I swear to ALLAH, this guy is just the gift that keeps giving:
Mitt Romney mistakenly confused the words “Sikh” and “sheik” at a fundraiser here Tuesday night when he offered his condolences to the victims of last weekend’s shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee correctly spoke of the Sikh religion earlier in the day when he observed a moment of silence at a campaign event in Illinois. But at the Iowa fundraiser, he instead talked about the “sheik temple” and the “sheik people.” Sheik is an Arabic honorific, whereas Sikh is a religion with roots in South Asia.
Palin with testicles.
dr. bloor
[Insert obvious “fixed that for you” joke here]
Olivia
Well, sheesh, there is an H in it. What’s he supposed to do with the damn H?
the Conster
Get a brain, moran!
Steve
Sometimes people call Romney a moron instead of a Mormon. What’s your point?
buckyblue
Clark Griswold running for Prez.
Cassidy
@buckyblue: Hey, hey, hey…Clark was a nice, well meaning guy who just wanted to make everyone happy.
Wag
Mitt may have testicles, but Palin was a lot ballsier.
Just as wrong, mind you, but Palin was definitely tougher than Mitt.
bago
This guy made money internationally?
divF
re: title – not at the top of my list , but still fine stuff from Frank Zappa. I’m more a sixties early 70’s Zappa guy, plus a few classic lyrics from later in the 70’s (see “Penguin in Bondage”.)
Linda Featheringill
You guys ought to just back off on the Romney criticism. He might be president.
:-)
NotMax
Somebody told me Mitt hasn’t had testicles for 10 years.
ant
sure says a lot about the people he is around all day.
nobody’s been using the term “Sikh” in the rmoney headquarters lately?
it’s the little things that can say a lot about a person.
Brian S
I’m in a twitter “discussion” with someone who thinks the WaPo is being unfair reporting on this because probably 90% of the population doesn’t know the difference either. Even if he’s right, shouldn’t a major party presidential nominee be better informed on that than 90% of the population?
salacious crumb
Who cares what Romney thinks? no one, and not even liberals give a shit about what happened to the victims in Wisconsin. I know everything about the white victims in the Aurora massacre, one was an aspiring reporter, one was hero for saving his girlfriend, one was a loving boyfriend, but nothing about the brown victims, except for their names.
When there is this kind of apathy towards minority victims, is it all that surprising that Mittens can botch up something like this so casually? what do you think the response from the media would be if he has misspelled one of the names of the Aurora victims?
Schlemizel
@bago: It just goes to show you what a dozen millions from daddy plus the right connection will provide to an MBA. He didn’t do anything the mob was not doing in the 50s and 60s. Cheap into a company, run up all the debt you can, steal all the assets for yourself & then walk away leaving everyone but you and your mobbed up buddies much poorer for the experience.
We used to send guys like this to prison, now we honor them as business leaders
schrodinger's cat
Palin may have been a better politician compared to Mitt, but he has better hair and we know how good hair is important to the Republicans.
4tehlulz
Are we sure he wasn’t talking about the chic temple and chic people?
Litlebritdifrnt
In better news our local OFA office has its grand opening tomorrow. I can’t wait.
PaulW
To be fair most Americans will have a hard time pronouncing words they don’t normally use. He more than likely hadn’t used the word Sikh (sounds like seek) before, and his phonetic skills fell back on Sheik (sounds like shake).
Romney’s problem is that he didn’t ask others to verify the pronunciation or check a dictionary. He just bulldozed ahead thinking he already knew. Reminds me of a lot of other Republicans who acted like geniuses but failed epically when the moment arrived.
AnderJ
WaPo was wrong: Romney was confusing “Sikh” with “chic”. As in: the donors at the chic fundraiser Romney was addressing ponied up $ 2 million.
NCSteve
Palin with testicles and the vast sense of clueless entitlement that comes from being born rich and thinking you’re a rugged self-made Galtian ubermensch because you got richer still.
amk
mitt thinks & acts like the typical ignorant, boorish ‘murkan. The whiteys will love him.
Joey Maloney
@Brian S:
No, he should be someone you would enjoy going around to the tradesman’s entrance and being permitted a beer with the servants.
@PaulW: To paraphrase the great TBogg, any sentence about Romney containing the clause “To be fair…” must propose a sound beating to be at all credible.
aimai
I doubt very much that a top Mormon leader has “never used or heard” the name Sikh before. Mormon’s are in a race to convert people, and the Sikhs are also a fairly new religion (just a few hundred years old) that converts people internationally.
aimai
greennotGreen
@PaulW: Really? He wants to be President of these United States, and he’s not familiar with the word “Sikh”? Oh, but I was thinking he wanted to be President to all Americans; I forgot it’s just the 1%.
R-Jud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Don’t forget those shoulders!
SteveinSC
Oh, my. Reach for the smelling salts. Sam Stein is clutching his pearls along with Joe (Did you know I was elected to Congress in 1994?)Scarborough Mark Halperin, Chuck Snod and Mika B about the latest “Over-the-top” Superpack Obama ad. It seems that those mean ole Obama Ads are working and it’s a sad day for America!!. What has happened to CIVILITY the way it was with Senile Saint Ronnie? Oh, the horror. Those mean Democrats fighting back with some of the spawn from Citizens United. Where, oh where are their fellow exquisite thinkers at BJ? Oh right, they’ve read the fucking polls and have nothing fucking to say.
TS
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not even in jest – Mitt’s a disaster but Palin was/is a never ending nightmare – that anyone so dumb, ignorant, stupid and damn near illiterate was a nominee for the No 2 position in the US is a sad reflection on the nation. That politicians from any side of politics give her points for anything other than the ability to part fools from their money shows how far from the ideals of excellence those people have gone.
Raven
@SteveinSC: And Joe’s rant about the three M’s was priceless!
Steve
@PaulW: Anyone can mispronounce stuff. But as you say, it sounds like “seek.” It’s not actually an unfamiliar sound to make.
Harlan T. Fescue
I suppose it is to be expected that the Peasant will mock a Great Man like Mitt ”Mitt” Romney over such trivia, but it still saddens me. Mr. Romney is a Very Important and Successful Person, and as such cannot be expected to waste time learning the various grunts and clicks that Those People use to identify themselves to each other. In a just world, they would be pleased that Mr. Romney was gracious enough to mention them at all.
schrodinger's cat
@TS: I was snarking. I find them both abominable, really. It is like choosing what is worse, malaria or typhoid.
ETA: Mitt may have an Ivy League education but if he is pretending to be illiterate to ingratiate himself to the
base. I think in a way that is more vile than the genuinely ignorant Palin.
Litlebritdifrnt
Anyone else see this?
cnn.com/2012/08/08/opinion/canellos-kleinbard-romney-taxes/index.html
I have no clue what Son of Boss is and therefore I am heading to the googles.
schrodinger's cat
BTW Modo has another screed against Obama this morning, apparently he is ungrateful. Did he ignore a pass she made at him or something, she sure sounds bitter.
TS
@schrodinger’s cat:
I know it was snark – and I agree Mitt is attempting to ingrate himself with the right wing base – but I can’t agree that anything he does/says is more vile than Palin – the extreme racism and hatred embedded in the tea party started when Palin spent 3 months ranting about the “difference” of President Obama. That she was allowed by the media to remain in the public sphere after what happened at the Gabby Giffords meet and greet is beyond saying s..t happens or both sides do it. Palin incites people – Mitt – does not – he bores them.
MikeJ
@Litlebritdifrnt: Interesting that they bring up Marriott as a company he was involved with being tax evaders. Romney sat on Marriott’s board, and they’re a company that does business in Iran.
Weren’t they up in arms about Plouffe knowing a guy who once had lunch with the babysitter of the hairdresser of a Persian immigrant?
bago
@Schlemizel: When working in leading edge research, you’re working with Russians, Indians, Chinese, Czechs, Chinese, Sikh, Irish, and Californians. The founding fathers were multilingual.
Anyone who is having tax shelters around the world should have some cultural awareness.
giltay
@PaulW: Well, except he said “Sikh” correctly earlier in the say. He just screwed up later on showing not ignorance, but carelessness.
Linda Featheringill
So, what did Mitt say about the chic people and their spiffy temple?
Carl Nyberg
They are all pre-dead Mormons, so why get caught up in details that aren’t relevant in the long run.
Mattminus
Transcription error by the liberal media to make RMoney look bad. He just liked their style, and was referring to them as “chic people” with a “chic temple”.
Edit: Beaten to the punch.
Carl Nyberg
I’d like to suggest a game for Balloon Juice.
Balloon Juice readers would suggest fictional characters and villains that are similar to Romney.
Then we could take the leading nominations and have a tournament.
NancyDarling
Mitt needs moar caffeine.
bemused
@Raven:
I missed the 3 M’s rant…I’m curious what profound wisdom Joe was lecturing on.
R-Jud
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I heard it explained once when I was stuck in a car with a bunch of lawyers for six hours, but my immediate thought was, “That sounds like a serial killer, not a tax-avoidance gambit.”
@Carl Nyberg:
High five!
Raven
@bemused: He was literally screaming the Mitt need to scream about Mormonism, Money and Massachusetts.
WaterGirl
Ya know, sometimes I say refrigerator when I mean stove, or whatever. In 2008, Obama said 57 states, what he really meant 47 states or 57 entities (50 states + 7 others).
I know the difference between a stove and a refrigerator, and I’m pretty sure Obama knows how many states there are. So, whatever.
And you might say “sheik” once when you meant to say “seek”. But I think you would catch it as soon as you heard yourself say it. The fact that he repeats the mistake over and over is why I think it’s telling. He thinks “Sikh” and immediately thinks “dark-skinned guy with a turban” instead of religious people who were just attacked in their place of worship. Which is where I think sheik came from in this case, not because sheik sounds like “seek”.
And that’s why this makes me believe Romney is a racist pig.
schrodinger's cat
Hey if Obama’s pastor was fair game during the last election cycle, why is Romney’s being a bishop in his uber creepy, male dominated church with a history of polygamy not fair game.
japa21
@salacious crumb: I don’t know where you are, but here in Chicago, there was a lot of reporting on those killed, interviews with relatives, etc. Plus, they are really playing up the white supremacy angle of the shooter, including his girlfriend.
wrb
@Schlemizel:
I was thinking about this in relation to Stericycle, Romney’s company that provided fetus disposal severices. I confess that I’m helplessly drawn to topic the due to deep tastelessness plus a deligt in the Beckett-like image of the upstanding pro -life business man getting into the abortion business because of that good bottom line, and business is business.
But actually I think it is important, despite how the subject makes people uncomfortable, because it illuminates Mitt’s soul. It captures who he is and how he succeeded.
The Vulture Capital MBAs made tons of money because they invented a philosophy or system of morality and ethics that released them from the ethical and moral constraints that limited others. I remember in school some MBA types who went on to make fortunes in the M&A madness arguing how the only morality ethical purpose to which they would be answerable, when they were running a corporation, would the maximization of stockholder profit- that it would be immoral for them to refrain from doing something due to some ethical inhibition, if the result would be reduced profits.
Mitt and Bain were at the forefront of that revolution. That is his life, that is who he is, gleefully closing factories and wrecking families while lighting cigars with the resulting cash, utterly without shame, convinced that he knows true ethics and true morality, and his inhibited lessors are just confused and pitiful.
The pro-life MBA calculating how to wring maximum profit out of “baby” disposal is the absurd extreme of who Mitt is, the extreme that illuminates his soul.
bemused
@Raven:
I did catch the Mass part. Of course Joe won’t let anyone else have the floor when he’s on a tear but I would have liked someone to ask him how emphasizing his gov record, Romneycare and other “liberal” positions, would go over with the crazy base.
Tonybrown74
Say what you will about Palin. But her ovaries are much bigger than his testes.
JPL
John, Interesting title. Mitt appears to be the type of person who cares about what the Presidency will mean to him. Maybe that’s Sarah’s definition of a real American but I call that type of opinion, anti-democratic.
AnderJ
@4tehlulz: Beat me to it. Were we stuck in moderation at the same time?
the Conster
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because shut up, that’s why.
Just One More Canuck
@Schlemizel: The only thing Romney didn’t do after sucking out all the cash was torch the buildings for the insurance
Shinobi
It’s unfortunate that such a large portion of the electorate finds stupidity more “relatable.”
Just One More Canuck
@wrb: That’s a perfect description of the thinking that takes place in MBA programs – it brings out people’s inner sociopath
SteveinSC
Fixed. You’re welcome.
SBJules
But was he using a teleprompter?
SteveinSC
@bemused: That is exactly why Romney’s crowd is off-balance and the ads are working. He cannot use the three M’s because they remove any differentiation from being Obama-Lite. To respond, to campaign, to keep his base, he has to be the New, conservative Romney, not the Old Romney(s). He hasn’t figured out how to square that circle and he probably never will. He is truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Now is the time to hammer the shit out of him to get these negative impressions to sink in. Later, even Oxyclean won’t be able to get that stain out.
NCSteve
@schrodinger’s cat: You’d be bitter too if you used to be considered cool and powerful and exquisitely snarky and in touch with the zeitgeist by means of your ability to turn body language into the news of the day and now you’re just considered to be a dried up Rita Skeeter-wannabe irrelevancy to everyone except the saps who keep paying you.
One day, you’re getting semi-literate small-minded war-mongering failures elected over candidates who combine rare vision with technocratic skill using only the power of your deliciously evil green pen and the next, people like Bobo and Ross Douthet and the Mustache of Understanding are getting all the Aspen invites and lecture fees while you stay at home and gripe at the servants (but only in the still totally in touch with my working class Irish Catholic girl roots kind of way, of course).
Marmot
Oh wow. I’ve been newsless for a little while–is my airhead aspiring-actress former neighbor in L.A. now running for president?
LanceThruster
Pain in the testicles.
wrb
Titless Palin,
the Twit
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Worth keeping in mind Romney has a much better education than Snowbilly Snookie. Two degrees from Harvard and a reputation for sweating the details, yet he comes out in the end like some Fox TV watching chump.
KXB
@salacious crumb:
To give credit where credit is due, Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper did their past two shows from Wisconsin, with particular focus on the victims and their families.
JCT
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Because he’s running for President for Pete’s sake! He doesn’t want to be talking all purdy and pointy-headed because the mouth-breathers that he depends on for votes might be put off.
Amazing what the political process in this country has become.
LanceThruster
@wrb:
Mitt could be called Sugar Twits.
Ash Can
I’m surprised the WaPo focused on this and not on his dissing of kibbutzim. Then again, if they had, it may have created some genuine controversy, and the WaPo’s cred as Romney shill might have been tarnished.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m running for President, for Pete’s sheik!
schrodinger's cat
@TS: Compared to Romney, Palin is a small time crook, he is the criminal mastermind. See his tax shenanigans for example.
Cain
@salacious crumb:
I was told that the priest tackled the shooter trying to stop him. He lost his life, or he was shot I’m not sure what happened at the end. But that took some balls.
Admittedly, I’m not watching CNN to follow this story because it is against my religion.
muddy
@wrb:
Your entire comment was just perfect, thank you.
@Just One More Canuck:
A couple years ago I did an organizing job on the home of a recent MBA. I was amazed at the number of smaller books, like self-help tall paperbacks, not regular big textbooks, that this person said they were required to read. The titles were all variations on, “How to fuck people over and have them thank you for it.” Some of the titles sounded like the book was going to be a starter handbook for rapists. There were over a dozen. It really freaked me out. They outright teach that?
Damn I’m glad I work with my hands. It’s much cleaner.
The Lodger
@LanceThruster: Or, for anagram fans,
Mr Money Tit
brantl
Palin with testicles! There should be a picture of both on a bumper sticker, with that on it! Jesus, I’d pay real money for that!
brantl
@schrodinger’s cat:
He’s not pretending.
LanceThruster
@The Lodger:
Oh, I am!