Supplemental: Another day, another onslaught!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2014

Peter Baker plays golf: For those who are keeping score, this was the third morning out of four when the New York Times went after the feckless, uncaring Obama on its hard-copy front page.

On Wednesday, Peter Baker wrote a “News Analysis” helping us see that Obama doesn’t care if black kids get shot and killed.

Today, Baker wrote a “Political Memo.” It’s built around the callous indifference displayed when Obama played golf. Headline:

“A Terrorist Horror, Then Golf: Incongruity Fuels Obama Critics.”

In theory, a person could write an intelligent piece about that general theme. You be the judge! Here’s how Baker started:
BAKER (8/22/14): He had just hung up the telephone with the devastated parents before heading in front of the cameras. Unusually emotional, President Obama declared himself “heartbroken” by the brutal murder of an American journalist, James Foley, and vowed to “be relentless” against Islamic radicals threatening to kill another American.

But as soon as the cameras went off, Mr. Obama headed to his favorite golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on vacation, seemingly able to put the savagery out of his mind. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the links even as a firestorm of criticism erupted over what many saw as a callous indifference to the slaughter he had just condemned.
“Callous indifference to slaughter” made paragraph 2. It belonged to Obama, not ISIS!

Wednesday’s front-page “News Analysis” was built on the way a White House photograph seemed to Baker. Today’s “Political Memo” is built around the things that round of golf “seemingly” seems to suggest.

We turned 13 just before Eisenhower left the White House. In earlier years, we remember being puzzled by claims that he played too much golf.

It’s amazing to see the way our scribes hang onto their low-IQ hooks. In the current week, it’s fairly obvious that Baker and the Times are giving official status to a new dominant narrative about the feckless, uncaring Obama.

On Tuesday, it started with a front-page report about how “aloof” the president is. There may be some substance to that claim. But the claim is being transformed into something a great deal uglier.

We have always opposed this cartooning, when done to Republicans too. We liberals had a lot of fun when Gail Collins was clowning, cavorting and playing the fool about Romney’s poor abused dog.

She clowned and cavorted and diddled herself. We did our dances and laughed.

Before that, these remarkably empty people made the world's biggest liar out of Candidate Gore. Now, they’ve started in on this.

This is the way they use the license we grant them. Was Collins’ bullshit worth it?

9 comments:

  1. Bob, hate to break this to you, but Collins' columns about Seamus the Dog had about as much to do with Obama defeating Romney as they had to do with the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series last year.

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    1. I almost voted against Romney because of the dog. Fortunately your Howler got results.

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  2. Where exactly does Somerby say Collins changed the election results?

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  3. Who cares. Golfer guy is a lame duck. What happened this week on the Hillary jihad front while Bob was falling for the race baiters bucket of worms?

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    1. Why has the Post abandoned their jihad?

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  4. I'm a lifelong progressive, I worked for president Obama in both campaigns, I think the right wing attacks on him for playing golf are idiotic and I love the game myself.

    All that said - to make a statement on this horrific beheading, which has shocked the conscience of the world, and then head straight to the first tee eight minutes later was a really really dumb move. I don't understand how he couldn't see that, and one does get the sense that he's about had it and just doesn't care that much any more.

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    1. See how easy it is for those doing the plutocrats bidding to move tribal thinking?

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  5. In earlier years, we remember being puzzled by claims that [Eisenhower] played too much golf.

    I well remember those years. Not only did the media present Ike as playing a lot of golf, they presented him as uninvolved in, or even ignorant of, the details of issues. Furthermore, Eisenhower encouraged this image.

    Biographers later discovered that Eisenhower had exerted a lot more control than the public knew. Time will tell if the same is true of Obama.

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    1. Coincidentally the following quote appeared in another blog today:

      I was recalling yesterday Russell Kirk’s great line dismissing the John Birch Society charge that Eisenhower was a Communist: “Ike isn’t a Communist, he’s a golfer.”

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