Apro Poet
September 10, 2008
Oh John, I hear you're livid that I gave that "lipstick" quote
You really made too much of it; I guess I got your goat
Yet though you think I'm nothing but a filthy rotten swine
My motive was not to suggest your running mate's porcine
I don't think Sarah Palin should be locked up in a pen
Or that to roll in mud or feed on slop she has a yen
And though I still deny her presence makes your ticket fresh
If you've an empty barrel, please don't fill it with her flesh
I have to say, my good friend, that I simply don't know how
You could have thought that I would think your VP is a sow
No, Barack Obama did not write this poem. Wouldn't you have more confidence in him if he had the wit?
But wait. Maybe we're being unfair. CBS News reports that "Barack Obama took it up a notch--or two--at a town hall meeting [Monday night] where he used comedy to mock and ridicule the McCain-Palin ticket."
Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present the comedy stylings of Barack Obama:
"I mean think about it, you guys remember this, it was just like a month ago they were all saying 'experience, experience, experience,' " Obama said as the crowd snickered, "Then they chose Palin and started talking about 'change, change, change'--What happened?" . . .
When discussing McCain's energy plan, Obama poked fun at his line on drilling. "What were the Republicans hollerin', 'drill baby drill'? What kind of slogan is that?! They were getting all excited about drilling!"
He even found a way to make an answer to a question on civil liberties comical. While speaking about the importance of habeas corpus, Obama said, "We don't always catch the right person. We may think this is Mohammed the terrorist, it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You may think it's Barack the bomb thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president." . . .
He got a lot of laughs.
We guess you had to be there.
Comforting the Afflicted
We've long argued (most comprehensively in this 2005 article) that liberal media bias often harms liberal politicians by reinforcing their own prejudices, thereby shielding them from political reality and compounding their strategic mistakes. Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press, who obviously sympathizes with Barack Obama, provides a wonderful example. She justifies Obama's attacks on Sarah Palin in this way:
With Palin out on the campaign trail every day blasting Obama, it became increasingly clear he had to respond and try to undermine her credibility. He was careful with his approach, declining in an interview on MSNBC's "Countdown" on Monday to respond directly to a question about whether she's too inexperienced to be next in line to the presidency.
As a thought experiment, let's recast that first sentence with the parties reversed:
With Biden out on the campaign trail every day blasting McCain, it became increasingly clear McCain had to respond and try to undermine Biden's credibility.
No one could write this with a straight face. It would be obvious that McCain was aiming for the wrong target, diminishing himself and elevating Biden. What Pickler wrote is obviously what those in the Obama campaign believe--and now that she has reported it as if it were a fact, it will only become harder to disabuse them of the idea.
At Least They Didn't Call Him Skinny
New York's WCBS-TV reports that New York's Gov. David Paterson is "accusing the McCain campaign of veiled racism":
At the Crain's Business Forum [yesterday] morning, Paterson drew attention to a phrase used numerous times by speakers at the Republican National Convention to describe Barack Obama's leadership experience: community organizer.
"I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention – a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it, they kept laughing," he said. . . .
Paterson sees the repeated use of the words "community organizer" as Republican code for "black."
"I think where there are overtones is when there are uses of language that are designed to inhibit other people's progress with a subtle reference to their race," he said.
Just one problem: As we noted last month in Denver, it was the Democrats who first "spent four days touting Obama's experience as a 'community organizer' as a central qualification" for the presidency. "Even after listening to those speeches," we wrote, "we're still not sure what a 'community organizer' is."
If Paterson is right, the Democrats were subtly arguing that Obama is qualified to be president because he is black.
The Paper Chase
In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, Lisa Orenstein of Baltimore complains that Sarah Palin isn't educated enough to be vice president:
Columnist Charles Krauthammer ["Palin's Problem," op-ed, Sept. 5] wrote that Republican nominee John McCain picked Ms. Palin to be a "game-changer" who would fill the campaign with magic. And I wanted Sarah Palin to be a hidden gem, too. But she attended six colleges in six years before receiving her undergraduate journalism degree from the University of Idaho. One of those schools was the obscure North Idaho College. No graduate degrees on her résumé.
By contrast, she notes the advanced degrees held by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Mitt Romney. Curiously, she does not mention George W. Bush's Ivy League credentials (B.A., Yale; M.B.A., Harvard) or John McCain's lack of same (B.S., U.S. Naval Academy; he attended some classes at the National War College but does not seem to have earned an advanced degree). Then she delivers the coup de grace:
In a country with more than 300 million people, with plenty of accomplished men and women, why would we settle for Ms. Palin's mediocre credentials? Most companies would place her résumé in the reject pile for far lesser jobs.
Lisa, the Obama campaign is way ahead of you! LA Weekly quotes Michelle Obama, speaking just before Palin gave her convention speech last week:
"What you learn about Barack from his choice [of vice president] is that he's not afraid of smart people," she tells the crowd. Whether intentional or not, a good part of the audience interprets the line as a preemptive strike and chuckles.
Didn't Andrew Jackson say that one man with a Ph.D. makes a majority? As Obama has observed, the American people aren't stupid, and there's nothing they enjoy more than feeling intellectually superior. Obama has a winning strategy here, seeing as how most Americans are above average.
What's that? The numbers don't add up? Oh yeah? Where'd you go to college?
Obama Questions Own Experience
• "But look, the Republicans can't govern but they run smart campaigns."--Barack Obama, "Countdown With Keith Olbermann," MSNBC, Sept. 8
See You in the Funny Papers
• "John McCain says he's about change too. So I guess his whole angle is: Watch out, George Bush--except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington."--Barack Obama, Sept. 9
They Beg, but He Won't Bash
Sarah Palin wasn't the first Alaskan in this year's presidential race. That would be Mike Gravel, the former senator (1969-81) who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination with even less plausibility than Joe Biden. What does Gravel think of Palin? The left-liberal Pacifica radio network wanted to find out. No, that's not right. Pacifica didn't want to find out. It wanted Gravel to bash Palin, but it turns out he admires her, though he agrees with her about little.
Blogger John Lott found the audio on YouTube. The whole thing is worth a listen, but we're just going to transcribe a few of the questions to give you a taste of the interviewers' utter lack of fairness and open-mindedness:
• "What do you make of the fact that the Republicans have been trying to beat Barack Obama about the head and shoulders--that he's not ready to lead, that we're in a constant war on terrorism, that who is he, he's a senator who's only been in office a little while--and then we get Sarah Palin, arguably much more of a heartbeat away from the presidency than Joe Biden would be under Barack Obama, we get Sarah Palin, and she might be the chief executive of the United States in this purported war on terror that the Republicans place so much stock in? What do you make of that?" (Gravel responded to this by calling the question "the same old political garbage.")
• "But Mike, even the mainstream media are reporting very much on Troopergate, for example, and there is, of course, a lot of question about her inexperience. There is, I mean, are you saying that McCain made a strategically good choice, or, you know--?"
• "Sen. Gravel, let's turn to another matter, one that's caused a great deal of buzz here in St. Paul today at the Republican convention, and that is the announcement that Gov. Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, that she is not married to the young man who is purportedly the father, and that this is being brought out now because there was so much buzz around on various blogs that indeed Gov. Palin herself may not have been the mother of a Down syndrome child but it might have been the same daughter that was the mother of that child. Now all of this, as we were saying before, is [a] ridiculous sideshow in American politics that we shouldn't even be discussing, but the fact of the matter is, it's out there now. How do you think it's going to play?"
Interestingly, Gravel's successor in the Senate was Frank Murkowski, who as governor in 2006 lost the Republican primary to Palin. Gravel never faced Murkowski on the ballot, however, as he had lost his 1980 Democratic primary.
Why Don't They Mind Their Own Business?
"French to Retain Oversight of Palin Probe"--headline, Anchorage Daily News, Sept. 9
Homer Nods
In yesterday's item on the "book banning" smears against Sarah Palin, we left out a paragraph from an Anchorage Daily News article, making one of the steps in the story unclear. We've gone back and inserted the paragraph, which explains that early in her term as mayor of Wasilla, Palin sent letters to several department heads asking them to resign. (The article we quoted goes on to say that Palin described these letters as a test of loyalty. The librarian passed the test, and Palin did not accept her resignation.)
Police Seized Urine, Feces During DNC
"Plan Unveiled to Convert Human Waste to Energy"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 9
Why Didn't Her Students Give Her One?
"Missing New York City School Teacher Spotted in Apple Store"--headline, FoxNews.com, Sept. 9
If It Doesn't Work, They'll Go Back to Laïcité
"French Court to Try Church of Scientology"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 9
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control
• "Pooping Puffin Paralyzes Canadian Conservative Event"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 9
• "HORROR: American Airline Sued Over Missing Body"--headline, WCBS-TV Web site (New York), Sept. 9
News of the Tautological
"Voters Make Picks in Congressional Primaries"--headline, WNBC-TV Web site (New York), Sept. 10
News You Can Use
• "Zoos Post Rare Animals' Profiles on 'Dating' Web Sites"--headline, FoxNews.com, Sept. 10
• "The Perfect Father-Son Activity: Peering Into a Woman's Window?"--headline, Pantagraph (Bloomington, Ill.), Sept. 10
Bottom Stories of the Day
• "Agent: Titans QB Vince Young Was at Friend's House"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 9
• "Nebraska and Iowa Democratic House Candidates Criticize Handling of Iraq War"--headline, Omaha World-Herald, Sept. 10
• "Joe Biden Impresses Manitowoc Teen in Rally"--headline, Manitowoc (Wis.) Herald Times Reporter, Sept. 10
Obama Passes the Global Test
The Republican Convention and the debut of Sarah Palin might have given John McCain a "bounce" in the polls, but the BBC notes a severe weakness in the GOP nominee's support:
People outside the US would prefer Barack Obama to become US president ahead of John McCain, a BBC World Service poll suggests.
Democrat Mr Obama was favoured by a four-to-one margin across the 22,500 people polled in 22 countries.
Here's a complete list of the countries included in the poll, along with the number of electoral votes in each:
• Brazil (0)
• Canada (0)
• China (0)
• Egypt (0)
• France (0)
• Germany (0)
• India (0)
• Indonesia (0)
• Italy (0)
• Kenya (0)
• Lebanon (0)
• Mexico (0)
• Nigeria (0)
• Panama (0)
• Philippines (0)
• Poland (0)
• Russia (0)
• Singapore (0)
• Turkey (0)
• United Arab Emirates (0)
• United Kingdom (0)
In case you don't get the picture, blogger Michael Asher has a map.
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