Shocking! President provides detailed answer to question! Press, public scandalized! Does he have no shame? Will he never learn his place?
The morally depraved Steve Benen thinks the President should give even more substantive answers. But how can we ask the American public to process real, factual information about public policy? It’s been so long since they’ve been exposed to such a thing it might cause brain cancer.
Gripe Department: Smitty at Other McCain writes, “If You Can’t Bedazzle With Brains, Baffle With Bacon Sandwich.” I’m looking forward to the bacon sandwich, Smitty, but I’ve never noticed that bacon sandwiches were baffling. Will it do magic tricks, or something? Otherwise me and Miss Lucy will just eat it.
And I’m sure Obama read the anwer off a teleprompter!
As for Smitty at the “Other McCain,” after 8 years of worshiping at the alter of the bad Norm Crosby impersonator we had as President, I can understand his confusion at a long, intelligent, and grammatically correct answer.
As for all all of the fat rendered from that bacon, I’m sure Smitthy put it right in his head, where it belongs.
It’s great to have a president who can give a detailed 20 minute talk on a complex topic. What a nice change.
Wasn’t it an aide to George W. Bush who described the process of preparation for a debate as being “tortured by the facts”? I suspect most people who rise to ask questions don’t really want to hear the answers. They probably just want to evoke a response that will confirm and publicize what they already assume to be the answer, or “expose” the respondent as the slippery liar they suspect them to be. I certainly would have been in the last category, if I had had the opportunity to ask “W” a question, so maybe I’m just projecting.
In the case of healthcare, there is simply so much misinformation and so many scary lies, that it has to be spelled out time and time again. “There are so many lies and but one slender truth to oppose them.”
So, the President spends 20 minutes answering a question, and the criticism is that he’s took too long. For over a year now — 24/7 — Republican pols and their propaganda machine, not to mention insurance companies and the medical-industrial complex, have been throwing every farfetched fantasy and outright lie they can think of at health care reform. Death panels! Higher taxes! Socialism! Stealth Mulsum terrorist government take-over of everything! Armageddon! But 20 minutes is much too long to spend explaining why none of this is true? Obama may be a smart man, but so far as I know he hasn’t yet mastered walking on water.
And . . and he REPEATED himself! Well, erm, yes, he did. That’s called Public Speaking: Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them, then tell them what you told them.
Some days you just gotta wonder.
Oopa! Meant to say, “he took too long,” not “he’s took too long.” Some days my fingers and my brain are not on speaking terms. Stern measures will be taken.
Remember how GW Bush’s direct if simple-minded answers won the debates over Kerry’s nuanced explanations? I prefer an intelligent speaker as much as any leftie, but Obama should learn to boil his answers down and be a bit less wonky for the sake of his audiences. He may have encyclopedic knowledge about a subject, but rhetorically it’s about convincing minds and hearts, and an excess of wonkery is self-defeating.
I get a bit suspicious of long answers in general – it says that a person may have mastered a set of details, but doesn’t really have a cogent grasp of the major themes, or how the details support the big picture ideas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s heard someone in business stammer on about some subject, lost in minutae, making it painfully clear they really don’t have a solid grasp of what they’re talking about.
I got a little bit of this from Obama many months ago, when I heard him speak in a town hall trying to justify the big bank bailouts. His answer wasn’t twenty minutes long, but the quantity of words used seemed to hide something – it didn’t quite ring true.
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I hope Smitty was merely employing a euphemism for a different animal (by)product that shares the initials BS. I, for one, greatly enjoy sandwiches featuring bacon, particularly in combination with peanut butter (yum!), and can state categorically that the only thing baffling about them is just how it is possible for them to be so delicious. (Why a grown person would use such a silly euphemism, I have no idea. But still…)
As a fan of both Obama long answers and bacon, I’m not at all clear what the connection might be between them. Did Obama say he liked bacon? What’s not to like?
Tricks?
I wanna be a conservative!
You know sometimes as a liberal I like to step back and consider, we liberals have all the cool people on our side, I’m not gonna bother to make a list, it’ll just get sloppy and never end. But who do the uptight “dimwitted-we want our country back from you different folks people have” who do they have on their side: Ted Nugent, Mike Huckabby, Victoria Jackson, Stephen Baldwin, Drew Carey, Kelsey Grammer(before or after the cocaine?) Faux News?
And . . and he REPEATED himself!
Oh, the horror. As opposed to the Crawford Chimp, who inanely repeated himself in the same sentence like a kindergartener or a retarded comic book character: “The terrists are terrizin’! In other words, we’re bein’ terrized by terrists!”
Was there ever a time when people were ashamed if they couldn’t muster the attention span of a chihuahua on meth? Please answer in three words or fewer.
Craig,
Yes. Pre-Bush.
What Craig said; and Gulag’s response.
Still, perhaps the president should try writing some haiku to practice succinctness? Or is brevity only the soul of lingerie, as I think Dorothy Parker said?
And re: bacon sammiches… with PB on toast, y’all. Only way to go.
Uncledad – – Speaking of Hucklebee, let’s never forget this frequent talk show
guest pardoned a faux born-again convict who went on
to kill four Seattle cops in a restaurant.
Now, if a soft-on-crime “lib” had done that – – –
Anybody remember the movie “Being There?” Dubya always reminded me of Peter Sellers character. I googled ‘Bushisms’ for some greatest hist.
“So long as I’m the president, my measure of success is victory — and success.” –George W. Bush, on Iraq, Washington, D.C., April 17, 2008
“I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be — hold hands.” –George W. Bush, on how he can contribute to the Middle East peace process, Washington, D.C., Jan. 4, 2008
“You’re working hard to put food on your family.” —Presidential candidate George W. Bush, Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000
“I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” –George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2008
“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.” –George W. Bush, on what he hopes to accomplish with his memoir, as reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009
Props to biggerbox for grasping the allusion.
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