If ever there was a person in desperate need of a good high colonic (preferably administered orally), it’s James Taranto, not least for the insufferable habit of referring to himselves in the first person plural.
This week the collective Jameses hove into view already clutching at their very best pearls and fanning themselves frantically for the vapors, emitting a stream of non sequiturs, calumnies and links so baffling they hurt to read, all in order to convince us how non-u that horrible man in the White House is.
There’s been a lot of talk of late about how “cool” Barack Obama supposedly is. But people are starting to notice the man has no class.
And the Jameses’ evidence for this assertion? That Obama dares to go on holidays when poor people are suffering.
The Jameses cite John McLaughlin, who has apparently conducted focus groups with “blue collar and Catholic voters” in Pittsburgh and Cleveland who are “stuck taking depressing ‘staycations’ because they can’t afford gas and hotels“. McLaughlin (as translated by the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard) manages to come to the stunning realization that if you spend several hours with voters letting them complain about the fact that they won’t get to spend five days next to a warm, piss-filled pool in Florida this year, they will eventually blame all sorts of people including the rich, the president, the government, bureaucrats and those lazy lucky duckies the unemployed.
He found that they tend to think Mitt Romney is “too rich,” but “there is a start of resentment of the government.” In Bedard’s words, “voters were also lumping in the president’s vacation spending in with the General Services Administration’s Las Vegas scandal and federal spending for those who aren’t looking for work.”
Apparently, if Obama had any class he would stay in Washington and never venture out. Or something. I confess I am not quite clear on the Jameses’ logic here.
That matters not however because, horrifyingly, the Jameses then call on their ultimate source to tell us all how dreadfully beyond the pale Obama is. Can you see? They speak her dreaded name. There is a silence then, as if the universe paused in horror, and she comes, tentacles quivering in the eldritch light, mandibles dripping with venom, waving a mint julep (heavy on the whiskey, light on the mint and the julep) and screaming, always screaming.
Obama is also notorious for his golf outings. Blogress Ann Althouse, another swing voter (she has admitted supporting Obama in 2008), notes that George W. Bush was “savaged” for going golfing “when Americans were fighting and dying.” Michael Moore made hay of it in his 2004 agitprop film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” notwithstanding that Bush had given up golf in 2003 on the ground that it was unseemly: “I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong message.” Althouse opens her post with a story about the latest casualties in Afghanistan.
Frankly, getting Ann Althouse to comment on class is a little like bringing in Harold Shipman to fix your lumbago and, if you think that simile doesn’t make any sense, I challenge you to do better after you’ve read one of Althouse’s articles in full.
Althouse further criticizes Obama for his appearance earlier this week on the NBC show “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” in which, as Althouse notes, “Obama performs 5 minutes of a musically sexualized speech about students. . . . It’s wearing down my sense of the outlandish.” We watched part of the Fallon video and found it to be a head-scratcher. The president seems to be making a serious policy argument (in favor of extending subsidies for college debt), Fallon is sucking up to him, and somehow it’s supposed to be a comedy routine. We guess you had to be there.
The horror, the horror.
The student-debt debate has underscored another unattractive aspect of Obama’s presidential style: his tendency to be always and indiscriminately on the attack. The Washington Post’s Rosalind Helderman notes that the president not only personally attacked two Republican congressmen, Missouri’s Todd Akin and North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx, but grievously misquoted both of them.
Helderman dryly notes that “it is somewhat unusual for a sitting president to single out individual rank-and-file members of the opposition party for criticism and scorn in public speeches.” She quotes Speaker John Boehner: “Frankly, I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House.”
But is anything beneath the dignity of the Obama White House? This, after all, is the same president who has ignorantly blasted the Supreme Court and Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee. The only difference in his attacks on Akin and Foxx is that he is manifestly punching down. What next? Will he go after private citizens?
Oh ha ha, he’s doing that already, as our colleague Kim Strassel notes:
This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.” In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.”
Strassel likens Obama’s demonization to Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” which “appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust.” It’s an apt comparison, but even Nixon delegated much of his attack-doggery to his vice president, Spiro Agnew. We guess Joe Biden is too goofy for that role so Obama has to do it himself.
Responding to your political opponents and engaging in petty name calling is so déclassé. You’d think Obama would know his place. He’s just like that dreadful Richard Nixon, who we seem to recall was a Democrat.
It seems to us that Althouse is on to something in suggesting that part of the reason Obama conducts himself in such an unseemly way is that the mainstream media are largely Democratic partisans, inclined to give their man a pass. True, there are plenty of alternative media voices now, but it’s relatively easy for a leftist president to dismiss them and continue to enjoy the adulation of the so-called mainstreamers, who have also been suggesting lately that Obama is a shoo-in for re-election because he is so likable.
The McLaughlin findings point to the risk that that isn’t the case. Obama could end up losing because sycophantic media encouraged him to act in such an unseemly way.
Holy shit. I just, can’t even … Apparently the Wall Street Journal is an alternative media voice now, and the news media that has spent the last three years inserting its collective nose carefully into President McCain’s arsehole every Sunday morning is sycophantic because it had a vague realization that the participants in the Republican primaries couldn’t find their own arses with a torch and two well trained bloodhounds.
There’s a parallel in the way the media have strained to play down bad economic news. A couple of hilarious examples come from NPR’s website today: A homepage title asked: “Is Slow Growth Actually Good for the Economy?” (The actual story, which has a less risible title, pretty much answers in the negative.) And an NPR “Special Series” is titled “Looking Up: Pockets of Economic Strength.”
Remember when the economy was strong and there were pockets of poverty? In November, it is possible the voters will.
So there you go. James Taranto says that Obama has no class because poor people are dumb and smelly. Or something like that.
To which we can only respond that James Taranto is a poopy head. He doesn’t give a shit about making a logical argument, so why should we bother?
Now we’re off to watch youtube videos and think about how superior to everyone else we am.
Valdivia
Obama is all class. These guys they make me want to kick someone’s ass.
Cacti
President black and the black family are uppity.
eemom
Mrs. Sarah, your awesomeness knows no bounds.
Narcissus
Fuck Ann Althouse. Seriously.
Canuckistani Tom
Had to chuckle at this, because the chiropractor who’s office is a few doors down the street from me is Dr. Shipman
Anya
God, I hate these assholes.
Boehner was calling the President a loser because he was crass enough to be born poor to a single mother who did not have the grace to inherit money or something, just like that poster boy for success Romney. Apparently, being the son of a single mother who graduated from Harvard and became the Editor of the Harvard Law Review and the President of the United States qualifies you as a loser. Maybe being a vulture capitalist and raiding people’s retirement saving is the only thing that makes one successful. God, it’s going to be a torturous seven months.
Cacti
@Narcissus:
Even the liberal Ann Althouse thinks that President Black is uppity.
As goes Ann Althouse, so goes…the outhouse?
clayton
Back in the day I got a free subscription to Newsweek. One of their features was “The Dignity Index.” They pointed out that contrary to Taranto’s and W’s memories, he in fact did not stop golfing.
This has been know for years, and yet here I am, a commenter on a blog, having to correct a man who has a national voice on the op ed pages of a nationally read paper.
Jesus wept.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, instead of that simile, how about “Inviting Julius Streicher to your nephew’s Bar Mitzvah”?
Nutella
@Anya:
Don’t forget the way Rmoney pulled himself up by his bootstraps — the ones made of gold and stocks that his daddy gave him.
Anya
Ann Althouse is a swing voter? Okay, so I’ve never seen her website but from what I’ve read here I assumed she was your garden variety internet wingnut.
Cacti
@Nutella:
The blessed matron Ann Romney said that cashing in stocks from Pere Romney while an undergrad was “living on the edge”.
jl
” But is anything beneath the dignity of the Obama White House?”
That’s easy. The WSJ editorial page and 99 percent of the GOP.
As with the race baiting dogwhistles, I think the danger here is to get side tracked playing whack a mole with their nonsense.
You know, it does not make one damn bit of difference what Barack Obama does, or Michelle Obama, or Biden or Clinton. The GOP has some stupid attack angle already outlined for every single one of them, whether they go right, go left look up or look down or look straight ahead, or stand still, or back up. They have every scenarios worked out, ready to type and go. They have done sooooo many focus groups these last four years, on everything.
If Obama was all staycationing because of the recession, and riding a armored security bike around DC because of gas prices they would Jimmy Carter the dude. they would cry about how this shows how he has so damn ‘diminished’ the country. As in ‘My God! Does the President not understand the need to project the potential greatness and prosperity of these Great United States? Why, he wants to degrade this country. He wants us to feel miserable and poor just watching him shuffle about like a pauper.’
Edit: also, look at him, hunkered down, out of touch in the WH, won’t go anywhere ’cause he knows the country hates on him so baaaaad.
If he did not react once in awhile to all the stupid attacks, they would go after him for being passive.
I guess the James Taranto collective got a pass for the high road, since he apparently is going to get paid for this even though he did not throw in any ‘angry black man’ schtick (but then I just skimmed it).
I still think important to back up and point out that they are pumping out garbage because they got nothing, nothing and more nothing in terms of constructive proposals. and if they are careless and signal too blantently what their plans are, or don’t lie their way to the middle fast enough they might lose big in November. So all they can do is say stupid incoherent nasty garbage to distract and rile people.
Anya
@Nutella: I know. How could I forget the hardship that young Romneys faced. I mean, selling stocks just to survive? What a miserable existence.
handy
If Obama wanted to show solidarity with the working masses and be more in touch with voters, he would be clearing brush from his ranch in Walker, TX.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Narcissus:
That’s not something I would recommend.
clayton
@Anya: Early on she got into the “popularity” angle of blogging and sucked up to Glenn Reynalds — Instapudit — and it spiraled from there. She got a lot of grief for her “sexual” analysis of things like young women posing for pictures with Bill Clinton to the significance of onion rings and carrot sticks in a Hillary commercial. And yeah, it was what your inner most pr0n looker would think.
Dee Loralei
I thought the correct dimminutive for a female blogger was Blogess? When I read blogress, I thought Ogress, which made sense giving we were talking about Ann Althouse.
Also dear, Sarah, it’s no wonder they can’t find their arses with bloodhounds, my dogs (Goldens) always go for crotch sniffing, not butt sniffing. But you did say the bloodhounds were well-trained, so maybe they were trained in the art of butt sniffing? It’s a conundrum, I tells ya.
Anyone know how to change dates on an Expedia.com trip online? I couldn’t find it when I tried, And was on hold with customer service for over 30 minutes. I guess I’ll try again tomorrow. I’m too tired to deal any more tonight.
And why the hell does Delta get away with charging me $150 to change flights 4 hours after I reserved the tickets, and I’m flying first class? HUH? (Yes, I know, white peoples first world problems.)
Anya
@clayton: So is Glenn Reynalds a wingnut?
Hunter Gathers
I would have gone with Dickless Wonder, but that works as well.
clayton
@Anya: Sorry I miss-spelled the name.
I hope that link clears it up for you.
Have you ever thought about what “heh” and “indeed” mean on the internets? John Cole once stated that Glenn sounded like a muppet.
jl
Good news is I heard on the news radio that Romney is going to get out and about with the regular folks, eating burgers and slurping malts at malt shops all across this great land with the little people, joshing around with just folks, young, old and in between.
I predict hilarity will ensue, and with all the Mittergafferung, it will take more than stale farts like this WSJ effort get anyone’s attention.
Anya
@clayton: It’s that annoying doofus that makes everyone wonder about how he became a college professor despite his lack of intelligence.
Citizen_X
Shorter James Taranto: DOESN’T THAT MAN KNOW HIS PLACE?
Brachiator
Got it. So, originally the GOP tried to paint Obama as an entitled, snobbish aristocrat. Now that they have in Romney a guy who is an actual entitled, snobbish aristocrat, what to do, what to do?
Ah yes, Obama is now a classless thug, a usurper to the presidential throne that can only rightly be claimed by a Real White American(tm) like Mittens.
All this talk about Mitt pivoting to the center. These pundits are race whispering as hard as they can to the hardcore dregs of the 27 percenters.
And the campaign has barely started.
Anya
@jl: Comedians throughout the world rejoice.
Redshift
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, do these guys ever do anything but make outlandish statements that only hardcore wingnuts believe and somehow think that they’ll turn undecided voters into hardcore wingnuts?
Crusty Dem
@Dee Loralei:
Good luck. I had to do that a few months back, Expedia won’t help, you’ll have to deal with delta. Of course, that’s after you get all the confirmation numbers from Expedia first, which will take another 30-6 minute call. I won’t be using Expedia again, I don’t know why they don’t send you the necessary info in the confirmation email. Plus, true Microsoft-quality customer service.
gocart mozart
Party in the WND comments and y’all is invited.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/breitbarts-coroner-poisoned-to-death/?cat_orig=us
Clue: the main suspect is a black male who lives in a white house.
Also, related, I found this link in a mango
http://www.nachumlist.com/deadpool.htm
It’s the Obama death list that we have all been waiting for. What took them so long?
Redshift
@jl: Can’t wait for another rash of put-downs thinly disguised as “jokes” as Romney can’t control his compulsion to be the alpha-CEO of any gathering!
jl
@Redshift:
The risk is that most of the saner 73 percent will conclude that the GOP is saying: ‘We think that you are butt dumb, low grade stupid racists who will fall for anything.’
Cacti
@Brachiator:
Mitt isn’t even a “Real” White American. He belongs to a weird, non-traditional religion, and his Dad was born in a polygamist colony in Mehico.
His whiteness is really all they’ve got to work with.
jl
@Redshift: I will surely check time to time for pix of Romney trying NOT to react ‘naturally’ to gloopy cheese steaks, drippy pizza slices, parched corn on the cob, sushi, and local speciality mystery pastries and whatnot he will encounter on the campaign trail while he strives to prove he is just regular folks.
Edit: and I forgot the corn dogs and chimichangas. Need the Big Dawg on on the trail. Maybe Bill has been dieting in prep for this summer. Let’s hope.
There must be some corn dog reax data for Romney by now, from the primary. Anyone know?
jl
Still life with Mitt and corn on the cob
http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/files/2011/10/race-romney-corn-340.jpg
Hill Dweller
@jl:
Bill joined the President at a fund raiser earlier tonight. He reportedly called Romney ‘Bush on steroids’.
jl
Regular all American guys you would want to have a beer with, and not be ashamed the next day, getting ready to dig into some good all American grub. Yum yum.
You can almost taste it!
That suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure looks good, guys!
Dammit, link too long. Sorry people. If you saw Joe and Barack getting ready to dig into that all American burgery goodness, you would head out the door right now!
so sorry.
swordofdoom
Well, they’re at least going to have to change the guy-you’d- want-to-have-a-beer-with formulation, as Elder Romney doesn’t drink.
jl
There we go
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/bZ8GtoD6mXA/Obama+Biden+Eat+Lunch+Burger+Place+Arlington/Z9hpVhJ57DV
handy
@jl:
“Dare I eat this? Dare I stick it up my ass?”
Brachiator
@swordofdoom:
Well, let’s see. Romney could pitch himself as the guy you would like to buy a brewery with. Or the guy that you would want to outsource brewery workers with.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
No, that’s the old talking point. The new one is that the president and his wife are shiftless. Look at how many vacations they take, and all the exotic places they go to.
Unlike the Romneys, who do not go to exotic places.
They buy them.
HobbesAI
For the simile, how about “… is a little like bringing in Glenn Jacobs to fix your teeth”?
jl
Don’t want to go all cyborg conspiracy alert here, but I can only find one pic of Romney eating anything. But it looks like some kind of unidentifiable fragments that might be BBQ chicken. And he is just holding it near his mouth with this blank look on his face.
Plenty of pics of Obama and Joe pounding down the grub. And the GOP primary squad is seen gulping down campaign grub, notoriously corn dogs.
But, not Romney. Coincidence? I think not
Actually, no pics of Newt eating any campaign grub, but, c’mon, who would take a pic like that? Or maybe film not fast enough to capture it.
bago
My shubbie will always be low poly. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.wikia.com/quake/images/f/f3/Shub-Niggurath.JPG&imgrefurl=http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Shub-Niggurath's_Pit&h=382&w=301&sz=15&tbnid=42dx1DBRGVG6sM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=78&zoom=1&docid=aQQnrtddRAfc8M&sa=X&ei=ZUWeT_bzNdPYiAK0l7mJAQ&ved=0CDgQ9QEwAw&dur=2605
the fugitive uterus
you know who ain’t got no fucking class? George Fucking W. Bush, that’s who.
the fugitive uterus
@jl: now you got me thinking – where ARE the corndog shots?? hmmmm
Rafer Janders
@swordofdoom:
Hey, Bush was an alcoholic who didn’t drink, and they didn’t bother to change the formulation for him — in fact, they came up with it.
kay
I’m fascinated by “blue collar and Catholic”.
Idiot pundits have been beating Democrats over the head with “white working class” forever, and of course a law professor-NY Times bloggingheads personality is the go to gal there, but have they always added “Catholic”?
Omnes Omnibus
Co-equal branches. Look it up. Although, to be fair, even coprophagic microorganisms are punching down when they criticize Akin and Foxx, so I guess that sentence doesn’t really say much.
xian
@jl: That attack for every angle thing is true, and the media falls for it repeatedly.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Did we really need the word “blogress”? Why did we need to genderfy blogger?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
I can do one better – it’s like bringing George W Bush and Dick Cheney in to fix your country.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Hell, it shouldn’t even be done frivolously. Or, frankly, even considered. (FYWP)
Dr. Squid
@Dee Loralei: Is that only because “dipshitress” isn’t a word?
JFitz
Like manna from internet heaven, a post mocking Althouse. I asked for it the other day, and Sarah delivered. Thank you, more please.
mdhenshaw
@clayton: I love the fact you think Newsweek is a great source for news.
melanerpes
After reading this, I completely understand Taranto’s motivation for tweeting a link for you.
Renaissance Nerd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): pronounce it “ble-ogress.” It’s an hilarious play on words, see she’s an ogress who blogs! Naturally it’s ok to use misogynistic terms for her since she doesn’t march in goose-step with the rest of the fascist brigades who for some reason call themselves progressives.
Trochilus
@Anya:
So . . . your admitted lack of knowledge, forms the basis for your opinion about Ann Althouse — i.e., that she is “your garden variety internet wingnut.”
How sad.
pat
I use Expedia all the time. I printed an itinerary that includes the expedia itinerary number, plus confermation codes for all the airlines that the trip is booked with. And I recall that the website allows you to look up your trip and also has a place where you can change your flight.
Andrew
A legitimate paper writing in the formal should absolutely be using the third person. The multiple people who work on the column also justifies using the word “we.” You attack his correct grammar, then pretend that you don’t understand what he is writing about? The left has been whining about Romney’s cars and houses for months now. Complaining about Obama’s spending is a more than justified response BECAUSE HE IS TRAVELING ON TAX DOLLARS. How do you readers possibly bother with this drivel? This article doesn’t make any points. You just claim Taranto is wrong, yet offer no rebuttles.
RalfW
Wow. I didn’t know Althouse was as old and clueless as my dad (ie: 82 and prone to outbursts during SNL’s Weekend Update).
RalfW
@Dee Loralei:
Delta (and the other majors) let you cancel your purchase for 24 hours with NO penalty! (or, with Delta, 24 hours starting at midnight of the day you buy, so if you buy in the afternoon Sunday, you have till midnight Delta time Monday to cancel).
Then just repurchase — assuming the price you want didn’t go away in the 4 hours or whatev.
It’s here for Delta. Note: this only works for e-tickets bought direct from Delta.
I’ve used is several times on Delta and once on Southwest. Saved money or travel headache more than once.
Jebediah
@Anya:
I’m guessing that for the Rmoneys, “survive” does not mean what it means for the typical struggling student. How many times a week do you think they ate Top Ramen, or $1 frozen burritos?
I’m sure it was similar to the “hardship” of living in a Paris mansion.