The media. Ugh.
Posted: June 4th, 2008 | Filed under: Media | 66 Comments »
We do try to keep political talk to minimum here, but I think in honor of Barack Obama’s historic “Yes I can declare victory and isn’t Hill a peach†Confettisburg Address on Tuesday, in honor of Hillary Clinton’s fun and delusional “I don’t care about math and stats, I’m not going anywhere,†speech, in honor of John McCain’s surprisingly grumpy (and lime green), “Hey you kids get out of my yard,†Louisiana chat … in honor of all that, I do want to make one point about us mainstream media types.
Sometimes, we really do say incredibly, incredibly stupid things.
I know, that’s a pretty controversial statement — specifically the word “Sometimes.†But …
Take David Brooks. Please. He is a columnist at the New York Times and free agent TV guy who, best I can tell, is all about real folk, authentic folk, middle class folk, red state folk, NASCAR folk, minivan folk, factory folk, American Idol voting folk, July 4th barbecue in the backyard folk and so on. There are things I like about Brooks, including his willingness to be somewhat unpredictable and take stands on both sides. Those are generally the political people I like, the ones who refuse to be shoved to one side or the other.
Brooks does generally lean right, and he like many commentators has bought into the concept that Barack Obama is too elitist and not at all like the real and authentic folk. I have to say up front that I find this whole elitist talk sickeningly absurd. The man is RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. Of course he thinks he’s elite. He’s not trying to become captain of our bowling team. Of course he thinks he’s elite, and so does McCain, Hill, Bob Barr*, Lyndon LaRouche, Ross Perot, Dennis Kucinich, Tracy Flick and anyone else who has the audacity to believe that he/she should be the President. Please. How in the hell can someone raise hundreds of millions of dollars and travel non-stop around the country to tell people again and again why he is the right choice — the only choice — to become the world’s most powerful person and NOT BE ELITIST? Ripping a presidential candidate for being elitist to me is like ripping your heart surgeon for being a perfectionist.
*Bob is the Libertarian candidate, of course, and in addition to the many talents I’m certain he has, his name sounds like Babar when you say it quickly. I love Babar.
But, I suspect, that by “elitist,†Brooks and others mean that Obama is out of touch and cannot appreciate the problems, concerns and state of real Americans. It’s a tag — that sadly is more or less what Presidential Politics have become. Tags. Obama is elitist. McCain is old (and grumpy … see above). Hill is, well, you know. W is a nincompoop. Al invented the Internet. Bill is, you know, it depends on what is is. I believe with all my heart that there really are many, many hard-working, thoughtful, brilliant, impassioned, meticulous and exact reporters and commentators in the mainstream media, but somehow with all the noise, the ones we hear are the ones shouting “elitist†in crowded movie theaters.
Back to Brooks. He went on TV the other day to continue explaining why he thinks those authentic folk from all over America just won’t connect with Obama. And here’s what Brooks said: “Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who could go into an Applebee’s salad bar, and people think he fits in naturally there.â€
Um. Yeah. Look, anyone can make a mistake. But I’m pretty sure that if you are bringing up an Applebee’s salad bar to make a point about someone being elitist, you should find out from one of your authentic friends that Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar. That’s Ruby Tuesday’s. Or Sizzler. Or Ponderosa (all you can eat — beef and chicken in the buffet too). Nice effort, though. Make us all look good.
But it goes beyond that. Applebee’s represents precisely the opposite of what Brooks is talking about. Like, Applebee’s used to have this really good salad with apples in it. They took it off the menu. Why? So they could bring in that stinking “name chef†Tyler Florence. Then suddenly they put all these Florence-infused, elitist things on the menu — Penne Rosa with sweet Italian Sausage, crispy brick chicken with warm spinach salad, bruschetta burgers — dammit! And, oh yeah, Applebee’s ain’t cheap. And the brick chicken sucked, by the way.
Sometimes the media really ticks me off.
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“Sometimes the media really ticks me off.”
I don’t live in the USA, but from what I read about it I understand that the source of your ire is probably the liberal bias.
Brooks is arguably the brightest political columnist in the country–one of the few guys who understands the dynamics between what happens in Washington and what’s happening in Middle America, and one of the few conservative commentators who can think behind pure ideology. Evidence:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1&oref=login
So I’d cut him some slack here. Unlike a lot of the commentators that seems to exist entirely in the Washington bubble, Brooks is at least trying to understand how the real world relates to the political one.
I didn’t see the TV appearance but my guess is he was talking (or meant to be talking) about the perception that Obama is an elitist, rather than a personal belief that Obama is one. That’s a real issue for Obama to confront.
But obviously Brooks hasn’t made it to an Applebee’s lately.
Per my movie quote and per Obama’s pastor.
“Kill Whitie!”
Applebee’s just tries too hard to be something it ain’t. That may also be true for most politicians, but I don’t get that feeing from Mr. Obama.
David Brooks is a hypocrite: he paints himself as salt of the earth, regular folk, yet he himself is an elite media type who wouldn’t deign to eat at Applebee’s. It’s not quite as bad as W who pretends he’s a “regular guy” despite attending Yale, inheriting millions, and owning a baseball team, but it’s the same genre.
I find it ridiculous, patronizing, and offensive.
I don’t live in the USA, but from what I read about it I understand that the source of your ire is probably the liberal bias.
Ha!
my problem with the media/political commentators is that they all have an agenda. Where can you get an ubiased factual information on politicians, their platforms, beliefs, etc. Almost all politicians also receive their campaign contributions from individuals & corporations who have their own agendas which they force on the candidates. Now tell me how this impacts the decisions made by the candidates or how it affects their platforms, beliefs, etc. or how they will run the country. How do you sort through all of this and the mud-slinging and all the other noise out there to make an informed decision on who you feel is the best candidate for the job.
Brooks often says intelligent things, but then he often overreaches and says dumb things like this.
Also, he’s on record as supporting Bush in 2000 and 2004 and also supporting the Iraq war. Those are three humongous errors from a so-called intellectual.
(I hope I’m not opening up this thread to . . . bad things.)
Sorry Joaldo, (I come here to escape politics but…) the best I can say about David Brooks is that he’s a calculating, sophist, neo-con mouthpiece who’s done a great deal of damage to this country with comments like the above mentioned. How absolutely absurd. He is the definition of a “Talking Point” talking head.
This wouldn’t exactly be the first time that Mr. Brooks has spoken to something that he hasn’t the first clue about. Sasha Issenberg wrote an article in 2004 in Philadelphia Magazine that was an attempt to retrace the Franklin County, Pennsylvannia, journey that Brooks had written about in an Atlantic Monthly article. Turns out that a large portion of the “facts” Brooks had in his article were anything but.
Brooks’s response? He said Issenberg was taking the whole thing too literally. Apparently, when an article is published reporting the “facts” about an area such as Franklin County, we’re supposed to be able to discern the real facts from the pseudo-facts and fabrications.
All that said, I still enjoy reading Mr. Brooks, even though he doesn’t always (in fact, rarely) shares my point of view.
Now who’s the grumpy old man?
This post is conflating having a huge ego with being an elitist.
Every national pol has a huge ego, but not all are elitist.
Barack Obama is an elitist. So what? So were JFK and FDR.
Who cares about this stupid election? We all know it doesn’t matter who gets elected president of Carver. Do you really think it’s going to change anything around here; make one single person smarter or happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens every year, and everyone makes the same pathetic promises just so they can put it on their transcripts to get into college. So vote for me, because I don’t even want to go to college, and I don’t care, and as president I won’t do anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected I will immediately dismantle the student government, so that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these stupid assemblies again!
Yes, being an elitist should not disqualify you from being President. As Jon Stewart pointed out, this is the one job where, if you do it pretty well, they might carve your head into the side of a mountain. That reward is not offered on Applebee’s menu.
McCain dumped his first wife to marry a multi-millionaire beer distributor heir. Does that cancel out his five years as P.O.W.? Is he an “opportunist”?
The talk of elitism is a b.s. Karl Rove imaginary talking point.
You’re exactly right, Joe, anyone running for president is going to be an “elitist.”
The other problem I have with the “elitist” term is that implies that it makes pursuing the “American Dream” a bad thing. You can’t want a good education for your kids, a good economy, and believe in the American Dream that anyone can be a success through hard work and simultaneously punish people with empty tags like “elitist” when they succeed at accomplishing the “American Dream.” It’s hypocritical. It’s also hypocritical to suggest that once someone achieves some success, they automatically forget the life lessons they learned growing up as someone without a lot of means.
Obama, Clinton, and McCain all achieved their success through hard work and public service. Throwing around stupid, empty labels does nothing to address the real issues facing our country like the economy, health care, and the war in the Middle East.
Odd that Hillary, who grew up in a fairly upscale Chicago suburb, is perceived as less elitist than Obama, who was raised by a financially marginal single mom.
Tammy Metzler- nicely played. Well done.
Perry- yes. One of the greatest political tricks pulled in recent memory was Hill’s almost instantaneous switch from the prohibitive Democratic nominee with the backing of the party’s “elite” (there’s that word again) and overflowing campaign coffers, to the flame-throwing, blue-collar-American backing populist underdog. In the blink of a few Obama primary victories in February she went from Francis Ford Coppola to Morgan Spurlock. It didn’t work, but it was pretty impressive nonetheless.
P.S.: Sorry for jinxing the Royals yesterday.
Joe (do you prefer this? or Mr. Posnanski?),
I like that one: Applebee sucks. The food sucks. Even Sizzler’s menu looks better down-to-earth with its early-bird or senior deals now and then (though it’s now and then disappearing from Midwest America). Ponderosa used to have good salad, but they disappointed me now (ref: 2007 Cf. 1998). Sizzler’s salad became much better.
So, to add to your point, I was in Applebee in St. Louis (-County, Brentwood/Clayton, anyone knows?), the power went off.
We ordered, then was 9pm, flicked. I and my friend waited 5-10 minutes in dark. A waiter shouted to all customers still hanging there: The kitchen won’t work because of the power outage. No apologie, no table-to-table confirmation of menu. My friend was fed up. We left still hungry.
It was the worst service I’d ever had. And I regret to have visited an Applebee again. But that was in Kansas (state), and I had no other choice on I-70 around Salina.
By the way, why did wiki say the Cards-Royals rivalry is “I-70 Series?” This sounds like an obscure tag that I rarely heard from my big red bird fella.
Is there a presidential race this year?
shout out for the Babar reference. he’s always been my favourite fictional french elephant, despite his imperialistic tendencies. and, um, the fact that he’s a bit elitist with that fancy suit of his…
I like the mention of Dennis Kucinich. Where is our old friend anyhow? I miss his frequent posts on this site when he was still running for president. Rumor has it that Rep. Kucinich attended the alien video press conference in Denver last week, but that’s still unconfirmed. The word was that he was going to come out of the closet and speak publicly for the first time about his alien encounter, but that the event organizers thought it would steal the lime light from their “video.” Did anyone else hear about that?
Bob Barr. Reminds me of the lawyer on Arrested Development. Bob Loblaw. Say that name fast.
I’ve been looking all over the Internet, but I can’t find David Brooks’ VORP (value over replacement pundit) numbers anywhere. Blowhard Prospectus doesn’t even have a listing for him.
As for Bob Barr, your attempt to align him with a French pachyderm is cleary part of a widespread liberal media conspiracy to besmirch his reputation as an All-American John Birch wingnut. For shame, Mr. Posnanski, for shame.
I understand this is anecdotal, but my pastor was in a hotel lounge in Illinois reading a presidential biography. A man came over to him and told him he had enjoyed that book and was a big fan of presidential literature of that sort. My pastor talked to him about the John Adams and Bill Clinton biographies and they chatted for about 5 minutes. At the end of their discussion, the man, Barack Obama, signed his book and went on his way.
Now you can say what you want about stuff like this, but Barack had no idea that this man was a pastor, so this had nothing to do with trying to gain some influence. Plus my church has about 100 people anyway, so it’s not like it would have done much good. My pastor is also not a guy to get starstruck, so I believe him when he says that Obama was truly a nice guy just having a friendly discussion with someone in a hotel lounge. If that’s not “in touch,” I don’t know what is.
I actually think Brooks is one of the better pundits out there. He does have two flaws common to his ilk, though:
1) He oversimplifies things.
2) He has a tendency to treat the painfully obvious as though its some kind of big revelation.
Still, he’s a good writer and his views are more unconventional and interesting than those of most of the punditry. Supporting Bush in ‘04 was, uh, questionable IMO, but he’s pretty sharp and I usually like his Times column.
Like Jon Stewart, and a previous poster, I want my President to be elite. I want my President to be so much better than me that every time I see him on TV I’m embarrassed by my comparatively lazy, stupid, self. The fact that I have a sneaking suspicion that I could’ve done a better job than Bush is, frankly, kind of sickening. Because I’d probably be an awful president.
I also wonder about why this whole “elite” thing matters. I’m thoroughly middle-class and humble, and I don’t know anybody who thinks “wow, Hillary threw back a shot with those boys in Indiana, she’s got my vote!” Where are these people? Are Americans truly that foolish? I can’t help but wonder if this whole thing is a media construct, created because media types have no idea how most Americans think, and so they invented a dumbed-down and patronizing version of what they think they think. You know, like it’s the kind of thing that only matters because the media says it does.
‘Course it’s a chicken-or-egg thing. Maybe people do really think that way and my family and friends are somewhat on the elite side, and I just don’t realize it.
Oh, and Applebee’s sucks. I always thought it tasted like picked off Friday’s trash and cooked it – and Friday’s, while I don’t hate it, is thoroughly mediocre. Maybe this makes me an elitist, but the only big chain restaurants I like are Outback and Red Lobster. The rest are mediocre or worse. If I want some good old-fashioned American grease – and, too often, I do – I’ll go to a diner or a lunch counter or a local pizza joint. If I want a nice meal, I’ll go to a nice restaurant. Chains are just blah.
Daniel – that’s a cool story. I’d believe it. I think Obama is the only one of the three remaining candidates who seems to have any remembrance of what it’s like to be a normal person. Not normal in that he worked at the old mill and went bowling with his buddies on Wednesdays. But normal in that he was concerned with everyday things like raising his kids, and advancing his career and paying his bills. Clinton and McCain have both been in the public eye for so long that at this point they are kind of media caricatures, somewhat removed from ordinary life.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Clinton or McCain would be bad presidents – hell, being president is far from ordinary. It does, however, mean that to call Obama “out of touch” is to use a very warped definition of the phrase.
Vin–
Great Bush story; cogent remarks too on the mediocrity of Upscale (“elitist”?!?) fast food, but I’d include Outback there, too, based only on my own preference: if I’m going to pay $35 for a delicious filet steak, I don’t want to eat it in a school cafeteria: I want candlelight, polite waiters, and NO FREAKING NOISE! (yes, I cannot resist the ironic urge to shout that out!)
Anybody see Bob Barr in that BORAT flick? He eats cheese Borat tells him was made by his wife, from milk from her…well, you get the pit…I mean pic.
Viva JP! The best quirky (that’s a compiment) blog around!
I quit going to Applebee’s the day they asked me what kind of sauce I wanted on my pasta. I asked what my choices were. The reply: “Red or white.”
The “elitist” tag, and “American values” stuff is so that the media doesn’t haver to take the time to educate the citizens on the issues that really affect them.
Keeping the citizenry ignorant makes it easier for those in power to pull the wool over the eyes of the people.
As for the first comment here, please let that be sarcasm.
Babar rocks…..
meaning the green suited pachyderm
“Keeping the citizenry ignorant makes it easier for those in power to pull the wool over the eyes of the people.”
Bob, you’re forcing me to quote my favorite KC area band – The Rainmakers:
“They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please..”
-from ‘Government Cheese’ lyrics by
(I believe) Bob Walkenhorst
Can’t read Babar without thinking of this:
Doc: That’s an interesting name, Mr…?
Fletch: Babar.
Doc: Is that with one B or two?
Fletch: One. B-A-B-A-R.
Doc: That’s two.
Fletch: Yeah, but not right next to each other, that’s what I thought you meant.
Doc: Isn’t there a children’s book about an elephant named Babar.
Fletch: Ha, ha, ha. I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any.
Doc: No children?
Fletch: No elephant books.
You really like Red Lobster?
Funny & smart comments all over the place here — and no shrill partisan howling. I like you people.
Anyone who can organize on the streets of Chicago, like Obama did, is hardly an elitist. That requires your most basic people skills along with an authenticity that simply cannot be manufactured.
But I disagree with you, Joe, on your tastes-good logic that anyone that close to the presidency must be an elitist. Think back to last century’s great Midwestern presidential duo — Ike and Harry.
I’m not sure if you guys know this but John Edwards dad worked in a Mill.
Great essay. More of it, the interweb clamors for it.
Tammiy Metzler: very well played I bow to you.
As for the elitist tag on Obama, this is straight from the Karl Rove playbook (executed by the Clintons, but surely to be repeated by the Fox News Noise Machine(c) ad nauseum through the general election). Swift Boating v.08…e.g., say it loudly and frequently enough and BS becomes true (or, more to the point, say it loudly and frequently enough and you control the narrative).
Edwards problem isn’t that he’s elitist — he did come from a poor background. It’s that he’s a scumbag — he used his successful American dream to become one of the richest ambulance chasers in the world…
Holding people (businesses) accountable for their actions, doesn’t make one a scumbag.
The real story is Edwards $400 haircuts, consistently harped on by the corporate media when he ran for President. The media made him out to be a hypocrite, because the rich can’t REALLY care about the poor.
Make no mistake what the media was saying: (Since one must be in the richest 1% to have a reasonable chance to become President–Clinton, Obama , and McCain all have worth well into the millions) the poor need not expect any representation in the government.
The media is complicit!
Joe.
Stick to baseball, sports, aquaman, and aimee mann
So, anyway about that four week radio show…
Political Elitism/=lofty degrees, high income or wealth
Political Elitism=looking down on people
Stick to baseball and the Chiefs, Joe.
First: Thanks for the politics, Joe. It’s your space — carry on.
I’ll accept the charge that Obama is an elitist, for the sake of argument. Why is that a problem? Sure, JFK and Roosevelt were elitist to the core (in that social Ivy yacht-racing way), and great presidential candidates. But that was a different time, when southern and Appalachian whites voted with Democrats and race had not yet become a fundamental election issue.
Today when someone says “elitist” it’s one of those code words meant to signal that the so-designated candidate will take away your guns and bus your kids to school in black neighborhoods.
“Prove it,” you might say. Well, I’ll be a sand-flea if George W. Bush is less elitist that Barack Obama. The difference is that Republican voters don’t care about the charge. They know their nominee will be against affirmative action and forced integration and secular education and gun control, no matter how Yale-ified and pansy-ass he might seem.
For a union pipefitter from Schenectawaukee, this is a bit of a conflict. Sure, Obama is the union guy, but on race, guns, religion, and now immigration, there are some wary feelings, and the “elitist” label does a nice job of wrapping them all up in a neat, sticky package. These were the Reagan Democrats, and this has been the Republican playbook since Nixon, and it works.
Obama is very different, though. He grew up on the outside, a sort-of black man in Hawaii, a poor kid at an elite prep school, a black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He has performed so many roles and connected with so many different sorts of people in his life that I think he’ll be able to shed the “elitist” canard without much trouble.
He’s also gonna talk nice about guns and hork a lotta Millers. We do what we must…
I love how this is the type of post Joe gets triple the responses to. He was taking a BS topic about BS issues (presidential politics, “buzz” words), and finding the inane and mundane in it all. And everyone goes and gets their diapers in a bunch. Wow. He may hate the media, “sometimes,” but I hate . . . I can’t even finish the thought . . .
“He’s also gonna talk nice about guns and hork a lotta Millers. We do what we must…”
That right there is why I could never be president (aside from my lack of character, morals, common touch, patience, ambition, devotion to my fellow man…). Sucking down Millers seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. If I’m going to be drinking beers with the locals, I want to drink BEER. That’s right, I’ll say it – I’m a beer elitist. (A beerlitist?)
Also – superb use of the term “hork” in a post. That verb really needs to find itself in everyday usage…
“That right there is why I could never be president (aside from my lack of character, morals, common touch, patience, ambition, devotion to my fellow man…)”
I’m afraid you’re overqualified.
Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog might be the greatest nonsensical phrase in the history of television.
Why more people didn’t get Arrested Development, I’ll never know. To me, it had everything: high-brow comedy, slapstick, political jabs, nonsense, David Cross. What more could someone want from a sitcom?
@Vin
Best.
Post.
Ever.
@ Gob
Sounds like a great show! Throw in Scott Baio and I think you’d have a winner.
Ryan V.- I’ll second the nomination for “beerlitist” to be added to the lexicon. And I don’t even drink beer, it’s just a cool word.
Don’t listen to the haters, Joe – this is just as good a post as any.
Re: elitism
The great American dream used to be that, no matter who you were, if you were smart and talented and worked hard, you could be anything – even President. In short, you could become the elite.
And then the current occupant of the White House came along to prove that you didn’t need to be smart, talented, *or* work hard (I suppose it didn’t hurt who’s son he was…). And along the way, the imagined preconditions to becoming President – ie. smarts, talent, and hard work, fell by the wayside – and instead, the notion now seems to be simply that *anyone* can be President (or part of the elite), without the previous preconditions.
And at the same time, those qualities that make you part of the elite – smarts, talent and hard work – are no longer seen as desirable. In fact, they are seen as prima facie evidence of elitism, and thus to be scorned.
It is truly a strange turn of events.
Joe, Judging from the scholars who have commented on this thread, it might be best if you stick to baseball.
And Tammy, if you really think the only person who is affected by the Presidency is the President himself, I am truly shocked at your ability to even turn on your computer, let alone type on one.
Barack Obama bowled a 32.
I repeat.
Barack Obama bowled a 32.
He is a black man.
Someone with that staggering a level of non-athletic ability should not be president. A nine year girl bowls 50.
If Barack Obama played baseball, he’d have an OBP of .003 (He’d get hit by a pitch twice. In 650 at bats.)
“So, to add to your point, I was in Applebee in St. Louis (-County, Brentwood/Clayton, anyone knows?), the power went off.”
Welcome to the Midwest. Or as we lovingly refer to it around here : The Third World.
There are villages in Uganda with more stable power grids than the junk that infests the Midwest. And I WORK for one of these stinking power companies, so I KNOW how little they do or care about it.
Creston,
If you’re going to take the time to list off the shortcomings of Senator Obama’s bowling skills, let alone to repeat them to us so they sink in, the least you could do is get it right. Mr. Obama bowled a *37* in seven frames. Now doesn’t that look a lot better than the implied 32 in ten full frames? (On second thought, not so much…)
And more to the point, just how, exactly, does a person’s bowling skills, or lack thereof, affect their ability to lead? I felt the best part of the whole bowling fiasco was listening to Beltway pundits talk about how it showed that Mr. Obama was out of touch with the common man. I’d like to consider myself a common man (though in truth I’m probably less than a common man…). That said, I can’t tell you when the last time was that I went bowling. Just when did this become the yardstick for measuring “commonness?!”
I don’t want to contribute to a flame war, so I won’t put down either candidate. I just want to say I can’t remember 2 candidates this good in my lifetime. One of the 2 in an election has always been a complete loser. I actually respect Obama for being against the war when that was not a popular stand. I hate these stick your finger in the wind types of politicians. McCain of course never budged on his “let’s go all in” stance.
See if you can guess from my name who I am voting for.
Monroe- might want to get your sarcasm meter checked.
Creston- “Barack Obama bowled a 32. He is a black man.” I get your larger point…but what does being a black man have to do with anything? I do agree with you on our crappy Midwestern power grids; hard to forget the great Chicago blackouts of ‘99 when power disappeared throughout a 50-mile urban and suburban area during multiple 95-degree days. Ah; the sweet smell of 7 million people marinating in their own sweat.
“Barack Obama bowled a 32.
I repeat.
Barack Obama bowled a 32.
He is a black man.
Someone with that staggering a level of non-athletic ability should not be president. A nine year girl bowls 50.
If Barack Obama played baseball, he’d have an OBP of .003 (He’d get hit by a pitch twice. In 650 at bats.)”
As someone pointed out, it was seven frames. Or six. Whatever. If you see his line, you’ll notice that he started out with gutters, then followed that with 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s. in his last frame, he got a spare which didn’t count towards his score since he didn’t roll again. Long story short, he was on pace for a 75-80. Still not good, but hey, It’s not 37.
He’s no Nixon, that’s for sure.
Hillary does care about maths and stats! She’s winning the popular vote! (That’s like the NHL’s Prince of Wales Trophy, only not as prestigious.)
Joe, I am so jealous of your commenters. Can I borrow some of them? I’m going to write about MSNBC again and I’m afraid all the Bill O’Reilly fans are going to come and leave a hundred flaming bags of poop at my virtual door.
Actually, the average O’Reilly viewer is age 68, so maybe they’ll just leave a bunch of comments typed in all caps, which is almost as bad.
“Creston,
If you’re going to take the time to list off the shortcomings of Senator Obama’s bowling skills, let alone to repeat them to us so they sink in, the least you could do is get it right. Mr. Obama bowled a *37* in seven frames.”
Easy fellas, it was meant to be tongue in cheek.
What’s most disturbing is how Obama is above reproach. It’s become almost blasphemy to criticize him in anyway. Kudos to John Stewart for pointing this out in his comedy routine, but he’ll probably catch flack for that, just like the rest of us. It’s as if Obama has been packaged and sold to us as some kind of diety, when he’s nothing more than a junior senator, with a thin resume, who voted present a hundred times at his job.
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