WTF Friday: November Is Coming

by

Above: Gov. Rick Perry with Yao Ming for some reason.

Happy Friday! It’s the day we celebrate the fact that we, as a culture, collectively agree we spend 71 percent of our lives wishing it were the other 29 percent. (To simulate this feeling, people in the service industry should pretend it’s Sunday.)

I hope you’re doing something special tonight, like playing catch with your child as the dusk settles in around you or watching every episode of “BoJack Horseman” in a row and then questioning your life choices. At any rate, I hope you’re doing something more satisfying than what Observer staffers and their ilk were doing last Friday, which was live-tweeting the first (and yet penultimate) soundbite-off between gubernatorial candidates Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott.

I think this tweet from the Houston Chronicle’s Matt Schwartz sums it up nicely:

small tweet

Christopher Hooks and Forrest Wilder gave a rundown of the substance and significance of the event, but I’m interested in the language. If last Friday you were, I don’t know, finally finishing that novel you’ve been working on, this is the level of discourse you missed. When asked how he would improve the speed of veterans’ medical service, Abbott listed the veterans in his and his wife’s families. “She had an uncle who served in the Army during World War II,” he said. Informative! Then Abbott asserted boldly, “The men and women who serve on the front line should not have to be pushed to the back of the line when it comes to their health care needs.”

Jon Stewart slow clap

[Keith Olbermann voice] So military support staff should go to the back of the line? Is that what you’re saying, sir? That we should create a hierarchy of access to medical treatment based on physical proximity to the front lines? Where does that leave women veterans who’ve historically been denied access to front-line duty? And why didn’t any of your family serve in World War I? Are you not proud of them? What kind of a name is Abbott, anyway—Austro-Hungarian?

The closest thing to drama came when Davis tried to respond to Abbott’s rebuttal on a question about education funding. (Note: she spoke after, not over, him.) The rules prohibited this—nobody wants this to turn into a whole “debate,” okay lady?—but Davis kept talking for a full 13 seconds after a moderator tried to shut her down. That’s an hour and a half in male politician crosstalk time. She was controlled and direct and spoke in exactly the same pitch and volume as before, so naturally, Davis-haters dubbed it a “meltdown.” The term got enough traction that Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman titled his Tuesday column, “Wendy Davis reaction not a ‘meltdown.'”

But it wasn’t enough buzz for said haters, who got mad that the The New York Times and Politico didn’t cover the debate. “If Abbott had pulled a similar disgraceful stunt on Davis, it would be national news. Abbott would be portrayed as having come unglued and perhaps even as a sexist if he had pointed his finger at her as she did at him,” whined Tom Blumer at NewsBusters.org.

Right. Because there’s nothing sexist about calling a woman’s firm defiance a “meltdown.”

Obama eye roll

(And hey, Tom, here’s the Wikipedia page for false equivalence. That should get you started.)

In Portuguese, there’s a word for things like the Davis-Abbott debate: chato. It means, roughly, “boring and annoying at the same time.” There were ways to spice it up, though. If you decided to drink every time Abbott said “Obama,” you’re probably just sobering up. (Nine timesyes, reporting!) You could also have read the stream of tweets mentioning Davis.

Ron throwing computer away

Nevermind, don’t do that.

But that was last week. That was a forum where both sides wanted to appeal to the state’s 14 moderate voters. This week offered more conventional WTF fodder: Ted Cruz showing he’s all about that base. At the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Friday, he warned, “These are dangerous, extreme, radical times” and said Democrats are “an extreme, radical party.” (Which is what I’m throwing at my house tonight. Hey-o!)

Amid Bible quotes, personal stories and a call to abolish the IRS (nice non-extreme-being!) Cruz also, notes the Daily Beast, “offered unattributed quotes from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, telling the crowd that the GOP ‘need[s] to offer a choice, not an echo’ and that ‘we don’t paint in pale pastels, we paint in bold colors.’” (Who’s his speechwriter, Fareed Zakaria? Hey-o!)

[Ed. note: Stop doing that.]

Still, Gov. Rick Perry may have won at this week’s WTF-ery not by what he said but what he didn’t say. According to the remarks posted on his official site, Perry prepared 1,615 words to say to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Energy and Climate Policy Summit, but not one of those words was “climate.”

He did, however, say that through 14 years of governance, “standing by my side along the way” was TPPF, a non-profit, non-partisan research institute. Aww.

Rather than acknowledging the existence of even a conversation about climate change, Perry fixated on Russia and his plan to beat Putin by… exporting natural gas.

“With the natural gas we now produce, we can help liberate our European allies from Russian energy aggression,” he said. “Energy is a weapon in the hands of aggressors. So I say, if energy is going to be used as a weapon, America should always have the largest arsenal. The arsenal of American energy will not, however, be used to bully other nations, but set them free.”

Oh good! More liberating! And setting free! America hasn’t liberated anybody in— [covers mic] (What was that? Again?? …okay.) Well, you can never spread too much liberty.

So this weekend, enjoy your liberties. Take liberties. Hell, be libertines. A lot of people will keep saying a lot of dumb stuff, and some of it will matter, and some of it won’t, but if it does, we’ll catch you up on it Monday. That’s our job. Is it dusk yet? No? Go sit outside and wait. It’ll come.