Are perhaps a bit much?
--Michael Crowley
Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2008 11:06 PM with 24 comment(s)
That's our Crowley!
Fireworks are never a bit much. This is America, dammit.
Indeed! A critical, crucial mistake by a naive, arrogant rookie!
Imagine: Fireworks at an outdoor venue after a major event! The nerve.
There was a five-and-a-half year stretch were John McCain didn't have any fireworks at all.
Etc.
bread and circuses--strange and slightly bizarre
Oh, good grief. Are the fireworks a bit much? was one of the streamers slightly askew? Did Joe Biden stoop too low when he was waving to people? Please get some sleep, Mr. Crowley
Nope -- outdoor equivalent of balloons. The music got a little Sorkinesque, but, fuck, it was a great fucking speech. Goosebumps, tears, all that shit, fucking-a right.
The subtrext of this setting and its accoutrements is that Obama is different--everything about the event was different from the normal coronation event on the last night of a convention. The degree of difference may work for him in suggesting a "new politics" made for the new electorate that he hopes to create. Or it may be too different and unfamiliar, too much like a electronic show, that makes him seem stranger, harder to trust, and less presidential. We'll know in about a week when the early responses to the event settle in.
Get a life, Crowley.
Man. Man. Man... Crowley, your reporting is top-notch. But you NEED to get off this whole "kick-me" trip. Dude, it was high school. Today the jock pumps gas, the prom queen's fat and homely. It's OK. You can admit it now. You really ARE much cooler than them -- and I'll tell you a little secret, just between you and me: you always were...
After the Olympics, everything must have fireworks.
Phenomenal address, ladies and gentlemen you've just seen the next President of the United States.
Jesus Christ on a tenspeed! It was great, everyone loved it, the thing went off without a hitch. Stop gazing at your own navel and enjoy it!
No, they were not a bit much. I am no fan of fireworks, but I think they were just right tonight.
Yeah, too much fireworks? When you don't have balloons, that's what you use. Besides, after all America saw China launch more fireworks than could be found in a small country's conventional arsenal, NO fireworks display will look like too much.
Fireworks = 4th of July. Good move.
I say the Obama campaign played everybody on this thing when they acted concerned about GOP celebrity/Greek temple spin. Normal people watching this event, especially the ones not all that familiar with Obama, had to have been floored by the spectacle and the speech. Americans like big events, big shows, great performers. They got it all here, AND they got one hell of a speech that left no doubts about this man's plans, talents, and deep understanding of the political terrain at home and abroad.
As someone said during the primaries, it's ok to speak before Obama, just don't go after him. I'd hate to be McCain right now.
good lord.
do you bite your nails, Mr. Crowley? The Republicans are gonna parse it like crazy, 'cause it was so good, they'll have to go small to find something wrong. Why do we have to do the same?
The fireworks were not too much because:
a) it was an outdoor stadium and they could not drop balloons
b) it was no worse than using the theme music from "The Natural" for GHWB
c) for ages, we let the Republicans do this whole convention spectacle patriotic thing better than us. Time to one up them.
EXACTLY !!!
NO BALLOONS = FIREWORKS.
Fireworks were not a bit much. For god's sakes, they shoot off fireworks after a frickin' FIELD GOAL in NFL football games.
I'm beginning to think he does this for effect. No one can be such an Eeyore so consistently and so little effect.
"bread and circuses--strange and slightly bizarre"
Eos, you made me laugh. Honestly, this is about the funniest thing I have ever, EVER read in a political context. The critique of a political convention - actual criticism of a political convention as "bread and circuses". This outColberts Colbert. Your second post, incoherent and pointless as it was, still made sense in your usual way, but ... "bread and circuses"? Of course it's theatre; it has ever been thus.
If you want to really criticise his speech, address the specifics and show us how they are dangerously left wing, as you have been insisting all this time. Address the middle class tax cut proposal, or the energy investment proposal, or the health care proposal. But "bread and circuses". Ah, man, funnnnay!
jhildner, I thought the Sorkin touch was terrific. You didn't? It sure beat that awful country song.
Beijing did it so much better, I kind of agree they would better have skipped it. (On the other hand, those beginning premature ejaculations from top of the set were exquisitely cheesy, pure Hollywood.)
ralph: Hell, I liked it and went with it -- I guess I was just expressing what I imagine a more cynical soul than I might think. I don't know if you were watching MSNBC, but there was a moment when Chris Matthews was re-reading lines from the speech in full passion mode as those Sorkinesque strings and horns were going and I thought, shit, this is like a movie, in a good way, as in, when the good guys win.
Fireworks seem to mean a lot less today than they did a few years ago. Whenever something nice happens for the home team in my city, fireworks go off at the ballpark. Like everything else in this over-indulgent society, everything that works gets run into the ground.
What everyone else said. Fireworks are much more eco-friendly than a billion balloons. I think they go off after every homerun at Comiskey Park, which is to say almost never.