Palin Bingo

I was planning on keeping my blog strictly about climbing. But lets face it, that would be a bit dull, so I’d thought I’d spice it up with some other stuff like politics. Last night was the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. We had listened on the radio to the first debate last week (we don’t have our TV hooked up to an antenna) which was fun, but we figured we needed to watch it on TV to get the full story. So Laura and I hopped on the bus over to the westside to watch it at the bar of our favorite restaurant The Iron Rabbit. They had a big screen TV up for the debate, and lots of drink specials during the debate. The ‘patriot shooters’ (red, white and blue shots) tempted me, but we figured a pitcher was more sensible. When we arrived there was an Obama volunteer who brought Palin Bingo. Palin Bingo is just what it sounds like, for a small donation to the Obama campaign we were given a sheet of paper with a matrix of Palin words or phrases that you cross off when she says them during the debate. Phrases like ‘hockey mom’ ‘pork barrel’ and ‘bridge to nowhere’. We would score off each one she says and try to make a line across the sheet like bingo. There were some giveaways like ‘maverick’ and ‘drill’ that she said straight away. It wasn’t too hard to play the game and listen at the same time, not that there was much that I heard from her that I didn’t expect.

The nice thing about watching the debate rather than just listening to it on the radio, was being able to see their body language and gestures. I felt that often Palin was quite rude when Biden was talking. Things like her reactions and her smirks while Biden was talking. Her eye rolling when she talked about government-run health care, and her winking into the camera felt plain creepy to me. The pressure was definitely on Palin for this debate, it was hers to loose. But I don’t think she lost the debate, but I don’t think she won over any undecided voters either though. Her performance was geared towards pleasing the republican base, which she did well. There were a couple of small slip ups that gave us a laugh in the bar. Like when she had trouble differentiating her stance on rights for same sex couples from Biden, and when she said ‘we need McCain to leave’ and quickly corrected herself, she meant to say ‘lead’. It was obvious that she had a lot preparation going into the debate, her answers to the questions sounded more like a practised speech she had memorized about subjects that were loosely related to the questions. Biden did well, but I think everyone expected him to. I felt he could have grilled Palin more directly, but the constraints of the debate didn’t allow for much rebuttal. I felt he could have been more aggressive when critising Palin’s stance on man-made global warming and other subjects where she is clearly mis-guided. At the end of the debate the buzz at the bar seemed to be frustration in Palins inability to answer the questions directly, I think also part of the frustration was because they were hoping she would mess up more than she did.

After the debate we walked across the street to Vic’s Pizza where we used some of our $40 gift certificate we won at the Scrabble tournament on Saturday (but that’s another story), and we listened to some of the post-debate reaction on our personal radio. At this time of night we normally listen to our favourite radio show TBTL with Luke Burbank on KIRO. Tonight it was bumper show, they still had TBTL but they were doing special debate coverage with Dave Ross, another of our favourite radio hosts. Once we were finished with our pizza and caught the bus back downtown, I was feeling fairly riled up or maybe I was still buzzing from the pitcher at the Iron Rabbit. I decided now was as good a time as ever to call in to KIRO for the first time. Somehow I managed to get through to Luke, I think it was casue I mentioned playing Palin Bingo in a bar. When I got on KIRO Luke kinda called me out on being a bit drunk, but I think it went pretty well. You can listen yourself here, scroll down to TBTL with Luke Burbank and I should feature in the 8-9 hour of the Oct 2nd show. I feel an obligation to go back to the Iron Rabbit to watch the next debate on Tuesday to report back to TBTL, but I think I might go to watch it at the bar at Quality Burrito, they’re serving tall cans of PBR for only $1! We’ll see…

Oh and in case your wondering, Laura won Palin Bingo with a straight of ‘Terrorists’ ‘Hockey Mom’ ‘Alaska’ and ‘Special Needs’.