Propeller Week In Review: January 11, 2008 — Jan 11th 2008

By James Marcus

THE COMEBACK TRAIL

Not surprisingly, the New Hampshire primary took center stage this week at Propeller. "Clinton Upsets Obama in NH; McCain Wins," with 165 votes and 469 comments, was securely lodged in our Top Twenty. Needless to say, there was a wide variety of responses to this double upset in the Granite State. ETproductions was happy with the outcome: "Now it's not a cakewalk for anybody. Let the real fight begin." Endoscopy suspected some Clintonian foul play: "Her goons got in and doctored the counts." And AlphaGnosis, not a traditional Hillary fan, had some kind words for the teary candidate: "I think Hillary's emotional moment helped her. It humanized her." Meanwhile, this story about the New Hampshire debates elicited a similar range of reactions--including a lengthy digression about Fox's decision to bar Ron Paul from its own debate. And the Republican victor was turned over the coals in "McCain: Straight Shooter or Bootlicker?", with 119 votes and 207 comments. To Will1313, the senator from Arizona was "a virtual rubber stamp," while getreal1 insisted that McCain was uniquely qualified to battle the terrorists: "If you dropped him off in the Pakistani mountains, he would get the big O." (No, not Oprah.)

BARACK ON THE RACK?

Despite his narrow loss to Clinton in the primary, Barack Obama remains a lightning rod for high-voltage hopes and resentments. Both were present in the comment thread for "Republicans Worried About Obama," with 143 votes and 523 comments. FSU92grad expressed his disbelief that Obama could really be the "squeaky clean, leave-it-to-Beaver candidate" he appears to be. JohnQPublic fired back at what he perceived as a Republican smear machine, which had "already tried the character assassination route with Obama." There was also "Barack Obama's Racist Church," with 123 votes and 392 comments. To tkyrchncs, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright's statement about leading an "unashamedly black" congregation was problematic: "No person should be ashamed of his race, but to identify a Christian congregation as black or white or any other race is about as unChristian as you can get." But smithichie suspected that a double standard was at work, pointing to Rudy Giuliani's cosy relationship with Pat Robertson. "I didn't see Rudy Giuliani turn down his endorsement," he argued, "even though Robertson makes millions from his church and makes yearly predictions rivaling those made in the past by The Weekly World News." On a more positive note, there was "Backers say Obama can regain world's respect for US," with 124 votes and 278 comments. This thread too became a referendum on role of Islam in the candidate's past (and present). But at least one member, doggammit, expected Obama to weather the storm quite nicely: "For several very obvious reasons Mr. Obama is a prickly pear. I very much doubt any mainstream politician will even consider a Swift Boat campaign against this man."

STRAIT TALK

Which story snagged the most comments during the past week? That would be "Iranian boats 'provoke' U.S. Navy ships in Hormuz," which rang up 156 votes and 745 comments. Much of the thread devolved into a pitched battle over who destroyed the Twin Towers--Al Qaeda, George W. Bush, and the Mossad being popular candidates--but after about 200 comments the conversation drifted back to the Strait of Hormuz. One member, john-galt, dismissed comparisons to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964. Iran, he asserted, "is a very real threat to us, because they are getting closer all the time to a weapon the [North Vietnamese] could only have dreamed about." But fourthfunz had little patience for this argument: "Your left vs right gibberish was invented to keep the populace from getting together." Said catstevens: "Playing around with a US Navy Ship is not a good idea." Countered pcknowledge: "A US Navy ship hanging around the Middle East oil shipping routes is not a good idea, at this point or ever." Still confused? Take a look at this related story, with 120 votes and 300 comments and a dead link, alas, to the Navy video of the incident. (You can see at least snatches of the video in this story at LiveLeak.)

AND DON'T OVERLOOK....

Several stories about Christian Fundamentalism made our Top Twenty. "The Christian Fundamentalists Who Support Huckabee," for example, racked up 130 votes and 517 comments. MonkeyBiz quickly labeled Huckabee's ultra-conservative base as "the American Taliban." Not so fast, responded secondchance: "I find it to be very strange that the left/liberals are on a mission to trash Christianity till hell freezes over, but this same group will never say anything bad about Islam." A related post, "Christian Dominionists Attack Public Ed," earned 110 votes and 363 comments. There were popular stories about North Korea, loofah-loving pundit Bill O'Reilly, and abdominal massage. A post about the death of Sir Edmund Hillary elicited this valdecitory comment from Teech: "If, indeed, there is a Heaven, Sir Ed will climb, and ascend to it." And finally, Propeller members asserted their inalienable right to silliness by voting up "Earth-Like Planet Discovered Around Moon." Leave it to ind06 to up ante: "Just this morning the exciting news came of the discovery of a Sun-like star less than a light year away!" But it was Rinty who registered the most hopeful response: "I wunder if thers any intelajunt life forms there." Well, they've got to be somewhere.

Tags: week in review, wir

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