Newton Bigelow

Couldn’t make myself actually watch the debate tonight. Instead, I read a bunch of websites that were doing liveblogging. It’s an odd thing to read the responses without watching the thing itself, but I kind of like it. You get a sense of the bits that provoked strong reactions, things that will be drowned in a sea of analysis by tomorrow morning. For instance, McCain apparently had a bad moment where he lapsed into gibberish. Not the kind of thing that pundits are likely to make much of, but it was notable enough that multiple bloggers mentioned it right after the fact.

But what none of the bloggers seemed willing to talk about was Obama’s stunning display of supernatural powers in the early minutes of the debate. With a mere wave of his hand, he was able to reduce his opponent to nearly a third of his original stature.

For the remainder of the debate, McCain hopped madly around the stage, his squeakily unpleasant voice grating on the nerves of the audience. Yet neither moderator Tom Brokaw nor any other commentator had the courage to make note of Obama’s sorcerer’s ways. Just more evidence of reality-based community’s unvarnished bias.