"Two Candidate Walk into a Bar..."

By Steven Weber.

My favorite kind of insult is a backhanded compliment. And Steven Weber's post is just one big backhanded compliment to John McCain. On a left-wing blog, you wouldn't normally expect to find a blog entry about how very well McCain did at the Al Smith dinner compared to Obama, who did "just okay." Except that the unwritten sentence after every compliment is, "Too bad the Good came too late for McCain and the rest of his campaign is shit."

Obviously, posting to The Huffington Post, Weber's targeted audience is fellow liberals. As far as I know, apart from starring in truly epic movies (Reefer Madness? Brilliance.) and graduating from SUNY Purchase, he's not some other kind of authority on politics, but neither am I, and I want people to agree with me, so I guess I can't really judge him to harshly there.

But I do like his style. Well, let me rephrase: I like his idea. I have some beefs with his final draft, but that's because it was beaten into my head at a young age that run on sentences are in fact made of hate and pain. And Weber is somewhat... verbose. Verbose to the point of annoying. So, yes, I definitely like the idea of insulting McCain with compliments, I just wish he'd had an editor. Or a pickier editor. Like me!

Again, since I didn't actually watch the Al Smith dinner, what with the lack of cable and all, I can't agree or disagree with Weber. But, apart from some grammatical faux pas, I think he presented his opinion in a delightfully snarky way. He managed to insult and compliment both candidates without stooping to low brow humor or below-the-belt jibes (which would have been unsurprising coming from a comedian).

All in all, it gets a thumbs up from me. (I'm still kind of annoyed with all the run ons, though...)