Were John McCain's web team pulled away from their desks yesterday to throw their shoulders into the Wall Street bailout? The Popeye-like Senator's site still promises a debate with Barack Obama on Friday, and several more next week. I haven't been this stumped by a candidate's behavior since Ross Perot flipped out in October 1992.
Did you cancel your debate party? Ha, ha, you are a nerd. But wait, un-cancel it! Or, uh, postpone it? Honestly we don't know what to tell you. Yesterday, John McCain "suspended" his "campaign" in order to fix the economy, and as part of that suspension he backed out of tomorrow's scheduled presidential debate. But Obama said the debate is still on! And Ole Miss (they are sponsoring the debate) also said they are going to still sponsor this debate! So... what? They can't reschedule. The TV networks don't want to move their fall schedules around to accommodate John McCain's crazy whims. Further, the event itself is the result of months of planning and involves massive security and making sure the moderator's free that night and getting all the cameras there on time and so on. So, no, they can't just decide to have this another night. Unless, of course, they reschedule the debate to take place the night of, say, the Vice Presidential debate! DON'T DENY US THAT TREAT, JOHN MCCAIN. If McCain Doesn't Show? If John McCain doesn't show up tomorrow, Obama will just have an interview, by himself, with Jim Lehrer, or he'll have a townhall, or both. So. Now that the House and Senate have reached an accord on the historic bailout agreement, McCain is going to maybe have to make a decision of some kind, regarding this debate, lest he look like even more of a fool (seriously, no one but Bill Clinton thinks he looks like anything but a fool). Some people say McCain will probably show up to the debate now, but the man is stubborn and petty (which is why he did this in the first place!). And right now, he's not blinking (they NEVER BLINK at ANYTHING). "There's no deal until there's a deal. We're optimistic but we want to get this thing done," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said. Of course, there sorta is a deal, now. But maybe it's not a deal McCain likes! McCain Will Probably Cave So McCain will probably show up tomorrow, to debate Obama. Because if he doesn't it's free airtime for Obama alone. He's painted himself into the stupidest corner ever! Because this plan he had nothing to do with crafting might work, in which case he looks like a grandstanding idiot, or else it will fail (maybe because of Republicans!) and nothing will get done and he'll show up to the debate regardless and he'll look like a grandstanding idiot. Then Sarah Palin will accidentally answer a question again and America will cringe and weep. (Because we are a nation of whingers.)
Some shadowy nonprofit is running ads accusing John McCain of having cancer. Which is true and actually maybe relevant (the fact that John McCain will be America's oldest president ever is certainly more relevant than Obama's house party with Mr. Ayers). The groups behind the ads are apparently run by nutty lefty filmmaker Robert Greenwald and Howard Dean's brother, and the ads feature doctors (with stethoscopes and stuff) saying that cancer is really bad and might kill John McCain. As an underhanded dirty smear, it at least has the advantage of being, you know, 100% demonstrably true! But still. The ads fail, miserably, by not pointing out explicitly that should McCain die in office, he'd be replaced by Sarah Palin. That is the scary thing here! No one would care if old man McCain died and was replaced by someone with half a fucking brain. Anyway, controversy!!
♦ Financial news outlets are performing well, not surprisingly. CNBC's Closing Bell saw ratings increase 70% last week. [AdAge]
♦ HBO has optioned the Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons with Tina Brown producing. [Variety via NYO]
♦ Furniture mogul Eric Villency is teaming up with Cotton (yes, the industry trade group) on a web-based reality TV show. [AdAge]
♦ Sarah Palin got cozy with Rupert Murdoch last night. [Politico]
♦ Thanks to hefty tax breaks, a record 19 primetime series will be filmed in NYC in 2008-9, compared to 12 last year. [NYT]
♦ David Letterman ripped into John McCain last night after the senator cancelled his scheduled appearance. [Gawker]
♦ Should Andrea Mitchell really be covering the financial crisis given her husband is former Fed chair Alan Greenspan? [CJR]
Just in time for noted Internet newbie John McCain's visit to the American Association of Retired People's annual event, Life at 50 Plus, Google and the AARP produced a series of videos explaining basic Internet security tips intended for old folks. Frankly, with college students downloading malware from pop-ups and McCain's running mate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin's getting her email hacked, there's more than a few nonretirees who could stand to watch the whole series.
John McCain's motorcade snapped by a passerby on 57th St. at 9th Ave. in Manhattan yesterday at 5.30pm—just about the time he was supposed to be recording an interview for the Late Show with David Letterman or else saving the country from financial ruin.
Late-night host David Letterman—who dropped his usual Midwestern bonhomie to drub John McCain yesterday evening—is not the only national institution to be overtaken by partisanship this election season. If only in jest, the New York Times crossword makers are being accused of favoring McCain's Democratic rival. While "Obama" has appeared as an answer several times, the Republican candidate hasn't been honored once. What's the Times' excuse? "It is because ‘Obama’ is a five-letter name that alternates vowels and consonants," a spokeswoman tells Politico. "It’s got three vowels out of five letters, starting and ending in vowels. So it is much more crossword-friendly than ‘McCain,’ which is a harder word to put in a crossword." And that explanation will do precisely nothing to mitigate conservative suspicions of a newspaper so rooted in New York that even the crosswords are liberal.
♦ Natalie Portman is single. She's split up with boyfriend Devendra Banhart. Best of luck, guys! [People]
♦ The son of famed architect Richard Meier says his dad is gay and he was forced into a mental hospital and disinherited for saying so. Richard's friends, meanwhile, say he's definitely not gay and he's actually quite the ladies' man. [P6]
♦ Clay Aiken pocketed roughly $500,000 for his coming-out cover story deal with People. [MSNBC]
♦ Sarah Palin might make a cameo on Saturday Night Live. Also, Hugh Hefner would love to give her a spread in Playboy. [OK!, Daily Star]
Somehow, YouTube already has a copy of David Letterman tonight lacerating John McCain for skipping the Late Show and suspending his campaign in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown. As reported earlier by Drudge, Letterman became especially upset when he caught the Republican presidential nominee in a live feed from New York being interviewed by his own network's Katie Couric. McCain had personally told Letterman he was canceling because he was headed back to the capital to handle the financial crisis. Whoops.
John McCain announced today that he would suspend his presidential campaign until the current economic crisis is settled, leaving some big holes in this week's TV schedule — most especially, this Friday's suddenly in-jeopardy presidential debate, which McCain is seeking to postpone (Barack Obama and debate organizers have rejected the idea). In the short-term, however, McCain pulled out of his planned appearance tonight on Late Show with David Letterman, and the host is pissed. Seems McCain told Letterman that he was canceling so that he could rush back to Washington D.C., but then Dave caught wind that McCain hadn't gone anywhere — that, in fact, he was just down the street taping an interview with CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric. What followed was an on-screen excoriation, according to the Drudge Report:
Magically the Senate approves the bailout package first, according to CNN.The latest is that McCain wants to postpone the debate until October 2. If Obama doesn't agree, he can debate some panel of undecided voters or whatever, McCain won't be there. An inspiring display of diplomacy, this one. Still mad about Obama snubbing his ethics reform ideas, I guess! Oh well, I have been watching these hearings for the past two days and the rest of Congress has been doing a pretty good job questioning spooky-looking Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson without angry angry John McCain. My favorite was this guy, because of his accent obviously but also because he seemed somehow emblematic of the shifting tide of public opinon. Walter B. Jones was elected to Congress in eastern North Carolina as a Democrat in 1983 but switched to the Republican party in 1994. He gladly voted to authorize the war in 2003 but now says that was a mistake. He's a convert to Catholicism and a supporter of raising the minimum wage and most recently an endorser of Crazy Ron Paul. (Paul's debate with Bernanke over the causes of the Great Depression: also a highlight.) Anyway, Jones sounded like he was on the verge of tears the whole time! And he had harsh words for the bailout concept, but managed to seem so goddamn genteel while saying them! I felt like I was watching a movie sort of. Except I know the end will be depressing!
McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt is a risk taker and a brilliant manipulator of the news cycle. The Rove acolyte's two biggest gambles—a delay in the Republican Convention in deference to an approaching hurricane and the selection of camera-magnet Sarah Palin as running mate—both distracted the media and the public from John McCain's weaknesses as a presidential candidate. One can assume he's behind the "suspension" of the Republican nominee's campaign. Will it allow McCain to skip an otherwise dangerous debate this Friday night while claiming he's putting country first? Here's an instant poll. Suspend your political bias but not your judgment.
Haha we were going to write about this and then John McCain flew back to Washington DC to solve this economic crisis himself. Before that happened? People were talking about how either John McCain lied to us about his campaign manager's link to Freddie Mac, or that campaign manager lied to John McCain about those ties, or both. How to respond to that charge? Hah. They didn't really know! Twice today—twice—McCain surrogates responded not by denying any of it, but rather by... comparing the New York Times to the Huffington Post. Ok, what? Nancy Pfotenhauer tried this line first on MSNBC this afternoon. Then spokesman Michael Goldfarb tried it later in an press release. That's right, they are saying you can't believe the Times because it's just like the stupid HuffPo with its Nora Ephron blogs and so on. What? Does this argument resonate with anyone who doesn't live online?? Man, the Washington Post is like the "Pink is the New Blog" of newspapers, right?? That MSNBC is pretty much the MediaBistro of television! Nonsensical zing! One understands why they decided to quickly shift gears this afternoon.
Hey mister ever heard of the LAW??! Okay, so if you want to really hurt your brain, try to figure out why some rogue trader(s) on the fun "bet on anything" site InTrade would be purposely spending good money to drive the price of Barack Obama Victory stock down? To a price that anyone who pays attention to the prices of Obama contracts on all the various meaningless virtual internet stock markets could easily tell you was a suspiciously low one that in any sane rational world would be quickly bid back up by arbitrageurs?? FiveThirtyEight suspects a "degenerate idiot" who obviously doesn't take the efficiency of liquid markets seriously enough.Manipulating markets for the LULZ, perhaps? We'll keep you posted.
Obama on tv earlier responding to the McCain debate stunt: dangerous crisis, lots of blame to go around, everyone has to help this crisis, swiftly. It seemed like the joint statement he was supposed to release with Maverick McCain before McCain ran away to Washington to get in the way! Obama said he had a conversation with McCain today about the joint statement. "When I got back to the hotel, he was already on tv." Jesus Christ. In re. debate suspension: "I thought this was something he was mulling over, it sounds like this is something he was decisive about." Obama sounded like he's going ahead with the debates. More (paraphrase): "We both have big planes, they can get us from Washington DC to Mississippi pretty quickly." FURTHERMORE: John McCain's at CBS right now! No time for debating, always time for Katie Couric!
Ok, so this is sleazy, right? Barack Obama and John McCain were on the phone today trying to put together a genuinely non-partisan joint statement on the economy and the necessity of some sort of "package" to fix this mess we're in. Obama called McCain to suggest this at 8:30 this morning. NBC: "McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain's statement was issued to the media a few minutes later." That is seriously a dick move! Hey: "'The debate is on,' a senior Obama campaign official told ABC News." So there's that. [Earlier]
