Talking Back to the Media: Um, What?

A few random observations...

I just heard Margaret Brennan of CNBC talking about how retail numbers are down. "People are scared!" she shrilled into the camera by way of explaining yet another downturn. "They're hanging on to their money, not spending, what will happen to Christmas? Is this the beginning of this year's War on Christmas????"

Okay, I made up that last bit about the War on Christmas.

Brennen went on to talk briefly about how people are putting more money toward their credit card bills to pay down their debt because they are afraid.

Okay - can we please use a little common sense? First, people aren't out buying stuff because they have less disposable income and stuff costs more. For quite a while, many people were using credit cards to buy stuff. After a while, those plastic users (myself included) ended up maxing out those cards as they switched to having to use those credit cards for necessities like groceries, gas, clothing. Income stagnated, debt grew and then started to get squeezed. Card credit limits were lowered, payment cycles shrank, interest rates climbed. More and more people are finding it difficult to cover the end of the month.

People haven't stopped shopping because they are afraid. People aren't buying stuff because they are broke. It takes everything they've got to cover the bills, and, hopefully, save some money.

Sheesh. I'm getting a bit tired of this mantra "people are afraid."



I listened to the McCain/Palin rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Ho-lee-shit. Okay, I take it back. Americans should be afraid. Of other Americans. I could not believe the rhetoric and nonsense and ugliness of McCain, Palin and their supporters.

Palin can't speak for shit. Her speech was disjointed and simple-minded. Also is her favorite word. I couldn't keep a count because I was driving, but her enormous overuse of the word (think McCain's overuse of the phrase my friends) makes her sound repetitive and ridiculous. Her speaking style can best be described as rambling. During the open mike session, a supporter asked McCain about hate crime legislation. After McCain made it clear that he doesn't support hate crime legislation, Palin took over and segued into "freedoms and also those freedoms that John McCain fought for also...." and ended up making the slam against Senator Obama for not voting to support the troops. Only slightly reaching......

McCain sounded shaky. His speech was a mess. I think a McCain speech writer had his or her child write the pitiful thing. Neither he nor Palin offered one detail or specific word about how they plan to "help Americans" with all kinds of needs, cut taxes, shrink government or control spending.

The people in the crowd sounded like the other recent crowds at McCain/Palin events. Angry, hateful, shouting ACORN, telling McCain to "take it" to Obama at the next debate (that came from a young African American man, apparently), another prefaced his statement with "I am angry that the Socialists are taking over America." Someone needs to point out that George Bush, a Republican, just signed a bill to socialize banks.

With this kind of escalation of vitriol and anger, I think McCain/Palin need to consider that they are creating an atmosphere where anger could easily spill over into violence. I think they should be very careful about pursuing this kind of campaigning.


I just listened to Rep. Heather Wilson describe McCain's newest plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The way she framed it, McCain wants to help people who had regular mortgages (used a downpayment, had good credit, etc.) and who are now upside down in their mortgages. That's interesting. Honestly, I don't really see any help coming to homeowners, but I'm just cynical because of our experience with Citimortgage. But if Wilson is correctly framing McCain's plan, I can assure you that's not going to help many people. The homeowners who are in trouble were preyed on by predatory lenders and many of them had shaky credit and hardly any downpayment. If Wilson is correct, those people won't be helped.


And finally, could we see a resurgence of the word affect? Please. I'm so sick of the word impact as a verb.

Observations over.