Giving a sh!t

Damn, I’m falling behind. More behind than I would like. A good friend asked me what I thought of Michelle Obama’s speech last night from a rhetorical point of view. Hey what the hell; I did major in Rhetoric, so I felt a tad guilty for not having watched the speech.

I don’t like speeches and not only didn’t I watch it, I wouldn’t have. But since I was asked what I thought, I dutifully watched the stream here.

As I told my friend, it is of course a well-crafted speech, and (rhetorically) a credit to whoever wrote it. I take issue with the way she paints herself and her husband as having worked their way up at the grindstone to achieve the American dream. They were Ivy League educated lawyers on their way up when they met and have worked in government for most their entire lives. The hard knocks speech is a bit maudlin for my taste (spare me the real workers bullshit), but from a purely rhetorical standpoint it was obviously effective in front of her audience. She tried very hard to sound sincere, but the speech convinced me of nothing.

I really should stay more in touch with these things. I just can’t. I largely skipped Romney’s speech too. He has my vote, so why bother? This is an opportunity to slow down creeping galloping socialism; not a speaking contest. I wish I could just vote and get this sickening ordeal over with.

In other sickeningly important news, my reaction to this story was “OH SHIT!”

LEHI, Utah (CBS Las Vegas) — A woman catches a mother potty training her two daughters at the dining table of a Utah restaurant.

Kimberly Decker posted on her blog this week a photo of a toddler sitting on a potty training toilet at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Lehi.

“While we sat down to have lunch, I noticed this young Mother was potty training her two twin daughters at the table. It didn’t quite register at first what was happening, but when I took a second glance I realized this is NOT OK! I decided to snap a picture of the whole incident and then later that afternoon as a ‘joke’ I decided to post it on Facebook. I couldn’t believe the response I got,” she wrote.

A local television station picked up the story, and Decker explained how she initially thought the “seats” the kids were sitting in were booster seats. She was stunned when she realized they were actually toilets.

There’s a blurred picture:

Awwww, how cuuuute!

“Baby’s first shit at restaurant table!”

Actually, the way people are today, it isn’t as funny as I thought it was when I first saw the link. Not so much because a child would take a dump in a restaurant, but because the mom could probably find a whole host of professional parasites who would maintain that there is a “right” for the babies of “working class women” to shit at the table. A right which undoubtedly the big bad Republicans wants to take away as part of their “war against women.”

Sigh.

I’d like to be more of a partisan rah-rah guy, but right now all I can do is count the days.

MORE: Reading this makes me wonder whether the speech may reflect well-founded concerns over white working class voters:

Obama intervened directly to get the language changed both on Jerusalem and to reinstate God in the platform, according to campaign officials who insisted on anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes party negotiations. They said Obama’s reaction to the omission of God from the platform was to wonder why it was removed in the first place.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

GOP officials argued that not taking a position on Jerusalem’s status in the party platform raised questions about Obama’s support for the Mideast ally. Romney said omitting God “suggests a party that is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of the American people.”

The left may hate it, but Obama and the Democrat leaders are obviously playing politics.

To the extent they can, I think the Republicans would be well advised to do the same thing and deny it.