Finally got around to reading the Newsweek special election issue.

Yesterday I finally got around to reading the Newsweek special election issue. I found these to be the highlights (paraphrasing since I'm not going to go back and hunt down every single quote, though I did find the last one so you get the full story):

1) When asked by a friend if she would stab Karl Rove in the back if she passed him in a crowd -- since, after all, he seems to be the guy who spread the news in the South Caroline primary eight years ago that their Bangledeshi adopted child was from John McCain and a black prostitute --Cindy McCain was like, "No, the front".

2) In order to avoid the 5-20 lbs. that candidates put on by eating everywhere they go, Obama would always get takeout from all the small restaurants he stopped at, and no one ever saw him eating. Friends, though, said that Michelle would "wolf down a cheeseburger as soon as she'd look at it."

3) Once early in the campaign when a South Side Chicago crowd was grumbling about Obama not being black enough, Michelle just looked at them and was like, "Stop that nonsense."

4) At a campaign stop in the south somewhere McCain called out from behind some photographers this fat older woman in a black t-shirt with the outline of two martini glasses embroidered on it in silver sequins, and when she got stagefright in front of all the cameras, McCain pretended to be in love with her and was like, "What, you're leaving me so soon?"

5) There's this report of top McCain aides doing karoake:

After the town-hall debate, Salter and Schmidt reunited with a dozen or so members of the traveling press corps at a karaoke bar in Nashville. It had been months since the duo had had a night out with reporters. Salter, who had sung in a band in college, was cajoled into singing a few tunes. Before long, and after a drink or two, he was into it. Under pressure from the reporters, Schmidt joined him for a chorus of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." Schmidt even sang "Rocky Mountain High," to squeals from the increasingly inebriated reporters. But then he went off and sat quietly. Schmidt looked worn out, his burly body weighed by stress and the woes of the campaign, his relentless stare dimmed by exhaustion. He ignored political questions and talked quietly about his family. Salter, on the other hand, had found his groove. Standing in the middle of the bar, dressed in his ubiquitous corduroy jacket, he bellowed "More Dylan!" until he had belted out every Bob Dylan song the bar had. Reporters sang loud, drunken backup and tried to get Salter to join them in boy-band dance moves. It was the first time anyone had seen Salter look as if he was having fun in a long time.

That sounds like truly awful karaoke. The one guy sounds like a jackass for commandeering the songbook, and then the whole backup/dance moves thing is typical of every drunken, self-absorbed group that ever comes in to a karaoke bar and behaves selfishlessly. This is the most damning thing in the piece, and I wonder that reporters involved didn't kill this piece, since the aides obviously couldn't. They all sound like a bunch of karaoke retards.