There was some faith and family forum thing going on yesterday and I watch-listened to it – meaning, i had the stream playing on the computer while I did other things. I was mostly bored with it. One super weird thing was the consistently terrible camera work of the streaming video. The wide shots were okay, but every single closeup of a speaking candidate was way off center. I took a bunch of screenshots to illustrate:
Former Senator Rick Santorum said “Gay marriage is wrong” and went on a soapbox speech I didnt at all care fore and furthered my distaste for his awful campaign. I always honor truth regardless of whether I disagree with a person and Santorum has had a lot of smearing go his way so for awhile, when he was still a senator, I thought he was kindov okay. Since he lost his re-election bid in 2006, he hasn’t done anything I’ve seen for me to give him much respect. His performance in the GOP debates has solidified that and this dinner table discussion-whatever-thing was no diff. There was one moment that started out strong when he was talking about his youngest daughter who, according to my calculations of how gustation timing works, was conceived as pity-sex at the time of his re-election loss. She has something similar, but more life threatening than Downs Syndrome and wasnt expected to live this long. The story started out solid about a families determination to overcome a hardship and – BAM – happy ending, motherfkkers, cuz she’s still alive and bringing joy to the world – but he went on too long and it got kindov rambly towards the part where he was talking about how he lied to his wife (his words) that he was dealing with the medical problems in cold and steadfast manner because he needed to be the rock of the family when in reality he was purposefully treating his daughter less-than-human so when he lost her, he wouldn’t be as emotionally effected. The point wasn’t terrible – he was revealing this because he was saying how he fought against partial-birth-abortion (a practice where a baby is pretty much delivered and then – surprise! – guillotined, French Revolution style) in the senate, yet found himself guilty of the same dehumanizing sin with his own daughter – but it just wasn’t delivered as crisply as it should have.
A successfully touching moment was delivered by Herman Cain when he talked about battling and winning the fight against cancer recalling, fighting back tears in his eyes, how he reassured his wife “I can do this” to which his wife replied “WE…can do this”.
Rick Perry went on a “when I gave my life to Jesus Christ” speech (ug) and Michelle Bachmann did a similar “what Jesus wants from us” blah blah thing that pushed me further away from both of them than I already was. Not that you can’t be totally horny for Jesus or whatever and still be a valid candidate – it’s just the pandering. so icky. I’d be just as uncomfortable if they talked about their love of ice cream or golf or any other, admittedly less, but still important passion in their life. Talk about the economy, dammit. Or if you insist on this family, Jesus, children, love and sparkles stuff – at least make this worth my time and say what you plan to do about it in the job you’re trying for.
The only 2 candidates that perk my personal interest in this primary weren’t present here: The two millionaire Mormons, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney. They made the right choice in skipping this – though I’m told that Huntsman wasn’t even invited. Mitt spent his time doing something that actually mattered instead – doing a Townhall meeting in New Hampshire. Good for him. Answering questions from voters in a key primary state is a thousand times more important than sitting at a table in a church talking about how important God is to you while you run for a secular government job.
Summary: Cain and Gingrich were the stars and would make an awesome, interesting and respectable ticket if this were 1996.
Newts real line of the evening was when he told the Occupy Wallstreeters to get a job right after taking a bath:
