Last night after Oprah put her eyelashes back on, and Americans everywhere digested Obama's speech while watching a rain of fireworks (on mute, cause that country song was a bit much), pundits sharpened their incredibly sharp reactions.
I watched the speech on PBS, and their #1 reaction was, "Great speech and everything, but it's too bad there wasn't a balloon-drop." Seriously. Considering how much they mentioned the lack of a balloon-drop, there were a thousand empty, aching balloon-shaped holes in the pundits' hearts last night.
Apparently, Obama's not having a post-acceptance-speech balloon drop is a really, really, really big deal. And it's easy to see why. By shunning the traditional balloon drop in favor of fireworks, Obama is basically spitting in the face of both the helium tank and party store industries (two of our nation's most important industries), while revealing his campaign to essentially be in the pocket of the powerful pyrotechnics lobby.
Not only that, but in choosing not to have a balloon-drop, Obama has lost key balloon-loving constituencies, like babies, women over fifty who own Party City franchises, people who are currently preparing to host baby showers or graduation parties, and clowns–and no president has ever been elected without winning over the influential retired clowns voting bloc.
I bet McCain gives his speech next week while wearing a hot-air balloon costume, just to illustrate how utterly pro-balloon he is.