We watched Darth Cheney's '04 RNC speech in Advocacy and Debate today

[LeftyMom]

We're watching An Inconvenient Truth next week, so our instructor wanted to look at political speech from both parties to be fair.

Ever watch MST3K?

Picture something like that but with 30 college kids instead of wiseassed robots. :rofl: (BTW, if anybody at one of the Networks is reading this, I would dearly love to see Cheney's next appearance introduced with Torgol's theme from Manos: Hands of Fate. It can be our little in joke, okay?)

Then she shut it off and we talked about how Shrubco couldn't run on their war and terra record now, but at the time it was an effective strategy. We also talked about the swiftboating of Kerry. Turns out my instructor runs a class on presidential speeches during campaign years. If I'm still at this school next year- and I don't see why I won't be- I'll definitely take that one.

I worried a bit about the fairness of presenting a crazy and unlikable Repub like Cheney and then Gore at his most likable and polished. But the more I thought about it, the last really good, honest, fair presentation by a Republican on the national scene- the last one that isn't worthy of shit talking and bad jokes- was probably Eisenhower's farewell address (the "Military Industrial Complex" speech) and most students will see at least part of that in PoliSci, where it's presented really favorably, usually as part of a discussion of Power Elite Theory.