Post-Modern Debate: The VP Clash in Poetic Form

[Editor's Note: Psyched about about Mittens and Barry this evening? As an homage to American political culture, Pavement, and poet John Ashbery, ToM's Clement Lime offers up his poetic take on the Biden-Ryan fracas.  Constructed from gchat conversations about the VP debate and in the style of Ashbery's legendary work The Tennis Court Oath, the poem will hopefully spark the inner politico in all of us.] What channel are you watching the debate on? CNN PBS CSPAN bitches, Biden leads with the grin! White, long haired, erotic. I speak for myselves, post-sober, or mice elves. I'm drunk on Paul Ryan workout photos! You all mind if I just listen to DJ Screw records all night …

A Fool Such as Biden: Point Break, Wayward Teeth, and Man Love in the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate

“This is a bunch of stuff!”  I couldn’t have said it better myself…. Wait, of course I could have. So the good people at ToM (I use both terms loosely) asked me what I thought of last night’s hellacious, knockdown, by-the-book, paint-by-the-numbers, firecracker-of-a-parent-teacher-conference. Let me tell you, this couple has fire! The way the one pretended to dismiss his younger (and better looking, mind you) partner with that scenery eating grin and broad armed expressions of dismay, while the fit one blinked those pale blue-green eyes like the emo-loving student-government-vice-president he always strived to be.  The passion between these two feels like Point Break-era Patrick …

Video, Terror, and the Politics of Reality TV

This is the true story... of one terrorist mastermind and his wives and couriers... picked to live in a house...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real... Remember when US soldiers found Saddam Hussein in a “hidey hole” in Iraq? He was dirty, bearded, and disheveled after eight months of evading capture by coalition forces, yet US authorities saw fit to release footage of the deposed tyrant being examined by American doctors upon his arrest. The effect and the intent of the videos were impossible to miss. The all-powerful dictator was being handled like a heifer at the state fair, his hair picked …