Dean grows the Democrat pie higher

Weird thought: maybe Trippi really is a Jedi. After the crazy-train moshpit reality show the night an insurgent candidate came third in a field he himself had probably grown by at least a third. (In the words of President Bush, “he grew the pie higher” … next maybe he’ll show he really does understand how hard it is “to put food on your family” in this land where “wings take dream” but let’s not got there.)
Maybe this “angry red face” meme had to be exploded in a big way, and maybe Dean needed more of a narrative than “raised the most money via the Internet.” For all the meme junkies out there, Dianne Sawyer even showed the Gennifer portrait. A key failing or weakness nearly bring our protagonist low but he grows through the adversity. Better story than “geez, he really is nuts” or “don’t they understand broadcast media at all?”
I’m not saying Trippi (by which I mean the whole team around and including the candidate) didn’t make a serious mistake in how they handled the TV moment. They did let Dean be Dean” and since that moment of misjudgement about how something would read to practiced TV watchers (something the Dean household is not) cannot be recalled, as you cannot unring a bell, the best way to deal with a raging bull is to seize it by the horns and leap over it like a Minoan.
Over on Kos, after Iowa one poster felt emboldened finally to object to the once-popular Trippi is a Jedi tagline/sig sported by a Deanster, saying something like, Can I now admit that I never though Trippi was a Jedi? And despite criticisms of Trippi’s own advertising company getting the TV work, maybe they are now handling the media with some aplomb, the triple-appearance last night: sober, homey, and able to laugh at oneself feeding the media just enough English to turn a corner that looked impossible just a day ago.
Atrios called the Letterman appearance an inverse judo flip. Think of it. If they can ride out the media moment and embrace the multimedia remixes coming from the Internet’s creative commons, the Governor comes out of it inoculated against one of his supposedly worst vulnerabilities going into the general election: too angry, unstable, finger on the button.
These are not the memes you’re looking for.