sisu

Con-Man-in-Chief: Barack Obama's "masterful marketing of emotions"

"Stephen Colbert sent me an email, and Stephen Colbert is the young person's Oprah," the sophomorically witty young Obama voter above right — signalling membership in the tribe of cool! — answered The Blaze reporter Benny Johnson's question "What issues brought you out to vote today?"

"Was this election truly a rebuke of conservatism and its principles?  Or was it a function of the masterful marketing of emotions, niche issues and even revenge?" ponders The Blaze reporter Benny Johnson, who asked young voters waiting in line at a polling place in Boston's South End Tuesday "some simple questions concerning why they showed up today to perform their civic duty." While Karl Rove implodes and pundits examine the entrails of changing demographics vs white people who didn't show up at the polls vs the cold technical brilliance of President Obama's ground game to explain Mitt Romney's epic loss, Johnson goes directly to the source, where unself-aware cult members regurgitate the party line: 

The answers usually began with a declaration of unwavering support for the president. So what were the issues that animated them in the campaign? Their answers were largely couched in generalities, warm pockets of feel-good social "rights" issues, that sounded line-and-verse like Obama campaign talking points …

To any conservative wondering where they went astray this cycle, observe the religious-like conviction of the voters here when rattling off their liberal talking points. However, beyond the rhetoric, how much do these eager voters know about our American government?

Their answers are sobering. "I mean, I think we have to keep going in the direction we're going, forward," said one pretty young thing who had swallowed the Kool Aid. More anecdotal findings from Conservatives4Palin's Mel Maguire:

One of my teenage relatives has been telling me what her classmates are saying, and none of them has so much as a marginal grasp of the issues. Many of them supported Obama because he’s black, and others were convinced that Romney was going to make abortion and contraceptives illegal.  Many even said they wanted their parents to be able to keep collecting food stamps, and they believed Romney was going to end the program because he didn’t care about the poor. None of these things are true, but we now have Bill Maher comparing us all to Nazis.

Unlike the anti-statist Tea Party surge of the 2010 midterms, this time the Gramscian march through the institutions is the big winner. Like the Constitutionally-challenged voters cited by Johnson and Maguire above, the bright young leaders — and followers — of tomorrow, immersed in the politically correct, identity-politics matrix of academia, popular culture and the lamestream media, seem unaware of their having succumbed to the mind-numbing brainwashing perpetrated upon them by the Con-Man-in-Chief and his fellow travelers.

Update: Arnold Ahlert at Jewish World Review is on the same page:

If it can't be reduced to 140 characters for Twitter's sake, it no longer matters.

We must protest, however, that a well-written tweet can be a work of art in the "Less is more" sense.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Haley Barbour knows what women like

The view across the studio in the early morning light as Haley Barbour disarmed the ever loaded-for-bear Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, the daybreak show that — like an accident just up ahead on the highway — you can't not watch. Mika wanted to talk "women's issues." Joe, aware of what sets her off, wanted to talk sports. Haley knew the way to postmodern feminist Mika's beating heart: "I want to talk about women." What a charmer. And there's meat on those bones.

"Barack Obama is the great uniter of the Republican party," the brilliant former Mississippi Governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour cut through Mika Brzezinski's "war on women" false narrative on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning. In Sun Tzu fashion, he slayed the MSNBC dragon without firing a shot. A swooning Mika didn't know what hit her.

Instalanche!

NAOMI WOLF, CALL YOUR OFFICE.

Crossposted at Riehl World News.

Olympics coverage: "Abide with me," but don't tell the great unwashed.

"Our program is tailored for the U.S. television audience. It’s a credit to [London Olympics opening ceremony producer] Danny Boyle that it required so little editing,” an NBC Sports spokesperson smarmily responded to critics of the network's cutting out — for their American audience — a tribute to the London terrorism victims of 2005 ("Abide with me" above).

"Get used to stuff like this," writes USA Today Sports reporter Michael Hiestand, explaining why CBS decided to skip the UK's Olympic tribute to victims of the Jihadist London bombings of Summer '05 and go straight for the ratings jugular:

Which is more likely to encourage U.S.viewers to stick around for your feel-good TV show: chit-chat between mega-celebs Ryan Seacrest and Michael Phelps or a tribute to victims of an overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago?

"An overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago"? How yesterday is that? Not to mention the International Olympic Committee's decision to bow in dhimmitude to our Islamist masters and pretend the first shot across our bow back in ancient history — the horrific Munich massacre of 1972 — never happened.

 

We're obviously not CBS Sports' target audience — much less an acolyte of the Church of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil of Islam — but thanks to Mediaite we've got the story:

During the portion of the performance that was not broadcast in the U.S., the BBC announcer asks the audience to observe a moment of silence. “The excitement of that moment in Singapore seven years ago when England won the games was tempered the next day with sorrow from the events of July 7th that year,” says the BBC announcer. “A wall of remembrance for those no longer here to share in this event.”

The poignant "Abide with me," sung by Emeli Sande in the Olympic tribute, is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, most often sung to William Henry Monk's tune "Eventide":

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me …

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile,
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

"I am big. It's the media that got small." Andrea Mitchell channels Norma Desmond

"A horse got me out of bed ... and living life," Ann Romney told the Ocala Star-Banner recently, referring to how horseback riding, and specifically the art of dressage, has helped her overcome some of the debilitating symptoms of MS. “Horses are great teachers. Horses are great companions. They bring us great joy," she enthused, but you'd have no idea of the depth and richness of her involvment were your primary "news" source MSNBC and Sarah Palin's "lamestream" media. Yes YOU, Lawrence O'Donnell. (CNN photo)

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," quips Lisa B on Twitter, locating the perfect fictional equivalent of old-media delusions of grandeur in Gloria Swanson's "Sunset Boulevard" portrayal of faded silent-movie star Norma Desmond, descending from denial into madness:

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Or, as faded lamestream-media stars like Andrea Mitchell — who was caught by new-media star Sooper Mexican the other day smearing Mitt Romney by twisting his words into the JournoList narrative of choice — might put it:

I am big. It's the media that got small.

She's right. It's those annoying gadflies Juan Williams calls "just bloggers" and our fellow soldiers in Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, wielding our rhetorical weapons of choice through social media old and new, who are as mad as hell and are not going to take this any more!

Who is big? The Anchoress twitters the answer in response to a snotty New Yorker whine about Ann Romney's horse sense, "Do we have to cheer for Ann Romney at the Olympics":

What a small question.

Update: Almost forgot. Ms. Mitchell has been honing her journalistic "objectivity" skills for decades: This from "The Tribal Filter on Green News," Insight July 23, 1990:

There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that "clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy."

 Update II: Teresa nails it in the comments:

When I saw the story pop up yesterday all I could think was... people still watch MSNBC? Really? Or are a few people listening in so they can grab twitter fodder?

Update III: David Hogberg ponders the question "Which end of the horse is Lawrence O'Donnell":

Surely O’Donnell has assistants who can look this stuff up for him. Or was it just too tempting for him to score cheap political points to bother with the research showing the benefits of hippotherapy on multiple sclerosis?

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

President Obama: The conscience of the king

"Pure garbage," says Tuck, retilling the source of the exquisite, deep, dark soil he uses for planting, repotting and mulching our Chelsea Gardens (above). Fruit and vegetable scraps from the kitchen, grass clippings and dry autumn leaves from the yard. Compost 'em, mix 'em together and ted 'em periodically over three years. Turn it around, and you're looking at Pure Chelsea Gold. The plants eat it up!

"Well, you can lead a leftist to reality, BUT…" twitters Darleen Click this afternoon, and our reply:

…You can't make him think. 

Thank you, Mr. President. Like every freedom lover suddenly released from the Fear Society Lite shackles of Obamaspeak by Mr. Obama's own unwittingly self-revelatory words during a post-armageddon press conference this afternoon, we're giddy at the thought of the narrative gift he has bestowed upon us:

The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in. 

Mitt Romney's Rapid Response Team has our back:

For the president of the United States to stand up and say the private sector is doing fine is going to go down in history as an extraordinary miscalculation," Romney told the crowd.

Romney also addressed the president's argument that the federal government should help state and local jurisdictions hire more employees, citing the recent recall election in Wisconsin. Gov. Scott Walker was able to fend off a challenge there inspired by his move to block state workers from collectively bargaining.

It was too late, but "some in press working hard to explain and contextualize Obama's 'private sector' remark," twittered Byron York in the wake of the Leader of the Free World's unintended revelation of the gap between his statist vision and the world view of the average American, as expressed in Tuesday's Wisconsin anti-recall reelection of Scott Walker. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein was typical of the reflexive JournoList Talking Points:

I don’t, for the life of me, understand why people get so excited over things like this. Is there any evidence that either campaign is having trouble coming up with enough damaging quotes, out-of-context comments or grainy video clips to populate their attack ads?

"Things like this." That's the left's problem. They are forever conflating leftist fantasies with facts from the right. As we twittered Byron York:

It perfectly reveals the difference between big-govt statists like Obama and limited-govt state leaders like Governor Walker.

The last word goes to Doctor Zero aka John Hayward:

Romney says Obama is "detached, out of touch." Hell, he's hermetically sealed.

Update: Darleen Click of Protein Wisdom links!

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Ed Driscoll links!

Update IV: Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin is on the same wavelength:

Sarah Palin slams Obama: 'Private sector doing fine' remark 'absolutely out of whack" and 'out of touch.'

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

There's diversity at Harvard?

"Cello," part of "Chamber Orchestra" series of concert-instrument interiors by Studio Mierswa-Kluska, featured in the Boston Society of Architects' Architecture Boston.

"There's diversity at Harvard? Where are the conservatives?" asks a skeptical bflat879 in the comments of Harvard graduating economics concentrator Shreya Maheshwari's myopic Harvard Crimson essay "The Social News Network," a touchingly naive take on the narratives that be:   

It’s great to use Facebook to filter through our personal and commercial interests. But when this filter extends to our intellectual life, it can trap us in an online echo chamber by gradually minimizing our interaction with opposing thoughts and cutting off our engagement with the broader world …

Even students at Harvard, with all its emphasis on diversity, aren’t immune to default social and intellectual collusion."

EVEN students at Harvard? Emphasis on diversity? If you want diversity, see Senator Scott Brown challenger, Harvard Law School's "first woman of color," lily-white Elizabeth Warren (0% Cherokee, 100% Bullshit). Who needs Maheshwari's "online echo chamber" when you've got the politically correct mindset of academia itself? Michael Barone explains in "Life in a cocoon dulls political responses":

But cocooning has an asymmetrical effect on liberals and conservatives. Even in a cocoon, conservatives cannot avoid liberal mainstream media, liberal Hollywood entertainment and, these days, the liberal Obama administration.

They're made uncomfortably aware of the arguments of those on the other side. Which gives them an advantage in fashioning their own responses.

We've been there forever, of course. As we wrote a few years back in "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open'":

Leftists have become soft and flabby in their thinking over the last 20, 30 or more years because their fellow travelers in the mainstream media — supposed to be keeping them honest — have been giving them a free ride, even as thinkers of the right, not enjoying such reflexive support, have been honing our debating and intellectual survival skills. That leaves the left soft and lazy and the right battle ready.  Enter the bloggers, stage right.  As paleontologist Dr. Vermeij might say, "It isn't going to be pretty." Googling the good doctor, we were thrilled to see his field studies of animal evolution had led him to very much the same place Thomas Sowell has come to in his studies of economics …

The leftist utopian dream was doomed from the start because it denied the economic logic of nature and human nature. The long-repressed voices of opposition in a free society, now ringing loud and clear through talk radio, cable TV and — of course — the blogosphere, will force the left to rethink its arguments or go extinct.

Update: Doug Ross is on the same wavelength:

Old media is literally committing suicide in front of our very eyes. In its desperate rush to see Barack Obama reelected, they are ignoring bigger and bigger stories. People have the Internet. They read The Drudge Report. They listen to talk radio. They read blogs. And in spite of all of these different access points, old media is ignoring blockbuster story after blockbuster story.

Update II: Heh. Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update III: Doug Ross links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Rom?

"Actually, Mitt is a very funny guy," a warm and engaging Ann Romney told "E.T" host Nancy O'Dell the other night, explaining "He doesn't comb his hair when we're, you know, not going places. It's like all over the place … Maybe we need to take a picture of what he really looks like when he's not working." Mrs. Romney won our heart and mind three weeks back with her decisive victory in the Democrats' faux "War on Women." Like Sarah Palin, she "fights like a girl." Click here to watch full interview.

“The fact that he didn’t talk about his campaign I thought was very touching to me," newly promoted Greenland, NH Police Chief Tara Laurent told ABC News, describing her unexpectedly emotional response to Mitt Romney's "secret trip" — reporters had not been notified — to the town's police department yesterday. The Republican presidential candidate had come to offer his condolences for the loss of veteran Police Chief Michael Maloney, killed three weeks ago while serving an arrest warrant:

Everyone here is in the grieving process, and anyone who is willing to come in and acknowledge that and make the officers and everyone feel good is welcome …

It seemed genuine, he wasn’t here to tell us to vote for him.

"This is what exhausted looks like (pic of nate coming home other night)," twittered Romney son Matt the other day, doing his part in the family-wide effort to humanize Mitt Romney in the hearts and minds of a skeptical electorate.

"It seemed genuine." The chief's sentiment recalled another Granite Stater's words half a decade ago when then Senator Barack Obama visited neighboring Portsmouth, NH with pandering promises of hope and change:

“I don’t think he came here with a political speech. He came out to celebrate New Hampshire, and we Democrats have been waiting so long for this,” said Andrea Goldberg, a longtime activist and state human service worker.

“I think he was genuine, charismatic …"

As we commented at the time in our prescient post "Did Obama just call me a racist?":

There's no question Obama knows how to pour on the charm and make Democrats "feel good about themselves"…

Swept up in the locals' devotional hysteria, however, the media didn't seem to notice. Folks hear what they want to hear.

“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” quipped candidate Romney yesterday in response to his opponent's craven attempt to "hog credit" — a disgusted Navy Seal's words — for last year's Osama bin Laden raid. Above, campaigning yesterday with running-mate longshot Sen. Kelly Ayotte in Portsmouth: "Campaigns enjoy generating 'veepstakes' speculation because it provides an extra dose of local and regional media coverage in battleground states such as NH," explains Seacost Online's Michael McCord. This small-government Tea Partier liked what Romney was saying: "Regulators are multiplying like 'proverbial rabbits' under Obama’s administration, and small business owners, such as commercial fishermen, are suffering from strict government regulations and rising fuel costs." (Rich Beauchesne photo)

Is that what's happening to us now? Among the walking wounded emerging from our Republican-primary foxhole to look around at what's still standing, are we hearing what we want to hear from the Romney campaign now that we've given up the ghost of our preferred candidate? As we twittered through the continuing fog of battle yesterday:

Slow to warm up, I'm appreciating @MittRomney more each day as he becomes the voice of sanity in the madness that is #Obamaworld.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Arrangement in Gray and Black

"Arrangement in Gray and Black Fur," popularly known as "Little Kitteh" by Sissy Willis. Digital image. Click here for full size.

"Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1," popularly known as "Whistler's Mother" by James McNeill Whistler. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Howard Kurtz and the media's "astonishing slowness" on Trayvon Martin

Once again the people sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas are way ahead of the lamestream media, who appear to prefer peddling their tired racist narratives to getting the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

"On Reliable at 11, Derek McGinty, Lauren Ashburn, Eric Deggans on media's astonishing slowness on Trayvon Martin killing & Sharpton's role," Howard Kurtz twittered the lineup for his Sunday show "Reliable Sources" this morning. We appreciate his candor but couldn't resist a little snark in our reply:

Astonishing? I saw it right away. It's why the bloggers and tweeters are leaving Palin's "lamestream" in the dust. :)

Breitbart's Ben Shapiro was on top of it from the start:

We will not stop vetting the media, including Al Sharpton! Persist we much!

Bill Hobbs cut through all the speculation and irresponsible "reportage" [rhymes with garbage] that had whipped up some of our more suggestible fellow Americans into a frenzy:

I have no idea what REALLY happened in Trayvon case, & neither do you. Nor does Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton.

As we've been twittering ourselves the last couple of days:

Sensed in my BONES, from the moment it entered my consciousness that Sharpton was involved, it was laced w lies.

SHARPTON'S INTEREST TOLD ME IT SMELLED: Zimmerman was on ground being punched when he shot Trayvon Martin.

So creepy watching lamestream media fall for the latest iteration of Sharpton & Co's tired old narrative.

Now that our "mainstream" betters are starting to ask the questions they should have asked two weeks ago, how will they handle the poison and vitriol of the virtual lynch mob being fomented by members of the New Black Panther Party and other spawn of President Obama's old Harvard Law mentor Derrick Bell's Critical Race Theory?

#LynchMob: RT @dangainor: Terrorists: #NewBlackPanthers offer $10,000 bounty 4 capture of shooter Zimmerman http://bit.ly/GOZ0Gr #Trayvon

Our buddy Pete DaTechGuy isn't holding his breath:

Martin Killing #msm outrage; Black Panther bounty, Black youth killed in cities by other blacks #iseenothing

What's it going to be, Howard Kurtz?

Update: Soros-backed MoveOn is gloating:

The Department of Justice has announced that its Civil Rights Division, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will investigate Trayvon Martin's death. This is a positive step.

However, the Sanford Police Department has a history of failing to successfully prosecute crimes when the victim is African-American and the alleged assailant is not. Sign the petition to the Department of Justice telling them to launch an investigation of the Sanford Police Department.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Santorum in Gettysburg: A new birth of freedom?

Rick Santorum talked to supporters at a rally (above) in Moline, Illinois yesterday on the eve of Tuesday's primary, which he's projected to lose to Mitt Romney. Tonight Santorum is in the "next must-win state, Pennsylvantia," where he gave "his own Gettysburg address," following Romney's victory speech, which picked up on Santorum's signature theme. More on that below. (Charlie Riedel / AP Photo)

"The issue in the presidential race is not the economy," but an oppressive government that's taking away people's freedom, Rick Santorum told a Rockford, Illinois rally yesterday on the eve of tonight's primary, even as "polls show the economy is the foremost issue for American voters." But polls, like interviews, are only as good as the questions asked, and we think the WSJ's William McGurn is onto something when he speaks of a candidate "disdained by a media [pollsters included] that literally cannot comprehend what he is saying." Counting himself "among the conflicted," McGurn weighs the pros and cons of "The Improbable Mr. Santorum": 

That he is where he is, despite his baggage is more than the latest manifestation of Anyone But Romney. It suggests that a sizable part of America hungers for a leader willing to address the connection between human freedom and larger truths, difficult as that can be.

The press would have us believe that these are zealots itching to make contraception illegal. In reality, they are folks who understand that the combination of expanding government and a permissive society is, in the long run, as lethal to the American Dream as bad economic policy …

Outgunned in both staff and money, disdained by a media that literally cannot comprehend what he is saying, disliked by many in his own party and loathed by the opposition for the same thing — his beliefs — well, there is something admirable about a man who takes it all and refuses to be silenced.

The media may not get it, but it looks like Romney himself is paying attention, as Fox News analyst Dana Perino noted moments ago, dissecting the frontrunner's victory speech:

There's a new theme that he's starting to use: Economic freedom.

Sounds like Romney's channeling Rick Santorum's "connection between human freedom and larger truths," as Santorum himself reiterated just now in his own after-primary speech following Romney's (rough transcription):

The foundational issue in this race, the one that is the cause of the other maladies we are feeling, all boils down to one word, and that's the word freedom.

Governmor Romney is now adopting that theme in his speech tonight, but I've been focussed on this theme in town halls and gatherings across the nation for months. And I know the anxiety people have about an ever-expanding government that is trying to trample our freedoms, whether economic or religious, building a dependency, and if Obamacare is implemented, every single citizen will depend upon the government.

The people I've talked to want someone to stand and fight, not because it's what some pollster tells them to say or because it's on a teleprompter. They want someone who's going to take that power in Washington and give it back to the people

Santorum wrapped things up by referring to some of his rivals' flip-flops, including Gingrich's infamous climate-change endorsement sitting on a couch in front of the Capitol with Nancy Pelosi, then closed the deal with this zinger:

I'm not going to change with the climate.

Update: Speaking for the talking-head community Wednesday morning, WaPo token "conservative" Jennifer Rubin pegs us:

Sure, there are bitter dead-enders who insist Santorum is still in the fight and who are certain if the voters only understood that Romneycare has an individual mandate Romney’s support would crumble. But these will, if they haven’t already, be seen as cranks.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.