After a weekend of despondency over Barack Obama’s debate performance, it maybe starts to emerge, even from polls and other imprecise indicators, that I was wrong and his showing wasn’t as weak as I though it was. Voters did not eat up McCain’s bombastic and mendacious bullshit. I was especially taken with two comments on the Talking Points Memo website that suggest viewer evaluation of the two men went to deeper levels that I ever suspected.
“As a psychotherapist and someone who treats people with anger management problems, we typically try to educate people that anger is often an emotion that masks other emotions. I think it's significant that McCain didn't make much, if any, eye contact because it suggests one of two things to me; he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.”
Monkeys were also invoked…
“I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear--look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior--low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.”
Yes, the secret word is still Perception
Never underestimate the monkey-blink.
ReplyDeleteYou Tarzan, me Pepsi, and isn't fucking frightening that a species capable of burning the world to a crisp still operates on sub-verbal primate levels, even when selecting it's leaders?
ReplyDeleteI, for one, was surprised that McCain didn't start grooming Obama or roll over and bare his tummy to the senator.
ReplyDeleteI'm profoundly glad he didn't. It might have driven me to drink.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I saw during the bloody war in Bosnia that people who are afraid of eye contact squeeze a trigger very easily.
ReplyDeleteUuufff... motherfuckers!