Oh, Right, Howard, Obama Would Never Resort to Playground Taunts to Whoop Up an Audience

Treacher rounds up some examples of Obama's intentionally demeaning and sometimes childishly taunting attitude towards rivals -- particularly those of the female persuasion.

Couple of examples:

"Brushing the dirt off my shoulders." Hillary = Dirt.

Exactly as Treacher says, I thought this was actually kind of cool when I first saw it. But it is intentionally demeaning and taunting. And now it does demonstrate Obama's method of showing anger when he's challenged.

And his cutesy flip of the bird. Hey, I do this with friends. It's kidding around.

But in this context, it's an insult.

Cool? Well, maybe, depending on how much tolerance you have for juvenile put-downs in a presidential race. I have some tolerance for that myself -- again, I sort of think this was cool. Sort of. (And childish.)

And this caddish, condescending fuck-you to Hillary, which sent the Hillary voters running up the walls:

I don't even like Hillary and I got the douchechills on her behalf for that. Here she is, obviously embarrassed and not just faking it when she says "That hurts my feelings" (how couldn't it?), and Obama, of his own impetus, decides to interrupt and slam her with a too-cute-by-half backhanded compliment forehanded insult.

Note that his opponent was, basically, in trouble -- confronted with her own liabilities -- so the tactically sound thing to do would be to stay out of the way. But he can't help himself. He has to rush in to pound the dagger in a little deeper.

Because that's his nature.

We have a pattern here. And Howard Fineman and Andrea Mitchell and all the other Vice-Treasurers of the Barack Obama Fan Club seem to be studiously avoiding noticing it.

What's Andrea Mitchell's and Howard Fineman's claim here? "Oh, sure, he'd stoop to childish playground taunts in some instances, but we know for a fact he'd never make a cutesy reference to a female opponent as a pig"?

Is that what you simps are claiming? Really?

posted by Ace at 05:57 PM

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