Half-Drunk Analysis: Media Criticism of Obama Increasing as Democratic Contest Continues

Once Your Buzz Is Working It’s Clear That News Organizations, Pundits Blame Obama for Not Being the Messiah

The agonizing Democratic primary season is far from over, and with each day that passes criticism of its frontrunner grows more frequent. A half-drunk but way credible news analysis by Affirming the Least Sincere (ATLS) shows unequivocally that Senator Barack Obama is under increasing fire from media organizations, the pundit class, and political operatives within the media who disguise themselves as impartial experts. Indeed, on all media networks and in all newspapers everywhere, the rising number of anti-Obama material suggests that everybody should hate him now. He’s a big jerk face. He's a secret Muslim communist who is also not our savior and he cannot perform miracles because he is too young and arrogant. And besides, he and his wife hate America and go to that terrible church. Fuck that guy.

Our analysis was conducted last night at McCracken’s Pub after each of us had downed four or five Eggenbergs. We began by carefully eating three plates of buffalo wings while mocking Michael Savage mercilessly, and from there we inexplicably detoured into a brief argument concerning Major League Baseball’s American League East division before turning to methodical bitching about how watching certain MSNBC commentators talk politics is only slightly more appealing than performing acupuncture on one’s testicles. We then compared strategies for fighting existential dread caused by xenophobic assholes, wherein each of us was careful to acknowledge that “a 2-day bender” is not a healthy treatment for accidental exposure to Rush Limbaugh’s Open-Line Friday. After a slightly uncomfortable silence, someone skillfully ordered more beer and we pivoted into a group debriefing of the “red-light” hoax in the skies over Arizona the other night, how it reminded everyone of the famous “Phoenix Lights” incidents of 1997, at which point Barack Obama happened to be pictured on two channels above the bar and we all came to the unanimous conclusion that mainstream media is stocked with a repulsive crew of character assassins who want to teach Obama a lesson for thinking he’s special. Our study also found that, given the remarkable success and tenor of the Obama candidacy, it’s highly likely that a vast conspiracy has formed among the power elite to drag his ass into the muck with everybody else. We know you’re a Harvard man with a crush on Karl Marx. We know you think you’ll get herpes if you actually hang around with the proletariat. We’ve got your number, and in a couple of months those lunchbucket Democrats who voted for Clinton will be clamoring to have you deported back to Iraqastan.

One doesn’t need to knock back six pints to achieve clarity, but it helps, and our mildly inebriated examination reveals troubling media trends that indicate a regular tsunami of bullshit is forthcoming. Our analysis also provides ample justification for wanting to put your drunk face on the table. That’s right, we say put thy drunk face down, put it down! Move that last glass out of the way, throw it on the floor, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Easy now...slow down. No one’s gonna care if you just take a little 5-minute nap. The wait staff is cool with it—we do it all the time. We’ll watch your stuff. That’s it, just relax. Allow the moderately interesting rock cranking from the jukebox to roll over you in riffs. Notice the peculiar way in which the loud voices and laughter and clinking glasses of the bar blur into a satisfying hum. Isn’t that nice? No Chris Wallace. No George Stephanopoulos. No CNN Best Political Team. Just that fine, buzzy hum. Now you’re getting it. Put your drunk face down. Put it down.

Letters: The Pope, The Hate, The Clinton

Howdy. Care to comment on the Pope’s visit to the U.S.?

Kevin
Toronto, Canada

Kevin,

Not really, although Waiting for Guffman was on television the other night. That movie is a classic, but I imagine you’re well aware of that. I always get a kick out of the scene in the musical-within-the-movie wherein an alien spaceship lands in Blaine, MO. Eugene Levy plays the alien who emerges from the ship to sing Nothing Ever Happens on Mars, which ends hilariously with the refrain “Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing! Bor-ing!”

Spank

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Hey Douche. I hate your site. It sucks. I don’t even know why I bother to check it. If I were a hacker I would hack the crap out of it. If it were a newspaper I would use it to start fires. If your site were a baseball team I would buy season tickets behind home plate and boo constantly at every single game including rain-outs. I would make Yankee fans seem polite. If your site were an ice cream stand I would leave it out in the August sun until all the delicious ice cream turned to puddles and got covered with flies. If your site were a stock car and if I were a NASCAR driver, I would buy your car and drive it into the wall in the first turn of the Daytona 500. I would escape the wreckage and not bother to rebuild the car. I would go on ESPN and talk about how terrible the car was and then I would immediately retire from stock car racing and blame everything on the car. Your “writing” is a joke. Your “reporting” is as entertaining as my 3-year-old’s artless scribbling. He only uses the brown crayon. The one that looks like crap. I think maybe he has a problem. My wife and I just look at each other when he colors, wondering about the brown crayon, since all those vibrant colors just sit there in the box unused. Sixty-three other colors. He always chooses the brown. He has filled 29 coloring books with his mess so far. One time my wife put the brown crayon in a small box and hid it on the top shelf of our bedroom closet. Later that afternoon he was coloring again with the brown crayon. We still don’t know how he got it, since our other child hates him and doesn’t help him with anything, let alone find a crayon neither of them know we hid. It was pretty weird.

Bruce,
Cabbage, IL

Bruce,
Thanks for sharing.

Spank

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Spank,
I’m getting pretty tired of people saying Hillary Clinton should drop out of the presidential race. It’s absurd to suggest that the more experienced candidate who’s won the big states should just abandon her campaign. She’s less than 200 delegates behind in the race and there are more contests to go, so everyone needs to chill!

Sorry. I just needed to vent, and I know I can count on you for a sound opinion on the subject.

Helen
Columbus, OH

Helen,
You might be right; maybe it’s not fair for people to say that HRC should just drop her bid. After all, there’s still a chance she can woo the party bosses to give her the nomination even after losing the popular vote and the delegate count and the total number of states won. It’s still possible for her to wrestle the nomination out of the hands of the most successful Black candidate in America’s history, thereby rendering all anger over the 2000 election moot. Victory at any cost is still in the cards but the Obamaniacs want to deny the remaining voters their chance to be heard!

Well, I hear you, Helen. It’s probably not fair. Just like it’s probably not fair to suggest that the experience Clinton touts ad nauseum includes mistakes so horrendous that she helped pave the way for the 1994 Republican revolution and derailed progress on her signature policy issue for at least 15 years. Nor is it fair to ask how a President Hillary Clinton will be “ready on day one” when she can’t seem to run a dominant campaign despite tremendous advantage in name recognition—a campaign that got thumped right out of the gate in Iowa, drubbed on Super Tuesday, and is now in such debt that it has trouble covering health insurance costs for its employees. It might also be unfair to point out how her chief strategist throughout most of her campaign happens to be one of the most repugnant people in politics, who is largely behind the current Clinton strategy to assume the role of a Republican candidate and slash Obama so badly that he appears unelectable. Just think about the brilliance in that approach! And yet people have the nerve to say she should quit. Unbelievable.

I guess what I’m saying, Helen, is don’t let it worry you. The next time someone tells you Hillary should quit, just remind him or her that Hillary is the only candidate to beat Obama over the head for praising Ronald Reagan’s ability to inspire before she herself praised the late President’s bipartisanship in a debate—as though she thought of it first and should be congratulated for her generosity of spirit. Tell that person to quit being so arrogant because Hillary Clinton is the only candidate with the guts to yell “shame on you” at Barack Obama in front of everyone; the only candidate sly enough to employ Bush-style tactics and plant questions for herself at a campaign stop; the only candidate brave enough to expose the “vast right-wing conspiracy” before becoming cozy with its key personnel when it became politically necessary; the only candidate sharp enough to dispatch a popular former President as an attack dog who mucked it up so badly in South Carolina the campaign had to bench him for a few weeks; the only candidate who pulled in $109 million in 2007 and then accused her opponent of being an elitist. Oh, Helen, the ammunition you have at your disposal is endless. Hillary Clinton drop out? Ridiculous! She’s going to fucking destroy the Democratic party win this election yet.

So keep the faith and shine on, you crazy boomer.

Spank

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