Guess who's been staying up too late b/c of the Democratic Convention?

I've been fascinated by the benedictions at the end. How can you pray and be a tiny bit political, but not too political? The pre-written teleprompter prayers seem to walk that line fairly carefully.

Anywho, thought this video comparison between Fox and MSNBC reactions to Michelle Obama's speech was interesting. I've also been thinking about how important commentary is to my assessment of various news items.



P.S. Thanks, Fox, for pointing out how attractive Michelle Obama is.

Um, no.

No, no, no. Obama is not the Antichrist. Thanks for spreading ridiculous crap, John McCain's candidacy.

I wish I had a snappier comeback - or something more insightful - but basically I've moved from thinking the Left Behind series was just poorly written and harmless, to being a dangerous tool o' manipulation. What else is there to say?

McCain's Race Card

About a week ago (I know, I'm slow on the news cycles...) John McCain jumped on Barack Obama for "playing the race card," by saying that the people running against him will point out Obama's differences from the guys you see on the dollar bills. Now, it might not be a fair accusation, but on the other hand, the McCain campaign moved pretty fast to highlight this remark of Obama's.

The main point here, though, is that while Obama may be trying to turn his racial identity into an advantage, John McCain has a race card that he can play every day, without having to say a word: he's white. That's all the race card he needs.

Dark Night

So I saw The Dark Knight on Friday, and I will try not to give away any plot points, but will just say what everyone else is saying, which is that Heath Ledger's acting is very, very good in it.

What I found very interesting about the Joker's character was that he liked to put people in situations of kill or be killed, and then see if their self-protective, animal side would come out. At one point, he literally calls it a sociology experiment.

I don't know if the movie was going in this direction, but it's interesting how much power the Joker was able to amass by framing problems as ones in which only one person or group could win. Since people accepted his framing, there was very little room for creativity in collectively addressing the real problem - him. And the result: chaos.

By contrast, it's very rare that someone has set us up completely in conflict situations that if one person wins, the other has to lose. The Joker is wrong; peace is possible.