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You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2008 / Today’s Idiocy

Today’s Idiocy

by | 49 Comments

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Is it November yet:

After losing the debate tonight, Obama gave Hillary the finger today. I don’t know if he intended to do that hand gesture in his pause while talking about Hillary, but it is obvious the crowd thought it was an intentional raising of the middle finger.

Another take:

I cannot believe that the official campaign for Barack Obama put this video on YouTube to show off the candidate. 1) His language and behavior on this video are juvenile, and 2) He flips off Hillary Clinton in the video.

For fun, try to guess which one of the above descriptions is from Red State, and which one if from Larry Johnson’s House o’ Crazy.

At any rate, it is pretty clear to me he was just scratching himself, but I will throw this out there- if anyone can prove that he actually did give the middle finger to Hillary Clinton, it is worth 100 dollars to the campaign from me.

Obama’s campaign, that is. If anyone deserves to be given the finger, it is Hillary Clinton and her supporters.

*** Update ***

From the comments, this side view of Obama “flipping off” Hillary:

Notice something problematic? Like a few extra fingers? What a total joke.

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  2. 2.

    bjd

    If you play the video backwards you’ll see Obama grabbing his crotch and screaming eat this bitch.
    These people are seriously deranged.

  3. 3.

    cleek

    it is obvious the crowd thought it was an intentional raising of the middle finger

    right. it could have had anything to do with the fact that he had just said “Senator Clinton was in her element”.

  5. 5.

    jenniebee

    Does anybody else remember the general election debate between George H. W. Bush, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton when, while answering a question about the drug problem, GHWB brought his finger to his nose and sniffed like he was doing blow?

    Good times.

  6. 6.

    jack fate

    Kill me.

    The King of Rude put it right down the middle, imo:

    What Barack Obama Wanted to Say Last Night But Wouldn’t
    […]
    And, even when given a low inside curve ball, he refused to swing. Asked to comment on Clinton’s Bosnia sniper fire lie, Obama balked: “But look, the fact of the matter is, is that both of us are working as hard as we can to make sure that we’re delivering a message to the American people about what we would do as president. Sometimes that message is going to be imperfectly delivered, because we are recorded every minute of every day. And I think Senator Clinton deserves, you know, the right to make some errors once in a while.”
    […]
    You gotta think that Obama wished he had his answer back on whether Clinton had been “truthful about her past” and that he had said, “For seven and a half years, we’ve had a motherfucker in the White House who has used every word under the sun to avoid the word ‘lie.’ The Bush administration has said that things were ‘misstatements’ or were the fault of someone other than the speaker or just outright denying they had said something they had said. What Senator Clinton said was a lie. It wasn’t just a lie she told once. It was a lie she told repeatedly, a lie her husband re-told just the other day. If I said to you, ‘I can shoot rainbows out of my ass,’ and then you said to me, ‘Senator Obama, fire my way,’ and all you got was a face full of shit with no pot of gold at the end, well, then I’d be a liar, wouldn’t I? Oh, but, fuck, I could just say, ‘Did I say “rainbows”? I meant “turds.” I must need some sleep.’

    “And Senator Clinton wants to keep talking about how untested I am, how un-vetted, how people are gonna dig up shit on me, that somehow it’s good that there’s all this shit out there about her already, that it gives the Republican fuckbags nothing to talk about. Are you fuckin’ serious? Every year corporate America sells us the same shit in a different package, tellin’ us it’s better, shinier shit, and we Americans, we go out and buy that same old shit in the new package and convince ourselves it’s something new. The GOP ain’t gonna not bring up Travelgate or other shit just because they’ve done it before.

    “Instead, they’re gonna say, ‘Hey, Hillary Clinton said she was shot at when she wasn’t. Oh, and, fuck, remember when she said she couldn’t find files and then she did? John McCain was a POW. Who you gonna vote for?’ So, yeah, yeah, keep on, Hillary, with that bullshit about people-I-know, keep tryin’ to call me a San Francisco faggot liberal or an America-hating nigger churchgoer. Man, the right wing wants you so bad that they’ve been sharpening their knives and cleaning their guns and those motherfuckers are jonesing for you like a junkie’s arm holes start to bleed when he sees a needle.”

  10. 10.

    WWB

    Obviously *proving* anything is impossible, but it’s not a stretch to read this as a juvenile stunt for the audience. Without the grin afterward, I’d probably agree it was just a scratch. Maybe that wasn’t his intention at first, but his and the audience’s reaction shows they both knew exactly what had transpired.

  11. 11.

    bjd

    Dug Jay,
    Yea, that was funny too, the god damn king and queen of whine calling Obama out for whining. What a joke.

  12. 12.

    Shinobi

    I’m sorry, but I think every middle finger in this country should be raised in Hillary Clinton’s honor right now.

    The more I watch clips from that debate and the more I think about it the more it pisses me off. The debate was so CLEARLY slanted in her favor. Every attempt was made to make her come off looking good. (Because of course the average American wouldn’t notice that one of the moderators of the debate had close ties to the Clinton family. Instead lets talk about Obama’s lose acquaintance with a crazy hippie.) Frankly, I find it insulting.

    Seriously, I would like to surgically add more hands to my body just so I could flick Hillary Clinton off more effectively. She’s making my gender look bad.

    (Also, did anyone see her super cheap publicity stunt on the Colbert Report? Seriously, my eyes cannot roll far enough back in my head.)

  13. 13.

    ethans mom

    House o’ Crazy is right–those folks are frickin’ insane. I’ve love Obama to pull a Seinfeld–it wasn’t a flip, it was a scratch; no flip, scratch.

  14. 14.

    Dreggas

    Quite frankly if he gave her the finger it would increase my willingness to vote for him. Why? Because the simple fact is that I, too, want to flip her off and often do vicariously when I flip off my TV.

  16. 16.

    A.Political

    “Obama’s campaign, that is. If anyone deserves to be told to be given the finger, it is Hillary Clinton and her supporters.”
    —

    Nice one, that had me laughing, you had me duped before I read that final sentence.

  17. 17.

    Morat20

    I noticed Talk Left put it up. Jeralyn weighs in on the “just a scratch side” (but it would be irresponsible NOT to speculate), but the commentators are highly convinced it was flipping the bird.

    Which means, from a quick survey, that the commentators at Red State are saner than those at Talk Left. After all, at Red State, a surprising number complained that this was wasting valuable page space.

  20. 20.

    jake

    I don’t know if he intended to do that hand gesture in his pause while talking about Hillary, but it is obvious the crowd thought it was an intentional raising of the middle finger.

    Ah. So if I think people on TV think a certain thing then the thoughts I think they’re thinking must somehow be a reflection the thoughts of the … um …

    Well anyways, he drinks orange juice!

    The buzzards hovering around Clinton HQ must be getting mighty impatient.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    They’re also dissecting Jay-Z’s Dirt on your Shoulder lyrics for added misogyny against Hillary.

    Need to get the old white women out for some pick up ball to know where that shit comes from.

  22. 22.

    Patrick

    I watched this all this a.m., and your view (camera angle) clears up the whole issue.

    I ask every doubter dare anyone to reach up to their cheekbone with their middle finger and scratch. The grapping motion causes the index and ring finger to curl, but the index finger stays straight.

    So now I think it was just a coincidence. But you know what, I STILL LOVE THE SYMBOLISM.

  23. 23.

    Patrick

    Well that was badly edited.

    I ask every doubter to reach up to their cheekbone with their middle finger and scratch. The grapping motion causes the index and ring finger to curl, but the index finger stays straight. From the front it looks like the finger, not so much from the side.

  25. 25.

    Tsulagi

    Yeah, I saw that Talk about no class: Barack Obama gives Hillary the middle finger post by Erick yesterday, and the comments. You just gotta laugh.

    Of course on RedState they’re absolutely certain they should be taken as the “serious adults.” On RS, serious adults=commander guys of their own short busses.

  27. 27.

    binzinerator

    Just more manufactured bullshit from the wingers. These people absolutely need to keep the public’s attention on the inconsequential and the petty, s.o.p. for republican politics of personality.

  28. 28.

    Pug

    I’m guessing the first quote came from Larry Johnson’s House of Loons because it mentioned that Obama “lost the debate”. They are crazier than Red State now.

  30. 30.

    John Cole

    Well, as usual I was wrong.

    That is what is so depressing. You simply can not tell the difference between MYDD, RED STATE, Taylor Marsh, Talk Left and whatever anymore.

    I likd it better when I was the batshit crazy one.

  31. 31.

    Angryflower

    Cleek

    sed -i is way faster.

    Let me get this straight – the right wing is atwitter over someone giving *Hillary* the finger?

    OK then.

  32. 32.

    Tom Hilton

    You know, if Obama intentionally made it look like he was flipping off Clinton while not actually doing so (and making sure that was apparent from another angle) just so there would be this inane hysteria which would be immediately debunked–well, if he actually did that, then the man is a god.

  33. 33.

    JLW

    There’s a new video up on the Obama website called “Obama takes on McCain in Erie PA” that shows him scratching his forehead in the same way.

  34. 34.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    Oh for FUCK’S sake.

    We’re1 not seriously getting our panties in a bunch over this, are we? Surely this kind of shit is down in the noise, below phantom snipers and racist pastors, right? We’re not really devoting otherwise productive brain cells to this nonsense?

    Wake me after November, please.

    1. By “we”, I don’t mean “we”, I mean “those other idiots who couldn’t distinguish between an actual constitutional crisis and a hole in the ground cavity where their brains used to be.”

  35. 35.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    On David Gregory’s show on MSNBC he played video of Hillary making comments about Obama and his supporters and I noticed that she pauses and touches her left check with what appears to be her middle finger just like Obama did. The video is played between the 45th and 48th minute of the show.

    I’m not saying Clinton is doing anything but touching her face for a second. Obama touches his face. Michelle Obama points. Bill Clinton points and touches his ear.

    Just mannerisms.

  36. 36.

    tjproudamerican

    Has anybody heard from Paul McCartney? Maybe Obama is telling us “Paul is dead.”

  37. 37.

    Beej

    And here we all are, doing exactly what the Repugs and Hillary”s camp want us to do: focusing on this crap instead of the issues that really matter. Can the world now move on?

  38. 38.

    Brendan

    Nice find of the side shot. Kudos to whomever did that.

    I thought it was just scratching, and then I looked closer at the original vid and was sure that his index finger was extended, too, but it seemed pointless to engage with the wingnuts on this one. However, a quick picture is nice to have to thrust in their faces.

    I give it thirty more minutes before “citizen journalists” “prove” [a] it was Photoshopped AND [b] the picture was not taken at the same time AND [c] or the same place.

  39. 39.

    John Redworth

    I read through the thoughtful and well crafted responses on LJ’s site, which leads me to believe that these people of worship at the alter of Hillary are batshit crazy. Saying they were not going to vote or that they were quitting the DNC because Obama got the nom is not only short sighted but really makes one wonder about the intelligence behind this brooding group of good-doers.

    Larry Johnson is a big surprise too… I didn’t know he got that involved in politics but then again, dressing up like Grandmama for a few years will lead you to do stupid and crazy things.

  40. 40.

    Jack H.

    Did anyone notice that about a minute before ‘the finger’ he gave ‘the pinky’?! And about a minute and a half after … that most vile of hand gestures …. the dreaded INDEX FINGER! Why is FOX and CNN not playing this 24/7?? OMG his campaign is dead in the water!! Also if you play the speech backwards you can hear “god damn America” over and over again. …. (wonder how many will actually try that?)

    God help America

  41. 41.

    Evilbeard

    Worse than the obscene “flipping the bird” this new evidence shows instead that Obama was showing the Freemason handsign “Will no one rid me of this troublesome bitch?”

  42. 42.

    scarshapedstar

    Remember when Captain Ed was just mildly crazy, but had a shred of integrity, and was still worth reading?

    To quote Abu Gonzales, Bradley Schlozman, and Monica Goodling: I don’t recall.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. […] Here’s a list of a cross section of sites commenting on this “issue” so far. Most sites that contend he was giving the finger are pro-Clinton and Republican sites (but then pro-Obama sites would deny it even if it proved to be true). Note that some bloggers on the left and right are skeptical: The Democratic Daily The Campaign Spot Balloon Juice Taylor Marsh Ed Morrissey Red State No Quarter Don Surber Corrente Talk Left (a must read pro-Clinton blog that seriously analyzes issues and dismisses the allegation) No More Mister Nice Blog The Divine Democrat Chicago Ray […]

  3. […] It just took a quick glance at a couple of videos of Obama speaking to confirm that he often scratches his face when he speaks. For example, check out the videos here and here. Sure you could imagine that he was flipping off Clinton from the angle shown, but it is far more likely he was repeating what appears to be a frequent, and possibly subconscious gesture while speaking. John Cole demonstrates how innocent the act was by showing a picture from a different angle: […]

  6. […] I don’t want to go too deep in the psycho-babble, but I think it is not an unreasonable claim to state that many people who found themselves to be die-hard Clinton supporters identified personally with Clinton. For many of the feminists and older women who made up Hillary’s unwavering core of support, a rejection of Hillary was a rejection of themselves- they saw Hillary being subjected to the kind of abuse that they themselves have suffered, they identified with the concept of the glass ceiling and identified with much of the sexism they perceived. They saw things that I simply would not see (not that example, as even I could pick out what was offfensive there, but check the whole archives and surely you will see some things you did not pick up), because of who they are and what they personally have experienced. In short, when Hillary lost, or they listened to some jackass on CNN debate whether it was appropriate to call Hillary a bitch, it was a personal loss or as if they had personally been called a bitch. When some idiot with a website named Balloon Juice said something nasty about Hillary, it was perceived as an attack on them. When the nonsense about Obama flipping off Hillary surfaced, it was perceived as yet another slight against the individual Clinton supporter- “He flipped me off!” […]

  7. […] Hugh’s link, in case you were interested, is to the video the Hillary dead-enders and PUMA’s watched 1000 times to convince themselves that Obama gave Hillary the finger. This video: […]