8 Mile...Starring Barack Obama

In a battle of words, it's usually not ideal to argue your point first. That way you get to hear the other person's argument, and you can counter that with your own.

Have y'all seen the movie 8 Mile? I know everyone in Detroit has. Remember that last battle scene, where Eminem - I forget his character's name - had the mic? He got up there and spat his rhymes, then he anticipated his opponent's comeback and tore it to shreds before he laid down the mic. Of course, the other guy now had nothing with which to come back, being that Eminem had already destroyed all his material.

He changed the rules. He threw a sucker punch that prevented the counter punch. He took words that he hadn't even heard yet and picked them apart.

Yep, that's what Barack Obama just did to John McCain. He 8Mile'd him.

If you didn't see Obama's acceptance speech (and I don't blame you if you didn't because I don't usually watch political conventions myself), you missed a brilliant display of gamesmanship. Not only did he make the case for the end of Republican rule by pointing out the obvious blunders of the current administration, but he anticipated every bit of nonsense that the McCain camp and the hit squad at the Republican National Committee might throw at him and made them seem, well, more than a little ridiculous.

For those who haven't seen it, I am not going to try to summarize it here. That would take too long, and I have to get up in the morning. And I can't embed the video because it hasn't shown up on the web just yet, so you'll have to find it for yourself to see what I'm talking about.

Oh, and that shuffling sound you hear is the McCain camp trying to figure out what just happened to all their talking points.

-e