More sadsack Saddleback

When I finished scanning the Sunday newspapers online, I checked a few political blogs to see how reactions to the faith-based forum last night were shaping up. First, I learned tickets to the event were sold for up to a thousand bucks each, indicating the audience was not just run-of-the-mill Orange County conservative evangelunicals, but RICH conservative evangelunicals. Taking inherent hostility factors into consideration, Obama showed a little courage agreeing to participate and got a slightly warmer reception than anyone had a right to expect.

I missed the first fifteen minutes of Obama's hour with Warren, and didn't see firsthand some of the Q and A being dissected at the blogs. As I wrote last night, I thought Barry made a sincere effort to give thoughtful, articulate answers to Warren's questions, most of which were obviously going to conflict with the predispositions of that audience. As a result, some answers were complicated replies about complex issues, and went on longer than one sentence. A disadvantage in modern America; doesn't bother me, but apparently a lot of my fellow Americans don't have the patience to deal with it.

The conservative blogs are humming with positive vibes about Speedo's performance. Unlike Obama, Ace rarely appeared to be giving the questions a moment's thought; he was obviously relying on canned material he'd memorized long ago. My guess is that during the 20 minutes I watched, Ace reeled off a half dozen answers that were verbatim repeats of stuff he was using in the 2000 primaries. Eight years ago that shit was fresh and interesting; now it's just tiresome. I guess some people haven't heard his act thirty times before like I have.

Bottom line: Everything was stacked in Speedo's favor, including host, venue, and audience. The crowd was ready to cheer his lame-assed jokes, personal anecdotes, and stump-speech punchlines, and his eagerness to pander to them just made the enthusiasm more predictable. Obama calculated there were political advantages to appearing at this dog-and-pony show, and maybe there were. We'll see. Personally, I'm not looking forward to four years of Speedo's "My friends..." horseshit.