Apparently…
…the liberal media can’t take a joke. Some things (birth certificates?) are just too sacred for levity.
At least by Romney. If Obama makes the funny it’s perfectly fine.
And here’s a pretty good explanation of the mentality of the MSM pecking order: it’s high school, plus The Collective Narrative [hat tip: commenter “T.”]
The Birther and the Truther phenomena are similar. Similar proportions of self-described Republicans and Democrats can be labeled as Birthers and Truthers, respectively. The similarity is not that Birthers and Truthers are stupid/ignorant/bigoted- choose your bad word- but that both Birthers and Truthers share a mistrust. Truthers do not trust the government. To Birthers, there is something offsetting about Obama, that shows he does not share basic elements of the American experience with us.
While I consider it most likely that Obama was born in Hawaii, there is something offsetting about Obama to me. His “bitter clingers to guns and religion” remark about rural Pennsylvanians showed me that Obama didn’t have a clue about rural FOLKS, and was approaching them as an anthropologist. How can one explain how these strange rural FOLKS operate? Some claimed that this was only a remark about rural Pennsylvanians, or more specifically about rural Pennsylvanian PIGS [Pole/Italian/Greek/Slav]- but this was about rural FOLKS in general. After all clingers to guns and religion can be found all over rural America, not just in Pennsylvania.
Obama also referred to the suburbs as “boring,” so there is another big swathe of the US he has no clue about.
Politicians making gaffes about sports, in an attempt to appear to be just plain FOLKS is a not unknown occurrence. When John Kerry was campaigning in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he referred to the sainted home field of the Green Bay Packers as Lambert Field- not as Lambeau Field. As Kerry was a New Englander, not a Midwesterner, one could understand his not knowing this bit of sports trivia. Obama took this “just plain FOLKS” gaffe to a new level, when he informed Bob Costas that his favorite baseball team was the South Side residing Chicago White Sox, and referred to attending games at Caminsky Field. Caminsky is Chicago speak for Comisky, so that was OK. But FIELD? Wrigley Field: where the Cubs play. Comisky Park: where the White Sox used to play. Obama lived in Chicago for 20 years, and can’t get that right?
Or when Obama had that 37 bowling game. It isn’t that Obama is not athletic. He appears to have a pretty good basketball game. He must have a good golf game, considering how often he plays golf. 🙂 It is that he hadn’t ever bowled before, which again shows his life experience is outside the mainstream of the American experience. At least my experience, as I had gone bowling numerous times during my childhood.
Certainly there are other examples that show how Obama doesn’t share wide elements of the American experience with us. To the extent that Obama doesn’t share wide elements of the American experience with us, he seems strange and therefore foreign : which explains why people were interested in his birth certificate. How many Americans would talk about eating dog as if it were as normal as eating a piece of corn bread?
Romney was simply reminding us of Obama’s strangeness, which is why Obama’s minions got so worked up.
[Once again, it is SO easy to make a Tom Lehrer reference. He was one urbanite that knew our country.]
If you ask me (which no one has and no one is about to), Romney needs to focus on the economy, the economy, and the economy, in that order.
The mainstreamers will (ofttimes knowingly) do whatever they can to misinterpret anything Romney says or does. Doesn’t he know the rules of the liberal bias game by now?
That birther joke was unnecessary. Let Obama be the candidate of Letterman and People Magazine. We need a leader who is ^serious^ about fixing the mess we’re in, and Romney needs to appear serious — utterly serious. Time’s running short.
As somebody said, the question he wanted answered is not whether Obama is American–noun–but whether he’s American–adjective.
MJR,
I disagree about the lack of necessity of the birther joke. Several people have commented that this is Romney getting inside the Obama campaign’s head. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) calls it a picador strategy where Obama’s reputation and appearance is being worn down by a thousand cuts.
The overblown angst with which Obamabots react to such simple things evinces their intolerance and belittles their own claims to the moral high ground. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. By election time, their furor will not be spent, but will be ignored by many as standard operating procedure.
I’m a Michiganian, and I thought it was a joke made funny by the fact that Romney isn’t a joke-teller and made FUNNIER by the blustering of the anti-Romney crowd.
“By election time, their furor will not be spent, but will be ignored by many as standard operating procedure.”
MisJean wrote: “a joke made . . . FUNNIER by the blustering of the anti-Romney crowd.”
Bingo! It’s already beginning to happen.
This stands alongside John Kerry’s expression of admiration for (then) Red Sox players “Manny Ortiz and David Ramirez.” Would they be any relation to Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, perchance?
I don’t care whether candidates know this trivial stuff, but I do care about the mendacity of attempting to appear as something they’re not. If they don’t know, fine, but don’t patronize us.
Nope, not judging from this video.
Yeah it is. He’s hopelessly unathletic.
Exhibit A: that golf swing. Merely swinging a golf club well takes only athletic ability; making the requisite shots is the part that takes skill and practice.
Exhibit B: Bowling at 37. Bowling takes essentially zero athletic ability; hell, I could bowl better than a 37 bowling right-handed (I’m a southpaw), and not having bowled in 40 years. It’s not that difficult.
I subscribe to T’s view re Romney’s joke, for several reasons.
First, and foremost, it highlights Obama’s bizarre personal history, in which his “Americanism” is obviously a thin veneer at best. (How many Americans, no matter how fatigued, drunk, or stunned by a blow to the head, would ever babble about 57 states without immediately correcting themselves? Answer: none.) He is not culturally an American, no question about it.
Second, the picador strategy is a brilliant, if perhaps obvious, choice to goad a galloping narcissist into a fatal blunder.
Third, the Reds have tried mightily to put casting aspersions on Obama’s provenance and upbringing beyond the pale, and we cannot let them frame the debate. They often win merely by such battlespace preparation, and so it is important to torch that strategy swiftly and tirelessly whenever they use it.
Fourth, pace Alinsky, it enrages the Reds, and amuses loyal Americans, and that’s worth a lot right there.
Take a look at this:
http://maxredline.typepad.com/maxredline/2012/08/another-exploding-cigar-and-truth-revealed.html
It definitely needs verification, and I do hope the Brits never let Sandy Berger within 100 miles of the place.
SamL,
WOW!
Now, it is my understanding that this would not have any bearing on Obama’s eligibility to be president; As I understand it, if one parent is over age 14 and has resided in the U.S. for at least 5 years prior to the birth, then any child born to that parent is a natural citizen.
Even so, I think this revelation, if true, is even more damning than to disqualify him as president, because between his Kenyan born autobiographical claim, his claim to be Hawaiian born and now this, it makes him out to be a pathological liar.
Truth will out.
BHO’s college transcripts contain not only his academic record which I suspect show a lazy C- student at best, but also his history of lies and misdirection. Every time BHO or his surrogates demand Romney’s tax returns Romney should offer to reveal all his tax returns for the last 20 year in exchange for the BHO transcripts.
BTW, RIP Neil Armstrong. A truly giant figure from Korean War pilot to the “giant leap for mankind”.
This all shows me that Obama nor his supporters are likable.
>>> If Obama makes the funny it’s perfectly fine.
… and usually unfunny.
The next “joke” Romney should make is to point out that his own SS number is real and not stolen from a long dead person in a state he never lived in.
Birthers same as truthers??? You would have to be kidding. The amount of evidence disproving Obama’s so-called Hawaiin birth is monumental. I better comparison would be between truthers and those who still believe Obama was born in Hawaii.
I liked that Romney actually went there. It was a quip, a throw-away. To call it a joke almost makes it sound too important.
My Prog pallys are using it as an opportunity to signal their in-group status. It’s comical how many of them need to post it on their Facebook walls.
But that’s exactly what the Obama campaign needs. My Prog friends have “normal” and undecided friends. The barrage of cool-kid signals will echo harmonically with the discomfort over Romney already seeded by previous disinformation campaigns.
It doesn’t work the other way. My righty pallys harrumphing on their walls about this being a sideshow will not awaken the lightly-engaged undecideds. If you realize it is a sideshow, you already know who you’re voting for.