That was just nasty...

I admit that I watched only one speech during the Dem's convention. I watched Hillary. That was it. She gave what I thought was a great speech with little to no mud slinging. Her speech seemed to be more focused on bringing the Dems together and backing Obama than anything else.

I heard a lot of the post-game talk about the DNC speeches, though. And I didn't hear anything about them being nasty or full of attacks or sarcastic. I didn't even hear that from the super-right Republicans.

But tonight at the RNC? Very nasty. All of the speeches. And based on the post-game that I've heard so far -- from the left and the right -- the Repub's convention has been not about substance and plans, but rather jabs and attacks.

This is just such nasty politics that I am quite literally sick to my stomach.

And the real rub here is that the Democrats will have to be very careful in any response. Harry Reid was personally attacked in Palin's speech. When he responded via an aide and used the word "shrill", Campbell Brown and some of her brethren seemed to think he was being sexist.

Ridiculous.

It is simply unacceptable that she can so thoroughly tear up her opponents and then those opponents get ripped for being sexist when they use "shrill" as an adjective to describe her speech. Her speech was all slam and no substance. "Shrill" is actually about the nicest thing that could be said about it.

Men and women cannot compete on an equal footing if this is the level to which the post-game insists on going.

So that you don't think I just don't like her and am just being mean to her, I'll give you that she is a great speaker. Her speech was fluid and she has great timing. She can read and pronounce the words she's reading. She has fantastic presence and, again, a great sense of timing. For the actual technical points of public speaking, I readily give her an A+. But for content?

Well, there was no content. Again, she didn't talk about plans, she just slammed the opponents.

What's more, after spending the last few days telling us through the McCain campaign that we must leave her family out of this, they were used throughout the speech as political props. I found that distasteful, disrespectful, and insulting.