What in the House? Speaker What Now?

Keep that gavel warm for her, buddy.

This has been a telling series of recent political choices by the Speaker.

Mandi Mansplains It All

Mansplaining:  The tendency of some men to mistakenly believe that they automatically know more about any given topic than does a woman and who, consequently, proceed to explain to her- correctly or not- things that she already knows.

Woman A: When he started mansplaining to me what it really meant to be a woman in the 21st century, I got up and left.

Woman B: Really, what else could you do?

     

                -Urban Dictionary

Friday Follies: The VP Debate Edition

You knew it was coming....

The word of the night, for sure.

Live-Blog 2.0: This Debate Is Veeptastic!

The last debate was just so awesomely good that we decided to live-blog again.

The one and only VP debate.

Follow us below the fold to the live action, starting in...

Empathy and Politics: See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

I've been thinking a lot about empathy lately.

The subtext of this campaign seems - to me - to be about empathy, in two ways.


1. Empathy and Likability.

Yes, empathy is often considered a girly emotion (in a dismissive way), but I'm going to posit that what pollsters are testing when they talk about "likability" is actually largely a measure of a candidate's actual or perceived ability to empathize with other people.


Take Bubba.

Classic, textbook empath.  He "feels your pain."  He could read a phone book and sound interesting because he would stop and tell you stories about the people and businesses as he read their names and addresses.   

Scandals that would fell other politicians barely leave a dent on Bubba.  People get mad at him for his policies or actions, he says stupid things on occasion, but in the end he pulls out a speech or an interview and most people remember why they like him.  He understands people.  He understands how to explain complex policies to people, he understands what people are thinking.  He's empathic. 

(Grammatical note: I'm using "empathic" differently than "empathetic," because of the extra meaning of empathic to describe a person who "is very in tune with the feelings of others," rather than "of or related to empathy" - for which I'll use "empathetic.")

And that quality leads to large likability numbers, which rebound after an appropriate time whenever he faces criticism.

Friday Follies: Hey Girl, Politics Are Dreamy

Evolution of a political meme:

First, there was Ryan Gosling, Tumblr (profanity in its real title).  Not really political, just funny.

A Protestant, A Mormon and Two Catholics Walk into an Election...

One of the most interesting things about this presidential campaign is how little we've heard - thus far - about the candidates' religion.

7 Fun (And Not-So-Fun) Facts About Paul Ryan

There is a joke in there, somewhere...

So some of you may have heard that Romney picked a running mate this past weekend, Paul Ryan, a Representative from Wisconsin.  And you may have wondered, who is that guy with the creepy eyes that I may, or may not have heard of before?  Well, we have some answers for you, below the fold...