Radosh.net

Was it really such a strong line? As the ad above shows, unlike "You're no Jack Kennedy" and "There you go again," this was a catch phrase with a pretty obvious response -- if you don't want to be confused with Bush stop following his policies. Seems to me the McCain campaign has been trying too hard to come up with a zinger (say it ain't so, Joe) in lieu of a coherent counterattack.

I wish when Obama picked up McCain's talking-directly-to-Joe-the-Plumber shtick, he'd looked into the camera and said "By the way... can I call you 'Joe?'"

Also, my fave comment at TPM after the third time Joe was addressed directly through the camera: "Joe must think he's in The Truman Show or something."

Obama says Biden now wants to be called 'Joe the Senator' in this Alfred E. Smith banquet speech. Some of these "zingers" are corny and obvious, but there are a few gems, and Obama's parody of his own words in last night's debate ("[they said] if we keep talking about the economy, McCain's gonna lose... So tonight I'd like to talk about the economy") takes the whole thing to a meta level that recalls Stephen Colbert's infamous 'roast.' Above all of that, though, whether the jokes are good or lame, Obama throughout is just fun to watch, pitch-perfect. It's almost scary.

@ Vance: He's definitely got chops. My favorite joke was one of the most obvious: "I of course never knew your great grandfather, but from what John McCain tells me..."

Of course, all the jokes were written for him. But who knew Bill Ayers was so funny?

The moderator in the Batman cli[p is, I believe, Jack Baily, host of the maudlin reality show "Queen for a Day," where ladies told sob stories and won a washing machine or some such for evoking the greatest sympathy from the studio audience. The TV version of Batman was always richly textured.

One of the funniest things in that Andy McCarthy piece is that McCarthy, who has apparenly written right around zero books ever, sets himself against Christopher Buckley, whom some might consider an expert in adopting and maintaining a certain "voice" or "diction" in his satirical novels, and McCarthy finds himself able to discern that Dreams of My Father is not in Obama's authentic voice, while Buckley, the longtime accomplished book-writer, has been conpletely fooled.

Also noteworthy is how the overall column hews to what's becoming a standard right-wing attack line: This outrageous, extreme allegation has no proof behind it - and that's why the press should be doing its job to uncover said proof! The fact that the press is not doing so tacitly proves it, because it's clear evidence of a cover-up!