Parsing words

During that Saddleback Church interview (whenever I hear that I can't help but think Brokeback for some reason), McCain and Obama both pandered to a bunch of religious nutcases, so in my book they both lost the "debate".

But there's been some discussion about Obama's comment's about Clarence Thomas.

Some critical of his comments say that he was hypercritical in that Thomas was better experienced for the SC job than Obama is for the presidency.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars disputes that Obama said that by quoting from a written transcript.

I WOULD NOT HAVE NOMINATED CLARENCE THOMAS. I DON'T THINK THAT HE. I DON'T THINK THAT HE WAS A STRONG ENOUGH JURIST OR LEGAL THINKER AT THE TIME FOR THAT ELEVATION. SETTING ASIDE THE FACT THAT I PROFOUNDLY DISAGREE WITH HIS INTERPRETATION OF A LOT OF THE CONSTITUTION.

I'm pretty sure that Obama didn't actually yell. I'm not sure why Ed thought he needed to yell.

But if you listen to an actual recording of what Obama said (and I don't have a link to one) it's very clear that he started to say that Thomas didn't have the experience for the job. But he caught himself after getting out just the first syllable of the word experience.

It's an empty debate and both sides of it are full of it.