I post this McCain ad to graphically represent what people mean by decontextualization. It’s a in weird way what the French post-structuralists call simulcra (see the wiki on Baudrillard on hyperreality. It’s in a sense as real (though being in a sense parasitic) as the original. On the other hand of course, you see how easily such a process can be corrupted. But once it gets free-floating it’s tough to reign the momentum back in.Watch in particular how the video is cut to make it look like Obama is agreeing with McCain. Never mind as others have pointed out that what is so wrong with agreeing with your opponent and not appearing an angry ahole like McCain did, but that Obama was using the I Agrees to look congenial at the same time he was slicing and dicing McCain. Let it never be said, conservatives don’t get postmodernism (creating your own reality, relativist strains thereof I mean).Transcript of the entire debate here.First use of “I agree” (my italics) :OBAMA: Well, I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility, but we need it not just when there’s a crisis. I mean, we’ve had years in which the reigning economic ideology has been what’s good for Wall Street, but not what’s good for Main Street.The obvious implication of Obama’s words being that McCain is a glory-crisis hog who only shows up when the media glare is onto something (cf “We Are All Georgians NOW!!!!”—edit: No We Ain’t Brother). So the agreement on Obama’s part is actually to call McCain essentially a (literally) Johnny Come Lately blowhard. .Second of the “I Agree” Statements :OBAMA: Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused, which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up…But l...