8
POPSRepublican Humor McCain's latest joke: when informed by an AP reporter that Iran's biggest American import is cigarettes, he joked, "well, that's a way to kill them." So funny, I forgot to laugh. Republicans are a hoot!
7
POPSMatt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"
10
POPSGut Check Time for White Americans The Wright affair has such resonance in this campaign because Wright has shown himself to be the kind of black person that white people don't like. He brings out our prejudices. Yes, I said "our" prejudices. Part of it is Wright's ignorance and part of it is his arrogance and part of it is that he talks louder than white people would prefer and part of it is that he uses the sing-song cadence they associate with other black ministers they have grown to hate over the years such as Jesse Jackson. Obama is none of those things (OK, maybe a little arrogant at times), so Wright has been brought to the forefront as a substitute punching bag.
20
POPS White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."