It falls to Fox News to try and clean up the repeated messes made by the Mitt Romney campaign. The Daily Show had an excellent three-part series on the extreme effort required by them to mitigate the damage done by the recent release of the video.
I wonder what it must be like to work in that way. Actors have no trouble saying lines that are not true or they don’t believe because that is expected of their job. But when you are not a professional actor, how do you cope with the cognitive dissonance of repeatedly having to not only say things that you know are not true, but are so obviously untrue that you must know that some of your listeners know it? It cannot be easy, however much you do it. Is this why presidential press secretaries tend to not last too long in their jobs?
Part 1:
Part 2
Part 3
(These clips appeared on September 19, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Who says they’re not professional actors?
In a sense, yes, certainly politicians are professional actors. But here’s the catch. Actors are paid to perform in a setting where the cultural contract is “willing suspension of disbelief.”
The audience and the actors make an unspoken contract that the audience will go along with the performance until the performance is over. Politicians, on the other hand? They can’t seem to remember that not only is there no such contract with the electorate, but NOTHING they say publically, or even semi-publically, is ever deniable any more. It’s OUT THERE.
Stuart Varney should change his name to Blarney. It would suit him better.
I agree with Jon: Craig Nelson will be my go-to soundbite for anyone that doesn’t believe Republicans are selfish, greedy assholes.