Tactical Analysis: Sarah Palin — Trying To Make Sense Of it All

Analysis: Sarah Palin is a force, from whichever prospective you may enter from. But the underlying question is how she has become one in the form of something completely different than what the political world has ever seen. 

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 Shortly after her “homecoming” speech in Fairbanks, Alaska, Sarah Palin opened up, making her first fresh address since her repetitive “stump” speeches after her GOP acceptance, provoking the first thought from me that explains her marvel. How has Sarah Palin accumulated this much press in such a short amount of time?

What me must first understand is the fact that this has been done before, by the person who has been hit most by Palin — Barack Obama. Long ago in political time, Hillary Clinton was once the king of the hill, and a sure-shot to at least make to the general election. And then Obama came, literately out of thin air, and getting more press and hype than Clinton has ever had — eventually overtaking her. 

And although on a bigger stage, this process has essentially repeated itself with Sarah Palin. And because of this, the Obama camp must understand how they took down Clinton could end up being the end of them — defensive rage. Clinton, down in the polls, switched from talking about her policies to using brute force, taking swipes at Obama from a defensive standpoint, something the public recognized as weak.

So what Obama must do is exploit Palin’s weaknesses without letting go of his strengths — discussing himself and what his plans are if elected. 

As I have explained in a different post, Sarah Palin has two big weaknesses — the press, and hand to hand combat. 

The first weakness is due to Palin instant celebrity status. She has fallen victim to what many politicians have feared — a press craze. One of the prices Palin has paid since entering the political stage out of nowhere is that every political or celebrity magazine must have her on the front cover. And because of this, most magazines or press outlets has attempted to discover dirt, hidden, or unexploited information about Palin so their article could be different. And this is what really brought out Palin’s family, greatly including her now infamous daughters, one with down syndrome and the other 17 and pregnant. This has exploded, and later sparking so-called attacks from the opposing party.

The first weakness is due to Palin instant celebrity status. She has fallen victim to what many politicians have feared — a press craze. One of the prices Palin has paid since entering the political stage out of nowhere is that every political or celebrity magazine must have her on the front cover. And because of this, most magazines or press outlets has attempted to discover dirt, hidden, or unexploited information about Palin so their article could be different. And this is what really brought out Palin’s family, greatly including her now infamous daughters, one with down syndrome and the other 17 and pregnant. This has exploded, and later sparking so-called attacks from the opposing party.

The second weakness of Sarah Palin, which could potentially make or break her, is hand to hand political combat. Palin has (and will have) success in what I would call mortar fire, attacking the opposition by way of press statements and campaign ads, which continue to play huge roles in the public, each one accumulating tons of traffic on the viral web and ending up as stories on news outlets such as CNN. 

But If you ask any political commentator of any party the main reason why Sarah Palin has become such a dartboard, they would say her politics. And this is mostly true — Palin is short on the offensive-defensive game of a sit down debate, and because of this, she will most likely not fare well in any sort of think-on-your-toes situation, which has resulted in this very visible tactic: stay away from any interviews or debates unless they are mandatory. 

This tactic, recognized by the McCain camp, has let Palin literately control American press in her direction without making it. More simply put, because she has already created an amazing amount of press and PR from bursting on the political scene and accepting her nomination, Palin doesn’t need to create any press in the form of an un-necessary interview or debate. And instead, she has created the occasional new story far back in her campaign headquarters with statements and ads reacting or criticizing to Obama and Biden. But this stay-back-and-shoot strategy hasn’t been publicly reported or written on, however, mostly due to the overwhelming news on her family, which has now been proved to act as a media shield.  

If Obama plans to take a vital advantage in the media, he must not only focus on his strengths, but exploit Palin’s tactical  weaknesses, which provides a gaping hole in her public image.

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Gaming and its Roots: Was It Better Then?

Some of you may remember one of my first posts: Why The 64 Is the Best Ever, detailing how gaming was back in the good old days of horrible graphics, fidgety joysticks, and great, long hours of playing games with good plots. This post sparked me two write two more in the future, the first highlighting on the decline of gaming all together, and the second on why movies based on games have turned out well. 

But although I feel that gaming back in the old days was better and more memorable, as a thirteen year old kid immersed in pop culture and its gaming, my mind has swayed back and forth whether new school games — even though they significantly lack plot — were more fun.

Then I ran into David Wornica, a blogger who tributes gaming to the 1980’s. His blog: Eight Bit Memoirs, was more of a punch to my face in the form of “why would you ever think that today’s gaming would be better?” 

It also brought out those great moments of playing 8-bit, 1D Zelda and NFL games, and although not playing them with 1080p full-def (in fact those screens were the size of my palm), they were the most fun I have ever had with electronics. So thanks, David, for reminding me, and frankly all of us that gaming will always stay in the 80’s.

Movies and Video Games — Why They Don’t Mix

Recently the difference between the silver screen and the numerous thirty-inchers hooked up to gaming platforms, dotting bedroom’s across the globe has been merged. But has it been abused?

Adam Elkus wrote a piece that I recently discovered, titled Game Over, Curtains Close, which gives an interesting analysis toward why video-game adapted movies have always been worse than their predecessor. He lets in the common argument from disappointed gaming fans: that the cast of the movie, its director, and its plot pails to compare to the superiority of the original game.

But this is contradicted entirely with the case of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which was written, directed, produced, and scored by the exact same people who made the original game. Consequently, the movie was a complete flop — going straight to DVD. 

So what really is the difference between video games and movies that is so large, yet undiscoverable? Elkus argues that because video games are active and movies are not, watching a video-game based movie would ultimately be a direct contrast to watching your friend play video games over his back for two hours. 

Although I do believe this is true, I think there’s more to the argument than that. In truth, a movie may be different morally than a video game, the audience is a big factor. Movie-goers are simply different people with different tastes than gamers, and that carries out to the theaters. And no matter how original the remake may be, it simply will fail because no one watching it will enjoy. 

And because a movie is the opposite of a game, a gaming movie will never succeed in the box office. Simple as that.

The Decline of Gaming

It has occurred to be that gaming has been on more of a decline than ever. Growing up with a Playstation and a Playstation 2, I was in love with adventure games equipped with good storylines. I always thought that good video-games should be movies that you can control, where there is an 60 to 40 percentage of gameplay to in- game movie transitions between levels. I remembered buying games for my Playstation — I was like a kid in heaven. Surrounded by great titles that I knew would occupy and entertain me for years, I knew there we no bad choices for my platform. And with a master video gamer as a big brother, I got some fun gameplay in and great insight from him.

But soon after the Playstation 2 came out, gaming got bigger and more important in pop culture and because of that, more time and money was put into it. This generated better graphics, but not much else. More and more games are now based off of bad Disney movies and younger celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Lizzie McGuire which sell but aren’t nearly of any quality. And because of this, more and more games with plots and original gameplay have vanished from the shelves, leaving true gaming purists saddened. But this is like losing a vote and gaining one hundred for a presidential candidate, he/she wouldn’t care. And they haven’t. So with the future not looking grim and the with the video game shelves flooding with worse and worse games, this is not a good sign. Of course there are a few games still around from this dying Breed, but the best games still remain in past platforms. And sadly, things will remain this way until changes are made.

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