![]() ![]() The support on both sides of the aisle you might have for a given option doesn’t predicate the option being inherently good. Politics makes the strangest bedfellows of all – where else might you find the president of the AFL-CIO (Hall) and Dan Sullivan’s 2020 campaign manager (Shuckerow) at the same table? Hall and Shuckerow repeatedly made references to the bipartisan nature of both their team and their backers, a strategy I’ve often lambasted to friends because bipartisan doesn’t at all mean a policy is good, or even workable. On the anti-convention (con) team, Matt Shuckerow and Joelle Hall are scheming. #Rage comics troll science pro#During the debate, he repeatedly said, “Well, I’ll take a stab at answering this,” in sort of an aw-shucks attempt at mediating whatever image Bird might have given the pro team. It’s a unique pairing: Bird’s made headlines and raised many an eyebrow on the left for his controversial opinions regarding abortion, nullification, and the interpretation of the constitution, while Leman seems to have been brought on board to act as the comparatively level-headed member of the team. The debaters are introduced: on the pro-convention (pro) side, we have former Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman and Bob Bird, two of the Alaskan right’s Old Guard, as it were. “We acknowledge that we are on Dena’ina land,” and on and on it goes, twisting and turning through history’s dim annals, at times resembling “Run To The Hills,” the Iron Maiden classic. I’m scribbling in my Moleskine notebook abstract doodles, complaints, quotes from Borat, when a UAA faculty member appears on stage and performs the longest land acknowledgement I think I’ve ever heard – and I went to school in Washington, where the self-flagellation has reached levels hitherto unimagined by modern science. Sarah Palin is here, sitting quietly towards the back, and so is Vic Fischer, who later gets a standing ovation towards the end, that I initially thought meant the debate was over. “When the constitutional convention doesn’t happen…” (EW pulls up a picture of the troll-face on his phone, and cackles uproariously.) I think he’s irony-poisoned, then realize that I’m one to talk. He keeps trying to show me 2008-era rage comics in sort of a post-ironic fugue state, claiming they describe the debate we’re about to watch. ![]() They can’t fire me – I’m freelance!Įvan Wright and I are seated in the back half of the auditorium, looking down on the stage like God. Direct your complaints to the Landmine editorial staff. He’ll be referred to in this column only as Evan Wright, after David Foster Wallace’s journalist friend that attended the 1998 AVN Awards with him (an event immortalized in Wallace’s essay “Big Red Son.”) Author’s Note: I’m David Foster Wallace in this analogy. #Rage comics troll science professional#I shan’t mention him by name here, because to do so would probably jeopardize his professional career, but he was one of the few that made it out of the debating sphere relatively unscathed, and with an intact sense of humor. He had the same vaguely annoying, Sam-Hyde-influenced style of joke-writing as I did, and we both passed the time in between debate rounds trash-talking the same effete Lincoln-Douglas and Policy debaters. I convinced a good friend to come along with me – a guy who, ironically enough, I met through high school debate. ![]()
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