Sometimes Wonkette really nails things:
The most humiliating moment in our national history — “America’s Waterloo,” they called it — occurred when President Obama threw that pitch to Albert Pujols like a total sally. Compounding the embarrassment was the pair of high-waisted, pouffy jeans he wore, which will be forever associated with deficit-inflating naifs as surely as a cardigan says “Jimmy Carter.”
jenniebee
Clicked the link, looked at the pic.
So… I know it’s a scandal if the Prez looks like he’s checking out a woman’s ass. How big a scandal is it if I (a woman) check out the Prez’s ass?
Cause baby got back.
Hunter Gathers
Is he back to being the black Jimmy Carter now? I was under the assumption that he was black Adolf Hitler. Or black Mao. Or black Stalin. Those tricksy conservatives keep changing crap on me. Wake me when he’s black Hitler again.
gnomedad
OT, don’t recall Frank Rich’s latest being mentioned here, but it’s pretty good: They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do .
Zifnab
@Hunter Gathers:
Black Jimmy Carter is worse. In four years, Jimmy Carter single-handedly destroyed our country and laid the foundation for every domestic and foreign tragedy that would occur in the next 30 years. Only through the divine intervention of Ronald Reagen was our country spared.
You should know all this. It’s in the Bible.
matoko_chan
Well……Obama already came out against sagging, the true masculine way to wear jeans.
I bet Rush and the rest of the puffy Anger-Whiggas display vast quantities (and i do mean vast) of plumbers crack above their macho-sag jeans.
Obviously AllahP is a sagger. I wonder whose prison bitch he is?
Michelle Malkin’s?
chopper
Sometimes Wonkette really nails things
heh.
cosanostradamus
.
I miss Walter Cronkite already.
.
jibeaux
Those are mom jeans? They look like totally normal jeans to me. As a suburban resident & mom, my opinion is that mom jeans, at a minimum, have front pleats. Tapering to the ankle and faded color are optional, but if you don’t have the front pleats you’re on fashion’s cutting edge as far as I’m concerned.
guster
@Zifnab: That made me laugh.
NonyNony
@Hunter Gathers:
I don’t think you quite understand Obama’s quantum nature. His natural state is to exist in a wave-like state that is all of these things at the same time. It is only when the observer needs to make a particular point about the man that the Obama-wave collapses into an observable state.
It’s not just his political philosophy either – which runs the gamut of Hitleresque Fascism to Chamberlinesque Accomodationism to Maoist Commuism to Stalinist Totalitarianism and just about everything else in between. It also applies to his race (“is he black, white, or “halfrican”), his religion (“radical black evangelical Christianity, radical black Muslim, or radical atheist anti-Christ”), and his personal characteristics (“hypnotic Svengali whose personal charisma masks his hidden agenda or poor-spoken rube who needs to sound out the letters on a teleprompter to make a decent speech?”)
The waveform holds all possibilities – truly a scientific wonder!
Wossname
matoko chan, you are so correct. I used to teach in a youth corrections facility. When we told the kids what sagging meant the pants went up like a flag at a tea party. Since I’m now at a public school I can’t tell the kids the real thing without getting fired.
Violet
Meredith Viera asked him about the jeans controversy on the Today Show this morning. He told her they were comfortable, he’s not into fashion, and people can basically eff off if they don’t like it. I almost cheered.
The msm and bobbleheaded pundits focus on ridiculous things like Shrub’s manly codpiece and Obama’s dad jeans. Maybe they should try doing a little investigative journalism. You know, just to mix things up a bit.
Hunter Gathers
@Zifnab: HHHHmmm, I don’t remember Saint Ronnie in the Bible. Maybe it’s in that crazy last chapter, the one that resembles a cheezy late night movie you might watch on Sci Fi.
Anoniminous
This is an attempt to avoid, obfuscate, bypass, and side step THE controversy of the Obama presidency.
I.e., to whit, ipso facto, and thus:
Where’s his birth certificate?
Until this pressing question is answered I refuse to be outraged by any thing less.
matoko_chan
@Nonynony
wow….awesomesauce!
tyvm.
The true meaning of Obama.
Does this mean the
conservativescrypto-neanderthals finally understand quantum field theory?aimai
Wave form is right. I mean, if he’s nattilly dressed we’re going to hear all about the cost of his jeans, like we did the cost of Michelle’s sneakers and he’ll be compared to “fancy” guy Harold Ford, Pimps, etc… If he dresses down he’ll be called “ghetto trash” like those poor kids. What the f? is left, really?
I wish he’d told MV “what, did those jeans make my ass look fat? Get a fucking life.”
aimai
handy
Isn’t Wonkette supposed to be one of the “liberals” in the media? And yet this is just all vacuous nonsense. God, I love me some MSM “liberals.”
BrianD
From the picture it appears Obama is left-handed. Is he?
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
So what you’re saying is that Obama has succeeded in achieving the politician’s ultimate goal of being all things to all people? It just seems that he’s done it a bit too well, so that he’s not just all of the good things that his supporters want but also all of the bad things his detractors hate. That’s a remarkable achievement.
Napoleon
@BrianD:
Yes
SGEW
@BrianD: Yep.
Tsulagi
@BrianD: Yes, it’s the mark of Satan.
Senyordave
Just so there is no confusion, the actual contoversy about the Obama birth certificate has nothing to do with the question of his eligibility to be president. The true question is where is the proof that he is a human. Obviously, Barack Obama is the antichrist, the wingnuts just want to be able to show the rest of the world.
Violet
@BrianD:
Yeah, he’s left-handed. And strangely, a lot of our presidents have been. I think the last four or five for sure. Both Obama and McCain are left-handed, so either way we were getting another leftie as pres.
Edit – I stand corrected. Shrub was right handed. His dad was a leftie.
SGEW
@Tsulagi: Literally sinister.
Napoleon
@Violet:
Violet said “And strangely, a lot of our presidents have been. I think the last four or five for sure.”
As a lefty I have to correct you. Dubbya was not so don’t blame him on us.
David
Don’t think that the puffy, high-waisted pants weren’t carefully chosen by a stylist.
I think he should gone with the sagging, baggy jeans and boxers.
LD50
He’s history’s greatest monster!
Dennis-SGMM
@Violet:
Yes, but he could talk out of both sides of his mouth.
Zifnab
@Hunter Gathers: What are you talking about? There’s the story about how Saint Ronald entered the Lion’s Den and pacified the Screen Actor’s Guild, how he drove off the Soviets and conquered Jericoh, and the one were he drove all the welfare queens out of the Temple. He plays a feature role in every story except the one about King David Sanford sleeping with his general’s Argentinian wife.
jenniebee
Just to make sure I understand this: Sarah Palin went on that godawful shopping spree and she was Jes’ Real Folks. The knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag she bought for her five-year-old was absolute proof that she was “of the heartland” and not some kind of elite poseur.
Obama’s jeans, on the other hand, offend the sensibilities of “celebrity fashionistas.” Which makes the baby Jeebus cry in his dijon mustard. Or something.
Brick Oven Bill
Wonkette makes a pretty good point, but misses the bigger picture.
To see the pitching arrangement is to see into the essence of Obama. The President threw from the mound, allowing the cameras to capture the image of a male pitching. But then Pujols was catching from in front of home plate, to make up for the fact that the President throws like a girl.
If the President were a real man, he would have set up a girl’s pitching station in front of the mound, threw from there, and allowed those pictures to be taken.
SGEW
The manly man pundits are just upset that we’ve gone from this guy to this guy.
Revenge of the nerds, indeed.
LD50
@Hunter Gathers: Can we call him the Black Pol Pot? I don’t think that one’s been tried out yet.
CapMidnight
@David:
and keep them up with flag lapel pins
Joe
@SGEW
I can just picture Bill Kristol running a chainsaw. If he runs it like he gives political advice there will be limbs everywhere…human limbs.
Woody
Well, speaking as a former (50 years previous) Little League 2nd baseman/centerfielder, it was a lame ‘pitch.’
But you cannot doubt he has got a decent outside shot (wayyyy better than any I ever tried).
The jeans? De gustibus, imho…
Dennis-SGMM
@LD50:
The birfers should work to prove that Obama is actually the lovechild of Idi Amin Dada.
matoko_chan
ZOMG! AllahP is a RACIST!
steatopygia
LD50
@Dennis-SGMM: Yeah, ‘the Black Idi Amin’ doesn’t exactly work.
Blue Raven
The “prison bitch” story has to my understanding been debunked in favor of “they don’t exactly have tailors in stir.” Or so my FIL the teacher in the CA penal system insists. But the value of the concept to reduce the number of times I have to see someome’s boxers is high.
John S.
I think you meant to say “what Wonkette says is technically true but collectively nonsense”.
You are a bad wingnut, BOB, for not properly regurgitating talking points. You will be assessed ten wingnut demerits, which will put you further from that life-size poster of captain Sullenberger that you were saving up for.
jenniebee
Allahpundit is taking credit for starting this kerfluffle – precious comments, as always:
There are several other commenters who rejoice that they’re too tall and slim to wear jeans like Barack “too skinny to be president?” Obama’s. One dodges the opportunity to call the President fat and zeroes in on the denim, which he says is “too thin” (not sure how he figured that – the drape and the welting in the seams look to me like standard Gap/Old Navy/Levis fare). And this is like, totally relevant because:
Which begs the question:
Indeed.
I especially like this one. It’s like that old “the food here is terrible, and such small portions!” joke:
but I think my favorite:
I suppose the metajoke’s on us.
kay
I don’t understand the jeans critique. They’re fine. I’m not sure what people expected him to wear.
He looks like every other almost-fifty year old dad. Well, he looks better than a lot of fifty year old dads, because he’s not fat.
IMO President Bush looked a little silly in the tight pants and cowboy boots. Obama dresses like a dad.
What kind of fathers do conservatives have, anyway, and what are they wearing? If the local fashion scene is any indication, they’re wearing huge multi-pocketed shorts and t-shirts with colorful writing on them.
Conservative men here dress like enormous toddlers.
I hope Obama isn’t taking their fashion advice.
Ash
Meredith Viera gets to talk to the freaking President of the United States, and she……asks him about jeans?
WHAT THE MOTHERFREAKING HELL LADY?
LD50
Obama hasn’t taken the advice of the wingnuts on anything else, so I doubt he’ll start with this.
AkaDad
Since a black man occupying the white House is terrifying, Obama is clearly the black Osama bin-Laden.
vacuumslayer
Erm, what do they want Obama to wear? Emo skinny jeans? Bootcut jeans? His jeans looked like plain old straight-leg jeans to me…and anyone who knows ANYTHING about fashion knows that they never go out of style.
Violet
@Ash:
She asked him a lot of stuff about topics like healthcare, the hostage in Afghanistan, etc. This seemed to be sort of a throwaway question. It was while they were walking, rather than in the official sit down interview.
Not that that justifies it. But in her defense, she did ask him other questions.
Ash Can
@handy:
It’s snark. That it’s all just vacuous nonsense is the point.
@kay:
It’s Wingnutese for “I don’t like Barack Obama.”
Ash
@Violet: Ahhh, ok, figures that this stupid ass clip would be the only one getting play anywhere.
matoko_chan
jeanniebee, AllahP is obviously a sagger.
You would think by now that the old white guy party would hit the UD once inna while.
I guess they learned nothing from that whole teabagging disaster.
gex
@Violet: Which just points out that they’re funneling the wingnut memes into the MSM. I’m sure the “serious” questions were also framed in wingnutty ways. This is her “tell”.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
We can’t expect America to win against its foes
With no one in the White House who can really
tap his toeshit the strike zone.You know, I have to agree with BoB on this, in a way. The “essence” of a presidency is in the little things, really. Like the way that a president hangs around a first grade classroom for twenty minutes after being told that “the country is under attack,” and the way he gives lame-ass excuses for it later. Or the way that, when a major hurricane is hitting the Gulf Coast, he flies to Arizona for a birthday party (and the way he makes lame-ass excuses for it later). Or maybe the essence is in the fact that, while neither attacks on American soil or natural disasters taking out a major US city are the sort of things that should make a real deciderer leap into action, keeping Terri Schaivo on a feeding tube totally was.
So the “essence” of Obama is that he’s a black guy who doesn’t care what jeans he wears to the ball park and who can throw a ball 55 feet, but not 60, and this totally shows that he’s no Curt Schilling (which we already knew, of course). I suppose that if you don’t have the Sack of Rome by the Goths to analyze, you might as well content yourself with the death of a mouse from cancer.
SGEW
Wait . . . how can we have a whole thread about politics and blue jeans without talking about George Will’s anti-denim Burkean bell jihad?
So true, so sublime. Edmund Burke frowned upon the blue jeans and the tawdry drapery of discontent! Where is the plumage, the beautiful plumage?
kay
@Ash Can:
I think he dresses like a grown-up. It’s personal preference, and surely men can wear anything they want to wear, but I’d prefer it if they’d stop dressing like kindergartners.
It’s cute when they’re five. It’s horrible when they’re fifty.
bago
I think the real question to ask is this: Is DougJ really a Matthew Gallant construction?
Ash Can
@kay: Definitely. Obama’s casual wardrobe says “no middle-age crisis here” loud and clear. Seeing us older folks in teenager garb can be quite the eye-burning experience, especially when the styles in question don’t even look good on the teenagers.
John S.
This is an axiom I have been working on polishing lately.
There are certain behaviors that when engaged in by a person of a certain age group is perceived in a positive way, but when engaged in by a person of a different age group is perceived in a very negative way.
Case in point: It’s adorable when a 2 year-old tears off their clothing and begins streaking throughout a house full of people. If a 50 year-old tears off their clothing and begins streaking throughout a house full of people, not so much.
Cyrus
@John S.:
How about a 22-year-old? I ask only out of curiosity.
asiangrrlMN
They wanna show Obama’s ass in jeans, it’s fine by me.
RodeoBob
To the best of my knowledge, the “sagging” jeans explanation is not “prison-bitch”. “bad tailor” comes close, but misses one key element that makes it “cool” to the kids:
Prisoners on suicide watch, as well as those with extremely violent tendancies aren’t allowed to wear belts or have shoelaces. Suicidal patients strangle themselves, violent folks strangle others. No belt + prison issue pants = sag, and thus the sag was a sign that you were a very violent prisoner. Or something along those lines.
b-psycho
@Brick Oven Bill: Do you honestly give a fuck whether or not the president can throw a baseball?
matoko_chan
Rodeobob, UD sees all, knows all.
6. sagging 39 up, 71 down
The way I’ve heard it is that sagging was a way for guys in prison to show that they had a gang behind them, or that they were in charge of a large group of inmates. It was like saying “here’s my ass, go ahead, TRY to rape me.”
That guy wears his pants around his knees cause he knows someone’s always got his back.
matoko_chan
The prison bitch explanation had way more ups.
The Urban Dictionary is definition by democracy.
;)
matoko_chan
n/e ways AllahP is definitely a sagger.
He’s Malkin’s biyotch and shez really a man.
Brick Oven Bill
I honestly don’t give a fuck about baseball pitches b-pyscho, but it is fun watching the President and his minders get bent out of shape on the issue. But he really threw a bad pitch.
He should have practiced before throwing that pitch in public. Why did he not practice? Or did he practice, and knew he sucked, and went out anyway? Or did he choke? What is this emblematic of?
Joe the Plumber would have practiced. This I know. Joe was practicing ball with his kid in his front yard when Obama came to his neighborhood to patronize Joe, but instead spilled the beans before Joe’s iron gaze.
Joe will get a beer endorsement one of these days. And then Obama will raise his taxes. Proving all the smart people were wrong for mocking Joe, which is pretty rich. And that Joe is prescient.
Maybe they could show Joe throwing a strike on the beer can. This beer I would buy. They could do TV commercials.
les
Jeebus, BOB, you might actually look at the places that are bent out of shape–they’re all wingnuts or your intellectual equivalent, the pres is not concerned. Stupid and illogical is no way to go through life, son.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Brick Oven Bill: Well played my man. On balance you have been a good addition to the comments on this site. Keep up the good work. I mean that. Seriously.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
No. Bill Clinton pretty much had that nailed.
A lot of this is the GOP returning to that old time religion. The old lie was that Bill Clinton was not the legitimate president because he was a draft-dodging white trash hillbilly skirt chaser. But they couldn’t dent his approval rating with a thousand bimbo eruptions.
They are trying a variation of the old theme with Obama because they don’t have the guts to just declare that they believe in a one-party political system ruled by white male Republicans.
John S.
LOL
Well, I suppose the male house guests would be delighted with a nubile 22 year-old woman streaking naked through the party, although I think overall it would be deemed highly inappropriate.
Keith G
@Brick Oven Bill: Click the link, ijit.
Mentis Fugit
Could you imagine President McCain throwing out the first pitch, or whatever you Americans call it?
With his waistband somewhere around the armpits…
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
First off, he threw a bad pitch in comparison with, let’s say, Papelbon (of course, Papelbon doesn’t take the mound encased in Kevlar). And professional pitchers occasionally throw bad pitches as well, it happens. As for what it’s “emblematic of”… if this cigar isn’t just a cigar to you, it says more about you than it does about him. I certainly hope he didn’t take time away from work to go into spring training. It’s a ceremonial first pitch and he shows up for the ceremony and does his thing and then lets the professionals do their job and play the game.
If you really must press the issue and imagine that the President knew that he would probably throw a bad pitch but went out anyway even though he thought he might get criticized for his performance… around here, we call that gumption.