One Nation Under Paul Ryan's Bicep: The Gawker 2012 Vice Presidential Debate Liveblog

The 2012 vice presidential debate begins at 9 p.m. How drunk will Joe Biden be? How drunk will we be? How many push-ups will Paul Ryan do? How many very direct analogies to pornography or guitar solos can an event like this inspire? Join us here for a liveblog with my esteemed colleague Drew Magary.

We're running this chronologically, so scroll down for the latest updates.


DREW: By the way, I have Biden's opening play scripted for this evening:

"Before I answer that question, let me just apologize to my fellow Democrats and to the American people for President Obama's performance in last week's debate. He was clearly unprepared and it showed. But, in his defense, no one told him that he would be debating a fellow Democrat. Congressman Ryan, were you aware that your running mate has now chosen to embrace our platform? Because I was as surprised as you must have been."


MSS: It'll never work. Ryan's seen "I know I am, but what are you?" before, and he counters with a phone the size of a Bible, touches it to Biden and BOOM, it has the same playlist as Obama/Biden, except it does everything Version 2.008 promised. Every American is paid $200 for voting for it, and the only thing that have to do in exchange is sleep naked atop a cairn on the backside of a exposed winter mountain five years after they retire.

DREW: That's a fair challenge. Also, any Biden opening salvo is destined to be turned against him. "Whoa hey, he gently mocked his opponent. CAN'T VOTE FOR THAT COCK."

MSS: Here's where I dig Biden the most: he can be The Onion's 1980s feather-haired rocker, or he can be some kind of metal-up-your-ass dude in your imagination, and for me, I can totally picture Biden coming out to the podium, Fonzie snap-pointing at the camera and saying, "Nanu-Nanu, America." Then he'd put the left elbow down on the bottom left of the podium, and grab the top right with a straight-arm, keep his body perfectly still and just tick his jaw side-to-side every few seconds—like he was jeering at Ryan. Like, "Go ahead, do it, motherfucker: try to cut funding for disco. You won't leave this building alive. I've got ten coked-up members of Lipps, Incorporated who'll chew off your fucking face and wear it like a mask."

DREW: I think he looks like the old guy in a porno movie. Where you're like, "WHOA, HEY—that guy's old." And you want to focus on the other performers, but you can't, because there's half a lemonparty in the shot.

MSS: Those guys lost all their cachet after Viagra. Before, you'd look at them, and it didn't even matter if they were especially ROBUST or whatever, because you were like, "Hey, wow. Good for him!" Now he might as well be a molecule wrapped in a crabbed organ.

DREW: This will be my first time listening to Paul Ryan speak tonight. I hope he uses finger gunz.

The Debate: America's Enbuffening

DREW: John King: "Joe biden has passed the test by being a sitting Vice President." Congrats, Joe. You've proven you can hold a useless job. That puts you up there with Frank Caliendo


MSS: Biden won the coin-toss, but I think he should have been allowed to kick. "I'll defer. I want him to hot-air into the wind."

MSS: I've already lost track of what the question was, if they've answered it and the basic lie count. It's Libya, right? Libya?

DREW: Always weird when one VP guy mentions another VP guy's kid. YOU HAVE A KID! I hate you, but using your kid makes it seem like I don't! DICK CHENEY'S KID IS GAYNESS.

MSS: Biden's already doing the smirky response thing, but it's entirely possible he just can't stop thinking about how he and his wife made Beau Biden.


DREW: I think a third grade teacher should grade both men at the end of this. "Did you remember everything on this social studies test?" And I want a counter-malarkey.

MSS: Paul Ryan is the kind of kid who used his allowance money to buy a sheaf of gold stars down at Office Depot and used it to slap some good marks there on the way home to mom.

DREW: Paul Ryan: "Urinating on Taliban corpses? Kinda hot. Wait, NO."

DREW: She fucked that question. It's easy to disapprove of corpse pissing. The Koran-burning thing was the hard question. But she went right to pissing. So Ryan was like, "PISSING?! HELL NO. EASY!" Also, Biden just did the sarcastic "Incredible" thing. So there's your, "He's pedantic!" narrative. You've smirking, malarkey, and "incredible." There's your RYAN WON story.

MSS: Do you remember the game "Snake" on those old Nokia phones? CNN is playing the SHITTIEST game of Snake on the bottom of the screen right now.

DREW: THIS IS A BUNCH OF STUFF! This is such BUNCHSTUFF. The sad thing is that, when you watch this shit, most people like me don't automatically have lies detected. All you can really go by is who sounds better. And Ryan sounds perfectly reasonable. Biden sounds like a fucking nutbar.

MSS: Biden's taken about twenty minutes to go from dickhead smirking, to outright laughter, to soothing "PAPA SAYS THERE'S NOTHING FOR YOU TO BE SCARED OF, MARTHA, BABY." He's operating at Peak Venkman, and there's 70 minutes to go.

MSS: Biden could just start listing all the jobs bills the GOP sponsored in the last four years and use up 0:00 of his response time. I appreciate Ryan being upset about the jobs situation in Janesville, so maybe he could have been pursuing more federal earmarks on the down-low.

DREW: Mitt Romney is a car guy! He owns cars and shit!"

MSS: Mitt Romney loves cars so much that he bought a special lever to lift them up and down. BOUNCE BOUNCE. WHEEEEE, CARS!

DREW: There's you're reduction of everything into one easy story. Biden: "Oh, you know paralyzed people? My old lady died, fucker."

MSS: I'm so tired of this "OBAMACARE IS CUTTING MEDICARE BENEFITS FOR SENIORS" thing. How many times can you double down before even Vegas would throw up its hands, like, "Impossible"? It's like that guy in high school who not only told you that he'd lost his virginity at camp but kept elaborating the story until the girl was unrealistic even by comic book standards. JUST WALK AWAY. Stop. Everyone will be okay if you stop.

DREW: Biden with the "Well, just fuck this guy" smile. Half the time! I can't be the only person who doesn't listen at all and just looks at the fuckers trying to not make any weird faces.

DREW: Tip O'Neill name drop.


DREW: I think Ryan is basically looking calm and sensible while Biden is gambling that being fairly genuine and being like NO! HE'S LYING! will read better. RYAN JUST MADE DOES EYES. BLINK BLINK BLINK. Biden is beating him down now.

MSS: I think that Biden's smirking is actually starting to work a little, because it shows that he's not actually going to become VIOLENT. He's gotten dogged and outraged, and the counterpoint of going "Pffffff! Hahaha really?" with his expressions makes it look like he's letting out the steam. On the other hand, it might just look fucking insane.

DREW: Make sure to note Ryan imitating Romney's half smile. It's freaky. It's like he practiced.

MSS: Oh, like, he's just sort of giddily wincing at people? Yeah, I saw that. El Barfo.

DREW: The wistful glance. The "I'm looking at you like you're a sunset" look.

DREW: BINGO. "Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy?!" Biden just had his counter.

MSS: Kennedy/Johnson reduced the highest marginal tax rate from about 90 percent to about 70 percent. If Paul Ryan wants some Kennedy-like tax rates, he's going to lose a lot of friends. But bring it on, Eddie Munster.

DREW: BIDEN JUST GAVE HIM THE FINGER. He gave him the Seinfeld waitress finger. POWER. MOVE.

MSS: Watching this CNN approval strand going up and down is like watching the sine wave of my own depression.

DREW: I'm on NBC. So all I get are Paul Ryan doe eyes.

MSS: NBC oughtta foley in the "thunk thunk thunk" blinky noise that hotties in Warner Brothers cartoons get when they bat their lashes.

MSS: THIRTY MINUTES TO GO!!! I feel like we've just rounded the bend on a marathon and crapped all over ourselves. It's disgusting, but at the same time: LIGHTER LOAD.

DREW: Is Ryan drinking from a vase?

MSS: I don't know, but now that Biden's yelling at Martha, I don't think he's going to be able to close the deal tonight.

DREW: Yeah no way. It's the nature of the beast. Obama has to do that shit himself. All Biden can do is not whip his dick out. Which is still PLAUSIBLE.

DREW: I think the Kenneday line basically saved Biden. Because Ryan's "words" line and Biden's Kennedy line will live for the week. And then we get to Tuesday, and it's a blank slate. But any liberal jacked because Biden is browbeating him is a fool to think that will make things super great. And the pointing at Martha and shit is bad play. "Listen up missy. I'mma fuck you hard and fuck you good."

MSS: When Democrats browbeat someone, that's an elitist tendentiously ridiculing people he doesn't think worth his time. When a Republican browbeats someone, he's just sticking up for himself. Biden's going to get called unhinged, but this is basically the same pummeling smug shtick that keeps Newt Gingrich's wife in $500,000 worth of Tiffany.

DREW: Oh, no doubt. But life ain't fair. You gotta know this shit going in.

MSS: Ahahaha, I know, there's no upside here. I just want Jill Biden to get a haircut with a sideways duckbill on the side of her head.

DREW: Is anyone still listening? I mean really. It's like the last 30 minutes of a company offsite meeting. Everyone just wants to get to the bagel bar. I got my Kennedy line. I HAVE MY NARRATIVE.

MSS: If this debate were being held in a hotel, you know that Biden would have palmed a fifty at the concierge and said, "Come in there in about thirty and tell the moderator there's an emergency in her pants." Then they'd be out the door. THE BOSS CAN'T STOP AN EMERGENCY.

DREW: "My friend." Always "my friend" with Biden. "My friend is a real cocktaster."

MSS: My friend would like to see my elderly cousins giving out gumjobs behind the Rite-AID in order to afford their chemo. My friend wants to make SEXAGENARIANS a literal thing in the worst way for anticoagulants. My friend's gonna send my second-cousin Enid out to ask strangers by the Home Depot, "You ever wanted to get sucked off by that bald chick in the first Star Trek movie?"

DREW: I think Biden is clearly more genuine here. This is his power ballad moment.

MSS: I think it's probably just tension from a long 90 minutes and maybe feeling too shaky to just take a sip of water, but Martha sounds a little warbly here post-Roe v. Wade and Catholic social doctrine.

DREW: I dunno, I thought this debate was okay. I didn't feel like either man was repugnant. Personally, at least. Biden seemd righter, but who the fuck knows what the one tiny extrapolation will be. One thing will get pulled out and then pushed. And that will dictate the narrative. And then when people will be like THE KENNEDYS ARE SKEWED.

MSS: I think this is going to be a win for whichever candidate is on the same side as the pundit speaking. It's weird and combative and snide and smug enough about so many things that the things people find off-putting will be the things they disagree with already.

DREW: I think Biden should have used this [closing] tone all night. The "I'm fucking exhuasted by this shit" voice. That's a solid voice for him.

MSS: Yeah.

Hey, Everybody! We're All Gonna Get Laid!

MSS: In closing, Biden asks a solemn question: "So we can fund the Pentagon to the tune of over $700 billion dollars per annum, but we can't guarantee that every American should receive NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV? IT'S ON."

(Biden throws an intense fireball of chi at the audience. Mitch McConnell is dressed just like Eddie Murphy in Raw. Rand Paul is smoking from a bong shaped like Frank Zappa being crucified. And Paul Ryan? HE LOVES THIS TAPENADE.)