I try not to get sucked in by all the 2008 campaign mashup videos; this stuff is all so temporary. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point you to the new gold standard in YouTube politics, via the American Scene: BARACKY.

Now, the original Rocky was 1976. But I think it's fair to call Rocky a 1980s figure, inasmuch as Sylvester Stallone is a 1980s figure, and the Rocky franchise is a 1980s artifact. (For instance, see this classic scene from Rocky IV, which could only have been the Reagan era. Wow.) Certainly the Rocky message, about a heroic individual overcoming despair, seems rather ahead of its time in the "malaise"-ridden energy crisis days.

I bring this up because 1980s cultural forms seem to lend themselves easily to this business of armchair-propaganda -- recall the Obama "1984" bit that made everyone crazy last March -- which is probably because the aesthetic of the 80s rejected subtlety so completely. The sort of loud, obvious, balls-out style that characterized all of the 1980s understandably translates well into short-attention-span Internet clips. (Hence the Rick Roll, another popular bit of 80s trash, which is funny within 3 seconds and ceases to be funny after about 10.)

The 1980s... you know, I have written before about the total sensory deadening that came out of the 1980s, and frankly it's such a beautiful night I don't have the heart to go into it again. So I'm just going to give you one video, one, that tells you everything you need to know about that godforsaken decade.

This song was #1 on the U.S. charts the week I was born, in 1988. And that's nice, because it means everything that has happened in my entire life is an improvement:

Billy Ocean. Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car. And now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go take a shower and wash all the TERRIBLE off me.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. This is an open thread.