{"id":4164,"date":"2008-02-14T00:07:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T07:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/02\/14\/weekly-standard-implies-obama-is-like-a-trained-dog\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T00:07:20","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T07:27:08","slug":"weekly-standard-implies-obama-is-like-a-trained-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4164","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Standard Implies Obama Is Like A Trained Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at the Weekly Standard<\/a>, Dean Barnett tries to downplay Obama’s speeches:<\/p>\n

In spite of Obama’s obvious strengths in this area, questions linger regarding Obama’s gifted speechifying. Do his speeches give us a glimpse at a very special man with a unique vision? Or are we merely witnessing a political one-trick pony? Yes, Obama can turn a phrase better and do more with a Teleprompter than any other modern era politician. But does his special skill set here actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs–unusual and riveting, but not especially significant?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1) I don’t think that Barnett is racist as Republicans understand the term “racist” (as far as I can tell, Republicans consider conservatives racist only if they join the KKK, and liberals racist only if they favor any program that might help people of color); I don’t know the man and can’t speculate about what he intends. But if this “Obama is like a trained dog” smear takes off among right-wingers, it’ll be because of its covert appeal to racism.<\/p>\n

2) Obama isn’t<\/em> as good speaking off the cuff as he is with a teleprompter; but that’s not because he’s substandard off the cuff, it’s because he’s off the fucking charts with a teleprompter. Obama’s been perfectly able to hold his own in debates, in interviews, and other occasions where he’s been talking without a script.<\/p>\n

3) Even if it were true that Obama is terrible without a teleprompter — and it isn’t — so what? As John Cole at Balloon Juice points out<\/a>, President Bush is mediocre with a teleprompter and disastrous without, yet he somehow managed to get elected. (Or close to elected.)<\/p>\n

4) This attack isn’t going to fly. A good political smear should be time-consuming to rebut; it takes quite a bit of tedious explanation to prove that Gore didn’t claim to personally invent the internet, and that Kerry in fact was pretty brave in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

In contrast, spend twenty seconds watching Obama on TV, and the “Obama is a dog walking on its hind legs” lie dies for everyone but the most hardcore reality-deniers.<\/p>\n

If Obama wins the nomination, they’ll have to find a better lie to tag him with. Hmmn, what other quasi-racist criticisms could they throw up? I’m betting they try “lazy.”<\/p>\n

[Edited for typos]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett tries to downplay Obama’s speeches: In spite of Obama’s obvious strengths in this area, questions linger regarding Obama’s gifted speechifying. Do his speeches give us a glimpse at a very special man with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}