This may be the worst April Fools’ Day joke ever:
After criticizing President Obama throughout his second term, I’ve reversed course and decided that he’s a tremendous leader, one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.
Perfection is too high of a bar to set for any man, or any president, but Obama has come close to clearing it. What stands between this president and Mount Rushmore?
Republicans—specifically, the stubborn extremists who control the House under the weak leadership of Speaker John Boehner. Gridlock, hyper-partisanship, and ineffective governance, those traits that make Washington so unpopular with voters, are singularly the fault of the GOP.
I don’t understand the appeal of Ron Fournier? Are there any actual Ron Fournier fans? At least Mark Halperin glommed onto that Double Down Game Change thing which is popular, however stupid it is.
amk
what appeal?
WaterGirl
Ron Fournier has no appeal.
Edit: though I do appreciate that he is no longer trying to pretend that he is not partisan.
RuhRow_Gyro
Juan Williams is smarter than Ron Fournier.
Hill Dweller
The brown haired guy who’s not Steve Doocy is smarter than Fournier.
The Dangerman
Fournier? He’s transforming.
Kay (not the front-pager)
If I’m not mistaken, Ronnie criticized President Obama throughout his first term (and through his first presidential candidacy) as well.
I don’t think he understands how April Fools’ jokes work. In paragraphs 1 and 2 he says something he obviously doesn’t believe, and in paragraph 3 he says something that is indisputably true.
I think I need to take an aspirin and lie down.
noabsolutes
This is like the Mann & Ornstein book, except that people are reading it and not taking it seriously instead of not reading it and not taking it seriously… sigh… I sure hope we look back on this era when Mount Rushmore has finally eroded down to something humorous-looking and ask ourselves WTF were we thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
I figure that if I click on the link I will get rickrolled.
Mike in NC
Oh, National Journal reference? Fuck those clowns.
katie5
It’s the written version of truthiness. You write authoritatively and snarkily and it begins to approach what some consider deeply insightful.
Ezra Klein is not far behind.
MikeJ
@WaterGirl:
Any criticism of a Republican proves you are an unthinking partisan. Any criticism of a Democrat proves that you judge based on the evidence and ignore all labels.
? Martin
I don’t get it. I think this is the contrapositive of Poe’s law.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Dunno… Some weird kind of meta-trolling by the entire mediasphere? (“At 12:00, let’s all drop our pencils and shout, “LEADERSHIP!!!” then give Ron a swirly in the girl’s bathroom!”)
Kay (not the front-pager)
Well shoot. I made the mistake of going over and reading his snarky sht and now I’m both annoyed and perplexed. He quotes Obama circa 2008
Then he goes on to snark:
Well, he did end the war in Iraq and will have troops out of Afghanistan by next year, He did avert an economic depression. He tamed joblessness but did not cure joblessness (see paragraph 3 above. He wasn’t able to do much about climate change for the same reason). He improved the nation’s reputation abroad, reduced the deficit to the lowest percent of GDP in 60 years, and provided affordable healthcare to approximately 22.1 million people. So not a bad record so far, and he’s not done yet. So Ron Fornier, DIAF.
Omnes Omnibus
This calls for silly humo(u)r.
David Koch
Dougie,
you’re assuming facts not in evidence, namely there is no known appeal.
National Journal has a circulation of .. wait for it… 15,000.
Here’s Kos publicly making a monkey out of him and his failed attempts at appeal.
jl
Maybe its not an April Fool’s joke, but for reals. I’ve had the sense for some time that Fournier is more than a little manic.
And, if it is an April Fool’s joke, it is one of the worst pieces I’ve ever seen: paragraphs of bland sophomoric snark as stale as flat beer sitting around in a paper cup since last summer’s county fair.
Well, I guess we’ll know for sure tomorrow.
David Koch
Ron Fournier: Judge George W. Bush By His Bro-Ness, Not His Horribleness (he wasn’t kidding)
Alison
Maybe his wife.
I mean…imagine how much better it would make you feel about yourself if you were around that douche all day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alison:
Or imagine how demoralizing it would be to realize that one had tied oneself to that moron.
bago
@The Dangerman: That’s too much n to be Cooley, Tukey.
Hunter Gathers
Yep. They’re middle-aged white guys pulling down more than 200k a year who love reading articles that use fancy, classy language to call Obama a lazy nigger. If only he weren’t so lazy, he’d shmooze the GOP with lunches and shit like that more often. If he weren’t so fucking lazy, he’d walk down to Boehner’s office and cut a budget deal over smokes and a shot. If he weren’t so fucking lazy, he’d repeal ObamaCare and knock those moochers and looters down a peg or two, like they fucking deserve. You know, to show Leadership. If he weren’t so motherfucking lazy, he would have bombed the shit out of
the Soviet UnionRussia, just to show the world that he won’t take shit from anybody, and that America, by far, has the biggest genitals on the planet.Fournier has fans, alright. They’re just not stupid enough to actually pay to read the shit that he writes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hunter Gathers: Unicorns, then.
Amir Khalid
A philosophical question: if you say something that you think is false, but is actually true, are you lying?
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Do you really believe it?
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
I presume Ron Fournier is not one to believe anything favourable about President Obama.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: It is April 1st. Of course, I asked about your beliefs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
John McCain, Karl Rove, Joe Scarborough, I’m guessing Tom Brokaw, Mark Halperin, Chuck Todd….
Turgidson
So his idea of an April Fool’s joke is say some stupid shit, then make some absolutely true statements he refuses to believe because he’s a moron, and ultimately make himself look like an even more insufferable idiot douche than he did already? Sounds about right.
And goddammit, Obama won’t be carved onto Mt. Rushmore, but he absolutely is more deserving of a spot on Rushmore than any president since FDR. Mayyybe Truman.
Patricia Kayden
@Amir Khalid: Facts are true whether you believe them or not, so yes.
Patricia Kayden
@amk: Made the mistake of reading one of Fournier’s articles. Never again.
Lurking Canadian
@Kay (not the front-pager): And he did all that over the determined opposition of the most obstructionist Congress since the 1850s. Apparently in Ron Fournier’s world, an “April Fool’s Joke” means to say a bunch of absolutely true stuff you don’t like, then say “April Fool!”
Tractarian
From the Marine urban legend crap to this…. Doug, please, I understand the “we read these as$holes so you don’t have to” thing, but do you have to foist the worst-of-the-worst on us?
Sherparick
He appeals to his fellow Villagers and to the 1%, and there standard of leadership is passing a plan that destroys social security, cuts their taxes, and bombs Syria. In otherwords, Fournier really still digs George W. Bush and can’t understand what went wrong.
MattF
So… Fournier is a jackass. He should (IMO) find it a wee bit disturbing that everyone merely assumes this is true– but, after all, he’s a jackass.
Mike E
@MattF: Wait…this is brilliant!
Everyone: tweet/email this asshat with the message of “Good for you! Welcome to The Light.”
Jack the Second
The problem with this sort of April Fool’s joke is that corrections are completely worthless.
Some number of people are going to read this article and walk away thinking that Rob Fournier thinks Obama is pretty OK. And they’re never going to hear otherwise, and go on thinking it forever and ever.
And that is goddamn hilarious.
Howlin Wolfe
@Alison:
I was gonna say, Ron Fournier.
JenJen
The first letter of each paragraph spells “April Fool.”
Ron Fournier is a douchecanoe.
Another Holocene Human
@The Dangerman: YES!!!
Another Holocene Human
@noabsolutes:
The fuck we were thinking was white supremacy.
SFAW
@JenJen:
Better that, than “On Wisconsin!”
[Which is an EXTREMELY obscure Chem E reference.
You had to be there.
Actually, even if you were there, it wasn’t that good.]
Be that as it may, Fournier is still a major-league asshole. Some of his commenters have shit for brains, too.
dubo
Republicans—specifically, the stubborn extremists who control the House under the weak leadership of Speaker John Boehner. Gridlock, hyper-partisanship, and ineffective governance, those traits that make Washington so unpopular with voters, are singularly the fault of the GOP.
I’m no fan of Obama, but it’s hilarious that when Fournier is trying to think up of the “wrongest” thing he can think of is the only time when he gets it exactly right.