Overexposed

I listened to the NARN, Final Word on Saturday. They had Eric Black, former Strib columnist, as a guest to discuss his post in response to Michael Brodkorb's video highlighting mistakes made during Terri Bonoff's announcement to be the Democrat candidate for the MN 3rd district Congressional seat in 2008.

Michael poses his video as a "gaffeathon" (It contains four clips totalling 34 seconds.). Eric responds in his post that Michael has cherry picked four very minor errors from a speech exceeding twenty minutes, and that the out-of-context treatment is somewhat of a cheap shot.

It pains me to say this -- especially since Black had a hand in the Strib's sliming of Alan Fine in last year's MN 5th district race -- but I completely agree with Eric here.

If you watch the video, this is really ticky-tack stuff. There was one silly gaffe (referring to Asia and Europe as countries) along with three very minor instances of misspeaking:

She referred to the "House of Representative" (without the 's'),

She referred to herself as a "State Senate" (instead of Senator), and

She indicated she was running for "Minnesota State Representative" (instead of Representative from the state of Minnesota).

If that was all Michael could find wrong with the entire speech, I would call that a pretty good speech. I'm certainly not going to crucify anyone for this kind of stuff, especially considering that the President that I still wholeheartedly support is the charter member of the speaking gaffe hall of fame.

Michael said that Bonoff's speech was indicative that Bonoff was nervous, and maybe she was. He also concludes that she's not ready for prime time, and maybe she's not. If that's the case, there will be more significant material than this to "expose" in the upcoming campaign.

In my opinion, though, this video does nothing more than to make our side look petty and deceptive. In other words, it makes us look like Democrats.