Pop Culture

To those of you who are amongst the elite who support Barack Obama and are therefore out of touch with Pop Culture:

John McCain was scheduled to appear on last night's "The Late Show with David Letterman". Just as he was about to tape the program Senator McCain called to tell Letterman that he would not be available because he had to rush back to Washington to be available for the negotiations and debate on the economic recovery plan.

Letterman was incensed and he spent the first 3 segments of his program exclusively skewering McCain unmercilessly. These first 3 segments (about 8 minutes each) included his opening stand up monologue, his overall introduction to the upcoming program with comments about the news of the day, "Tonight's Top 10" (Questions people are asking the McCain Campaign), and 1½ segments of his interview with his major guest of the night (Keith Olberman of MSNBC's Countdown replacing John McCain).


There were two significant parts of the Olberman interview that were not much covered by the "Main Stream Media":

1. The first contact to have the two candidates address the economic crisis on a non-partisan basis was made by Barack Obama who called McCain and suggested that they issue a joint statement about the crisis stressing those points that they have in common. Then about 1/2 hour later McCain, upstaging Obama, without mentioning Obama's call to him, unilaterally held a press conference announcing that he was suspending his campaign and suggested that Obama do the same thing and that the first debate scheduled for Friday night be postponed.
2. Letterman showed a clip of McCain preparing for an interview with Katie Couric followed by another clip showing a part of the interview which was broadcast at the time Letterman was taping his show. In other words, McCain lied to Letterman and did not "rush back" to Washington but ditched his appearance for a more opportune event.

One could say that what McCain did was normal politics and should be expected. However, McCain promoted the nature of his action as a bipartisan effort for the welfare of the country rather than as a political ploy. This is just more of the same old politics that McCain originally eschewed as part of his campaign.

The suspension of his campaign and the idea of postponing the debate comes at a time when McCain's polling results have begun to plunge as a result of the news about the economy and just after he released 2 of the dirtiest campaign commercials. The suspicion is that he wants to change the subject from the economy to one that paints Obama as unethical by using the crisis as a political opportunity, deny Obama the opportunity to respond with his own add in to the latest McCain attack ads, and further it has been suggested that postponing the first debate would set up the opportunity to replace the only VP debate with the postponed presidential debate.

These are the types of actions we can expect from a McCain administration. It would be another 4 years of dishonest government with outrageous spin to cover up the further implementation of corporatism and enrichment of the wealthiest at the expense of the rest of the population.

Michael