be (or at least easily could be) Republican voters are now back to supporting the Republicans this cycle. Don't look for this dump to turn into a temporary bounce. This is a real phenomenon with a real mechanism, not some temporary blip caused by a whirlwind of media."

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are delighted about McCain's polling surge:

• The Next Right's Ruffini: "Holy crap. We could actually win this thing."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "All of the sudden, life is really good for John McCain. [...] Of course, this is immediately after a convention, so whatever bounce there is may well dissipate soon. That is the nature of bounces. Then again, it is worth noting that at times, bounces do not dissipate. Something that ought to worry the Obama campaign."
• RedState's Adam C: "There is good reason to be excited about some of the recent polling that shows Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin can win the race, and there is a majority in the country willing to support them. The futures markets have responded, giving McCain a 48% chance of winning which is his highest chance of the entire campaign."

OBAMA: Let's Not Panic, But...

While the leading liberal bloggers aren't as nervous about McCain's rising poll numbers as many of their readers apparently are, they still have significant problems with how the Obama campaign is being run:

Marshall remains critical of the Obama camp's media strategy: "I continue to see a campaign in which the McCain camp has a consistent and aggressive message. They're constantly on the attack and largely defining the debate. The Obama campaign is largely reactive, parrying the attacks -- sometimes rapid response, sometimes slower response, but defined largely by response. It seemed that way to me in July, in August and it seems that way to me now. At several points over the last year, I've underestimated Obama's campaign. And I take it that their position now is that they're not going to get knocked off their game. Instead they're staying focused on the ground game in the dozen and a half states where they believe the race will be won or lost. That's difficult for someone in my position to evaluate. The messaging and air war is something that is inherently visible. The ground game is very difficult to evaluate because it's much more difficult to see. So we're left to take it on faith that they know what they're doing, without having much way of seeing for ourselves. I certainly hope they do. But what I see is a campaign that is for some reason either unwilling or unable to take the initiative in the national messaging war. It's all reactive. And, yeah, that worries me."

Meanwhile, Open Left's Chris Bowers complains that Obama and his surrogates are too complimentary toward McCain: "[...] Our generals keep telling us how great the people shooting at us really are. It's Russ Feingold saying what a great President McCain would be. It is Joe Biden saying how he doesn't know anyone with more personal courage than John McCain. It is Barack Obama prefacing every criticism he makes of John McCain with a glorification of McCain's service to America. And the list goes on and on. This is the message I am supposed to be amplifying? In order to defeat McCain, I now have to repeatedly say just how awesome McCain is? [...] The compliments Democrats regularly pay to John McCain are self-defeating and disempowering. We aren't going to win an election where we say our opponents are awesome, while our opponents say that we suck. I want to make a difference in the fight to defeat John McCain, but with this structural set-up, it doesn't feel like I can. McCain's favorables keep going up, and his poll numbers follow along in due course. Gee, I wonder why that is."

digby also criticizes the Obama camp's message: "I always felt that Democrats should have run hard against conservatism itself so that a majority of voters would reject the GOP brand no matter who was wearing it. Instead we saw airy campaigns rife with symbols of liberal progress and the promise of some new post partisan agreement that only one side had signed on to. [...] There's much about the Obama campaign that I admire. But I have always believed it was a mistake to box themselves into a post-partisan trap. They probably had to be careful about the tone, so that people would feel 'comfortable' with a young black presidential candidate, but I think they overcompensated. This was a partisan year and it should have been a partisan rout. But somebody had to make that case. [...] It's a tie today (or very close) and if the Obama campaign focuses on the economy, does well in the debates and gets out the vote as well as the GOP's re-invigorated churches do, they should win. But the days of arguing that this is a map changer or that 'The Obama Movement' represents a seismic political shift are over. It's a 50/50 fight, just like it was in 2004. Half of the country still doesn't know that George W. Bush's failed governance wasn't a bug but a feature [of conservatism]. And you certainly can't blame them for not telling anybody."

OBAMA II: Dear Barack: Get Better Ads!

Many liberal bloggers are complaining that the Obama camp's ads are dull and uninspired:

• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "One of the more disappointing elements of the Obama campaign has been their advertising, which has tended to focus on fairly conventional, 30-second, issue-based spots. Their ads have been neither creative nor attention-grabbing, in contrast to both their reputation for being a media-savvy campaign, and some of the relatively creative spots put together by the McCain team. [...] If the Obama campaign does not begin to think outside the box a little with its advertising, I think it may find it has trouble getting the return on investment it expects."
• dday: "I absolutely agree [with Silver]...that the campaign ads have been poor, and I say that as someone who works for a living in the creative media. That's not because they don't attack McCain or they don't tie him to Bush; it's a question of style. Even the ones which have done a credible job from a content perspective are not innovative, getting bogged down with the same statistics and one-line shibboleths ('protecting our economy') that pass for contemporary policy debate, instead of offering a vision or a compelling storyline in those 30 seconds. I'm not completely opposed to presenting factual information (the 'McCain will overturn Roe' ad was fine), but in Obama they have an appealing candidate with unappealing advertising."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Nate Silver is absolutely right. The Obama campaign needs better ads. I've been saying that for a couple months now, and things haven't improved. [...] I have yet to see one memorable Obama ad -- they're the typical, generic political ads we've come to expect from Democratic media firms like GMMB. Those media types get paid a lot of money (win or lose), so you'd think that they'd come up with something original for the most interesting and charismatic candidate we've seen in decades. We've lost the last two elections following the conventional wisdom of ad agencies like this. Infuse the campaign with some original, creative thinking, please."

In slightly better news for the Obama camp, liberal bloggers like their new ad, "No Maverick", which accuses McCain and Palin of "lying about their records":

• Sudbay: "I haven't loved a lot of the Obama campaign ads. Til now. This latest ad, titled 'No Maverick' is exactly what the campaign needed. It's crisp. It's tough. It doesn't hold back -- and right now, they can't hold back. [...] McCain and Palin are lying. They need to be called out on it, just like this."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "This is a great punch back, and this ad is a whole lot better than a lot of the ads we have seen as of late from the Obama campaign. But I'm with Josh Marshall -- as great as it is to see the Obama campaign hit back, and hit back hard, it's about time to see the campaign go on the offense and get the McCain campaign on its heels. As [Marshall] put it, 'You have start the fight. Let the other guy fight back.'
• Beeton: "It would be nice...if the media would label what it is that Sarah Palin and John McCain are doing accurately. [...] Luckily, the Obama campaign doesn't have a problem calling its opponents liars."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas offers his take on why MSNBC removed Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as anchors of its political coverage:

"As I'm sure most of you have seen, MSNBC has removed Olbermann and Matthews as anchors of their political coverage. [...] We know that MSNBC had been under pressure from the McCain campaign over their political coverage, since of course, only sycophantic pro-GOP voices should be allowed on the air:

'More recently, though, McCain, 72, has accused news organizations such as the New York Times, Time magazine and the NBC television network of being unfair to him. The campaign even considered pulling out of one of the three presidential debates because it would be moderated by Tom Brokaw, a former NBC News anchorman.'

In fact, read that last sentence above again. That's apparently why MSNBC caved. McCain would pull out of that debate unless MSNBC ensured that there would be no progressive (or semi-progressive) voices to comment immediately following the debate.

So while Dems continue to go on Fox News, legitimizing them, and while Obama gives [Bill] O'Reilly a ratings bonanza, showing the whole country how he can abuse, talk over, and interrupt the Democratic presidential nominee, Republicans are playing hardball and winning. Just more evidence that their side plays the game far better than ours. Politics is a contact sport, which puts us at a huge disadvantage when only one side seems to grasp the rules."

LEST WE FORGET: Running Out Of Ideas

The Hater's Amelie Gillette critiques the MTV Video Music Awards:

"The problem with the VMAs is really the problem with MTV in general: the show and the network are constantly striving for both relevancy and freshness. From that shallow well come ideas like, 'Let's put GPS devices in all of the limos so kids can track their fave stars' arrivals online!' No one, save terrorists, would find that even remotely interesting, MTV. Good job. Or: 'Let's recap the show the instant that it ends with a "memorable moments" montage!' Remember when Kid Rock was Kid Rockin all over the stage? Or when Michael Phelps walked? Classic VMAs. Ugh."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at September 9, 2008 01:39 PM