James Wolcott of Vanity Fair got sucked into watching Joe Lieberman perform soft-shoe in front of his new bestest friends:
Lieberman’s speech redefined unctuousness. He lubricated unctuousness with his own personal brand of smiling smarm. As a few bloggers have noted, this was a speech that didn’t mention President Bush (neither did Thompson’s, I believe) but used President Clinton as an applause line. It wasn’t much applause but it was more than he got when he praised McCain for trying to address thorny issues such as global warming, campaign finance, and immigration reform–issues that the Rush Limbaugh fans either consider bogus (global warming) or feel McCain was on the wrong side of (campaign finance, immigration). The reaction in the hall to Lieberman’s speech reminded me of the SCTV bit in which Love Boat’s Gavin MacLeod (Joe Flaherty) pays tribute to One Day at a Time’s Bonnie Franklin as her face is flashed on the big screen:
“I think she’s a helluva entertainer, folks–don’t you?”
Deathly silence.
Moving right along…
As the camera snapshotted the delegates during the Lieberman speech, it underscored what a tired, old congregation has been gathered, the Republicans never more looking like the Party of the Past, yesterday’s news. It’s bad enough listening to fake Dixieland, it’s worse having to look at it.
[Click to read more of James Wolcott’s Blog: vanityfair.com]
Other than Norm Coleman’s line1 that was tailor-made for Obama’s team to use as YouTube fodder2 , Whiny Joe’s shout-outs to the forbidden topics of global climate change and immigration were the most unintentionally funny moments of the RNC, so far.
Footnotes: