Today, it’s the water
The buzz today is all about Marco Rubio’s water bottle.
Well, in a way, why not? There’s nothing new to say about Obama except that of course, as could have been predicted and as was predicted, he was more leftist, more aggressive, and simultaneously more ominous and more boring (which should be an oxymoron but is decidedly not). People are hungry (you might say: thirsty) for something real, human, and simple to sink their teeth into, and Rubio’s gesture grabbed them.
Gestures have a tendency to do that, and they can even be revealing—sometimes more revealing than the scripted words. Remember Bush 1’s watch and Al Gore’s sighs? Rubio’s water seems somehow more innocuous—at least as best I can tell from the sample of jokes I see around the web). And it certainly is a change from Romney’s bland smoothness.
Are gesture’s trivial compared to speeches? I contend that speeches have become trivial. Even though I don’t prefer to process information through the auditory route and don’t like speeches in general (and I’m equal-opportunity on that score: I didn’t listen to Obama or Rubio or Paul), I can recognize the fall-off in the quality of speeches between the era from Kennedy to Reagan and recent years, not to mention fall-off from the early days of the republic.
Also in no surprise whatsoever, a CNN poll found that 53% of watchers very much liked Obama’s speech and 24% somewhat liked it, and that those who viewed it were much more likely to be Democrats than the population as a whole. The rest, no doubt, are having difficulty stomaching both Obama and his speeches, and chose to spare themselves.
If you’re interested in content, here’s a piece by Ed Morrissey that goes into what Rubio actually said. But if you’re interested in the water (and who isn’t at least a little teeny bit interested in the water?), a picture is worth 344 words (the grand total in this post, at least according to my word count program):
[NOTE: The title of this post comes from this ad campaign.]
I assumed he was still washing the vomit out of his mouth after listening to the supreme ruler for an hour. They’d would have had to put me in a straight jacket if I had to sit through it.
Hmm…water. Water imbibed by a Cuban-American. Water is wet. Parents were immigrants. Wetbacks. Racism!
“Ann Althouse”: a commenter on the real Althouse’s blog named “Baron Zemo” had this to say:
I have wise commenters!
When giving a real speech to a real audience, speakers can take a quick sip when the audience applauds, laughs or asks questions. Rubio did not have this luxury.
When giving presentations for work, I take a quick drink while someone in the crowd is asking me a question. The focus is on the person asking the question and I am not expected to say anything while the question is being asked. Perfect time to get a drink of water! This is not possible when you are the only person in the room.
There would have been no graceful way for Rubio to pause and take a drink. But I submit that a keeping small glass of water on a small table just under camera view would have been better than keeping a bottle off-camera. When he moved way left, bent low and basically disappeared off camera to grab the bottle, and then disappeared a second time to put it back, it was more ackward than the actual act of drinking.
Hey! It’s The Real “Pause that Refreshes”…
As the folks at Rainier Beer say, “It’s the water, and a lot more.”
Sam L.: if you follow my link at the “NOTE” at the end of the post, it was to a YouTube video of an ad with that slogan—but it was for Olympia beer, not Rainier.
OT, big time.
“I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”, Part 726,453: Jackson [Michigan]-area woman gives birth to 10-pound baby same day she learns she is pregnant.
The meat of the story: she was a survivor of a flesh-eating bacteria infection which took over her abdominal muscles (which were removed surgically) and a major diabetes downer, and then just last Friday walked into a clinic thinking she had an hernia. A CT scan revealed the baby, and an ultrasound revealed she was very due. Never conceived before, and was told she never would. From the pictures, I could see Mama and Daddy were still quite shocked – but very happy to have their baby girl.