Mouth-corner spittle, in HDTV.

Amanda Hess (via Instapundit) was watching Obama looking nice and "crispy" on HDTV and then, suddenly, there was "a small collection of saliva in the left crease of the candidate’s mouth."

The development nearly incapacitated my housemate; he spent the remainder of the speech in a nervous fit, wishing aloud that one polite delegate would flag down the candidate and discretely wipe his own mouth, the telltale indication that Obama “has got something … right over … no … a little to the left … there, you’ve got it.”...

Near the speech’s end, Obama did move to wipe the corner of his mouth, causing a grand celebration among the party. However, the move only displaced the spittle, helping it to migrate lower down the lip.

Ha ha. This brings back fond memories of blogging for me. From October 13, 2004, live-blogging the last Bush-Kerry debate:

Bush is smiling a lot, and the left side of his mouth nevertheless turns down oddly. A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote. [UPDATE: the NYT and the WaPo take note of this, and only this, observation and I react to that attention here....]

And that was without HDTV. That was the first time this blog got quoted in the NYT, so I'm pretty nostalgic about Bush's spittle. But I'm looking back on the vague, fuzzy past. We've got a new crisp guy now and a wrinkly old geezer and, with HDTV, we'll be able to inspect the individual bubbles of any mouth foam.

Think too of the skin blemishes. Everyone's skin will look bad in closeup on HDTV, which brings more clarity than seeing the person in person. It's hyperrealism. And unlike in person, you can get right up close and stare at it and talk to other people in the room about it. And blog about it.

Now, it's going to be important for politicians to wear makeup, strong makeup. Not just a little powder. And then how are they going to look to the people who are around to see them in person? In fact, how are they going to look on HDTV when we can see that they've got on makeup. Garish! Crazy!

Unless....



... they are female.

Ah, finally! A real advantage for women.

Thanks for the technology, guys. We will now use it to rule the world.

ADDED: But Chip Ahoy got out his magnifying glass: