speechifying

Just finished watching Obama's speech. We started late because we were at Elaine's for a special Mardi Gras dinner. (more on that later. The short version: the food was much better than the service.)

We normally watch these things on CSPAN because you get the least extraneous bullshit (I prefer the unadulterated bullshit of the speeches themselves). Also CSPAN gave me a free button at the inauguration, so I like them. Tonight when we set up the DVR to record, the speech wasn't on the CSPAN schedule so to be safe we recorded MSNBC.

This was the first time I'd ever seen a speech with one of those "audience-o-meter" things. You know, where they have people turning a dial to reflect how they feel in real time. I tried not to watch it at first but it was impossible to ignore. What I learned from the audience-o-meter:

• We hate terrorists! woo!
• We love our troops! woo!
• If kids aren't learning it's their parents' fault! woo!
• It's time for America to lead again! woo!
• We hate bankers! woo!

The first candidate to campaign against terrorist bankers who don't read to their kids is a surefire winner. You heard it here first. Also:

• Democrats and Republicans both like Obama about the same: a whole lot. Both lines on the audience-o-meter were the same almost the whole speech. For the top three applause lines above (we hate terrorists, we love the troops, we blame parents for their kids dropping out of school) both lines were literally off the scale. Whew, so glad we're past all that nasty partisanship!