#veep debate

[alastorssimpforever]

Watching the Veep debate is so fascinating. They both seem to be debating the actual opposing president not each other. And they seem more civil than the president debate.

I do love Kamala Harris but wtf was that bullshit answer from Waltz about being at Tiananmen Square Massacre. I can't with them beating around the bush when they're given a straight question. You weren't at the Massacre, admit it.

And for Vance, the fuck does "earning back the trust of the American people" mean???

They do seem to be more agreeable than their president counterparts. But they do just love to beat around the bush, don't they? Politicians...ugh.

I kind of like hearing about something that isn't just a bloodbath where I'm shaking my head and screaming at the screen when Trump is talking. Yes, is Vance still radical. Yes, he doesn't seem to be as terrible as Trump.

[fearcutsdeeper]

Watching this debate is weird because Vance's entire strategy seems to be to pretend Harris is already president. "Why hasn't she implemented these plans" well you see, the veep is not empowered to do that,

[objection-dot-lol]

Sometimes friendship is eating ice cream and watching the veep debate and yelling at the tv

[mariacallous]

I love how the only two things people are focusing on from this veep debate are JD Vance whining about getting fact-checked once and also his makeup game

https://x.com/CIAspygirl/status/1841294938530889857

That's a win for Harris/Walz

[progressivepower]

CBS News Says It Will Be Up To Vance And Walz To Fact-Check Each Other In Veep Debate https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-elections-2024-debate-cbs-fact-check_n_66f7507fe4b0632d68f6e8a4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[iamnmbr3]

Watching JD Vance trying to cover for Trump in the post-debate CNN interview is painful, he knows how to keep a straight face but sucks at lying and convincing people. It reminds me of what Amy from Veep once said: “don’t even bullshit! Bullshitting takes talent, you have none! You’re just a blah blah blah bitch!”. I’m against Trump so I think that’s great, but as someone that’s into debating tactics and strategy it’s painful to watch this guy trying to be convincing… almost no skill, zero talent and zero charisma. Holy shit he sucks lmao!

JD Vance is what negative charisma looks like. His rancid creepy bigoted vibes cling to him like slime.

[thehumanwiki]

*watching the veep debate*

couchfucker do you have to answer every question with “but first here’s sometjing completely different”

[zalrb]

Which characters do you think are enneagram 3 personality types?

Polished and sophisticated, Achievers have a particular taste for the nice things in life. They have the capacity for huge chunks of productivity to reach their goals and high standards. Their goal is to be remembered and appreciated for their discoveries and creations — to be the best.

Smart, ambitious and typically well-dressed, Achievers hit and exceed targets left and right. Their performance and dedication is admired by others and may even inspire them to take action.

Achievers typically have schedules chock-full of events and professional meetings to keep themselves busy and on the go.

An unhealthy Three may appear obsessive, self-aggrandizing, and malicious. They may throw other people under the bus for their own advantage and appear untrustworthy.

Enneagram Threes are part of the “heart-based” triad of the Enneagram, along with Type Twos and Type Fours. This triad focuses on the emotion of grief and struggles with not feeling loveable as they are.

Threes seek to project a specific image of themselves and repress their internal feelings. This type may struggle to understand their own emotions as they focus instead on what they want to do and achieve.

Michaela Pratt

Harper Stern

Olivia Pope

As children, this type most likely learned from an early age that achievement resulted in love and praise, so they established their identity on gaining attention in the form of success.

Cristina Yang

Annalise Keating is complex, I think she starts off as the "unhealthy" Type 3 (for various reasons) and we see her develop to the "healthy" Type 3 throughout the show.

Azula

Carmy Berzatto (A man! I was like, do I just think all male characters are deadbeats?)

I think an argument could be made for Syd Adamu

Amy Santiago

Paris Geller

In the context of Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf

Yeah, I can't think of anymore men....

I guess an argument could be made for Tommy Shelby

The three characters I was debating were: Dan Egan and Amy Brookhemier from Veep and Hermione Granger.

[skyler10fic]

The Political/Gov't TV Shows That Are Actually Fanfiction Family Tree

We start with the movie The American President. It is adorable and gets 1990s viewers thinking, What would it be like to examine the White House as a place to be a human person and not just a setting for action movies and fictionalized intellectual debates/morality lessons, nor disappointing reality as the president turns out to be a sleazeball a few years later, boosting the idealism of this VHS/TV replay into the late 1990s.

(fine print: I actually have no idea if this was the first of its time. I was six. This is all based on vibes)

Things really start to take off when we get The West Wing starting in 1999, which turned out to be a VERY interesting time to examine life in the White House as people tuned into politics and government, but they aren't looking for a big Air Force One (1997 movie) action show. They are looking for FANFICTION of what they want the White House to be like. They need reassurance that despite imperfection and scandal and all-out flops, the executive branch is a found family of lovable geeks who care too goddamn much about their jobs and democracy but also have compelling backstories and personal lives. There's love, there's drama, there's witty walk-and-talks, there's Allison Janney dropping dry humor one-liners everywhere. The President is everyone's dorky dad, and the First Lady is our mom who won't take his bullshit but loves him with every cell of her highly accomplished doctor being. This is the trunk of the family tree.

Next, Commander in Chief. 2006, only 17 episodes but really key representation in the genre opening the public imagination. Geena Davis is the classic VP-gets-promoted into being the first female president. Mrs. President here is a mess, frankly, making some very ham-fisted decisions, and also seeing the way they wrote her dealing with the gender politics of it all was huge for me at the time as a teen/young adult. Sadly, the tides of audience ratings were turning, and people were very sick of irl politics (e.g., the real-life "war-on-terror" in Afghanistan and now the addition of Iraq not being the Western-savior heroic victory marches we were promised they would be five years earlier). So seeing political drama subplots about the fictionalized Middle East hit a sore spot, and everything else re: presidential imperfection as a flawed character in a TV show (and not some idealized boring Mary Sue) was too much, especially for a female character, who is already from the start narratively damned if she does damned if she doesn't. Flopped, but our fanfic of what it would be like to have a woman, particularly the gorgeous Geena Davis, for president was an important branch of the family tree since West Wing never got there even as an epilogue possibility for what happened next (no shade to Matt Santos).

The next few years are rough. Sorkin pivots to journalism with The Newsroom (which I loved but many hated). We have Veep on the comedy side and Scandal on the drama, Designated Survivor for three seasons, Billions, and a few others, none of which I have seen.

THEN we finally get the incredible Madam Secretary, which you think is going to be the fanfic of The West Wing if it had a spin-off about the State Department and you're not totally wrong there, but it's ALSO a crossover post-canon alternate universe fic of what would have happened if a colleague of Alias's Sidney Bristow had had an actually pretty good boss at the CIA who went on to become president and then hired her to run State but she (and her canonically Hot Guy husband) are still in secret agent mentality. Every season of this is so full of adventure/romance/humor/heartwrenching drama that it feels very much written for fanfic writers/readers stylistically. Personally, I wrote a lot of Lightning Strikes Twice while watching this.

Okay, follow that line of thought to The Diplomat! I am only 5 or so episodes into this one, but I feel confident recommending it anyway because (at least for these five first episodes) it is very much an AU fanfic of if Madam Secretary had a presidential successor who was a bit of an asshole but assigns Kerri Washington out of "meaningful" foreign service diplomacy in the Middle East to be the US ambassador to the UK (seen as a fluff posting, which it turns out not to be!) when she should actually be a CIA agent, which ends up making the actual CIA agents' lives harder. She's also essentially fanfic of what if the political power couple marriage wasn't actually the dreamy fluff of Madam Secretary but actually lovers-to-frenemies. Instead of everything they do making each other better, what if everything the political/diplomatic power couple does jeopardizes each other's mental stability and professionalism. (I've been promised Allison Janney shows up at some point, but I haven't gotten there in the show yet. haha)

That's as far as I've gotten in the family tree, but I hope you enjoy fanfiction escaping into a different political world that has to abide by Hollywood rules instead of the terrible reality of what we have facing us. Happy coping!

[readysetjo]

Veep was a great preparation for this debate I think I’m hardwired to receive the audacious trump comments as comedy

[betterbesttvshowbracket]

current shows in each bracket so far (no particular order yet):

ask box and submissions open! all categories are up for debate. If you can make the case for moving a sitcom to cult classic or a misc. show to prestige, I'm open to hearing everyone out!

When each category has 32 shows locked in, I will seed them based on an average between viewership and ratings and open up the polls <3

CULT CATEGORY

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

X- Files

Columbo

MASH

Twin Peaks

Supernatural

Riverdale

Pushing Daisies

Firefly

Freaks and Geeks

Doctor Who (both)

Star Trek (original series)

Avatar the Last Airbender

Over the Garden Wall

Futurama

House MD

Sherlock

Dark Shadows

Hannibal

Fringe

Lost

Gilmore Girls

Roswell (og)

Skins UK

Midnight Gospel

Adventure Time

Angel

Eastbound and Down

Merlin

Twilight Zone

Dark

Charmed

Battlestar Galactica

"PRESTIGE" CATEGORY

Dirk Gently's

The Getdown

Succession

The Bear

Breaking Bad

Better Call Saul

Chernobyl

Game of Thrones

Boardwalk Empire

Atlanta

The Wire

Black Mirror

The Great

Big Little Lies

Justified

Mad Men

Yellowjackets

Interview with the Vampire

Black Sails

Fleabag

Yellowstone

Westworld

The Handmaid's Tale

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Foundation

The Borgias

West Wing

True Detective

Deadwood

Mr. Robot

Band of Brothers

Fargo

Sopranos

Bojack

Boondocks

Downtown Abbey

Mind Hunter

I Hate Suzie

The Last of Us

Barry

White Lotus

Watchmen

Orange is the New Black

The Crown

Ozark

Narcos

Maniac

Undone

The Missing

Leverage

Six Feet Under

SITCOM CATEGORY

Seinfeld

Girlfriends

Bob's Burgers

Archer

The Good Place

Arrested Development

The Simpsons

The Office

Parks and Rec

30 Rock

Sex in the City

New Girl

Psych

Elementary

Abott Elementary

Community

Letterkenny

Modern Family

Scrubs

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Derry Girls

Blackish

Our Flag Means Death

Miracle Workers

What We Do in the Shadows

King of the Hill

Man Seeking Woman

Full House

Trailer Park Boys

Friends

Ted Lasso

Wilfred

That 70s Show

Girls

Broad City

Veep

Curb your Enthusiasm

Flight of the Concords

IT Crowd

Monk

Shameless

Documentary Now

Better Off Ted

Weeds

OTHER CATEGORY

The Vampire Diaries

Pretty Little Liars

Grey's Anatomy

Stranger Things

Smallville

One Tree Hill

You

Criminal Minds

Gotham

The Flash

Legends of Tomorrow

The Mandalorian

Daredevil

The Umbrella Academy

Legion

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Blacklist

The 100

Midnight Mass

Haunting of Bly Manor

How to Get Away with Murder

Gossip Girl (og)

The OC

Young Pope

Haunting of Hill House

Euphoria

Walking Dead

Peaky Blinders

Vikings

Supergirl

Dawson's Creek

Bunheads

The Society

Prison Break

True Blood

Normal People

American Horror Story

Squid Games

Dexter

The Boys

Queen's Gambit

The OA

ER

Spinning Out

[dearyallfrommatt]

Well. Shit.

I honestly don't have too much to say. There's still some this-and-that to dig through, but it looks like we elected a brand new used car, one we know smells bad and burns through oil. He got even more votes this time. He ran a shit ground game, got stomped during the debates, constantly came off as a gibbering lunatic OR a gormless whiner, had a historically loathed veep candidate, & it looks like he'll not only get a commanding victory, right-wing dingbats across the country are getting seats. Cruz and Scott both got re-elected.

Philip K. Dick called the Nixon Administration - and the aura of fear & loathing that swamped the country - the Black Iron Prison. He thought the resignation of Nixon caused it to fall, but I'm more cynical than that. Ford pardoned Nixon and it just went to shit from there. Trump's a stooge as much as every Republican president since (maybe) H.W. Bush, & the GOP winning the Senate means they're about to go hog wild, son.

As a middle-aged white, cis male who owns land in rural Northeast Mississippi, I'm in basically the same shape today as tomorrow. I don't have kids and still know that's the best decision I ever made. Buckle up, neighbors. It's about to get Meaner and Dumber.

[marta-bee]

So, about last night's VP debate.

J.D. Vance lied over and over again. Where he didn't lie it was a technicality that amounts to much the same thing- ex. the nationwide abortion ban, you could make the argument he wants a state-level approach but where each state still bans it vs. a federal-level action, so perhaps not a lie but in practice not one bit better. The trouble is he lied so smoothly and calmly, he doesn't come across as ripped from the pages of The Handmaid's Tale. Not too surprising when you look at his biography: the man's made a career of packaging and marketing his image.

The lack of truth baked into the format (you know, the whole no factchecking thing) helps with that, too.

Thinking more broadly about this... Look, a lot of people struggle to acknowledge a crisis. It's easier to say Vance isn't so bad and things are exaggerated about him and Project 2025, than to accept the man clamoring for a dictatorship looks like the guy you'd meet at the Elk's Club pancake breakfast. Denial is so much gentler sometimes.

So yes, I do worry the debate may give a lot of people space to think they can vote for him, that he's not so bad and they basically like old-school conservative principles, don't like how the country's going, all that. The good news is there's a month left where Vance will continue being Vance, and more importantly Trump will continue being Trump. Which will hopefully keep that bitter taste in those people's mouths, as it should.

Tim Walz was a little too flustered, not nearly as polished. I think he seemed at least as normal as Vance, with the added benefit of being truthful and decent. I do wish he could have been more forceful in shedding light on Vance's lies, but then he's America's coach not our debate teacher.

Bottom line: not great, and yes it does make me nervous in a way I wasn't before. But also not, like, apocalyptically bad either. Veep debates usually don't shift the needle on opinion too much anyway.

There was one interesting thought on the MSNBC this morning: that Trump psychologically can't stand to let someone else have the last word. Mr. Trump, on the off-chance you're reading this: yes, your running mate did so well last night and you should absolutely agree to debate Harris one more time so you can show you can do it even bigglier. It's your legacy at stake after all.

Or to put it another way:

[is-this-a-sideblog]

[suttttton]

thoughts on the veep debate so far:

1) godddddddd these things are boring when both candidates are politicians

2) did you know jd vance grew up in the middle class??? because my god does jd vance want to make the point that he grew up middle class

3) tim walz has gotta get better at answering stupid questions. he's struggling a bit