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Saturday, November 09, 2013

Good Words

There’s a certain type of political journalism that so exists in the moment that numerous such moments have been declared to be disasters for Obama, going back to Jeremiah Wright. This kind of hyperventilating approach always turns out to be wrong and overheated. It turned out that all those things were pretty bad, but it also turned out that Obama survived them. And he’ll survive this, too. Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast.

The whole piece is fantastic and exactly why I continue to laugh at the hyperventilating:)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It turned out that all those things were pretty bad, but it also turned out that Obama survived them. And he’ll survive this, too.

So if all those things were admittedly "pretty bad", why should he survive them (politically)? What does it say about our nation that its leader can do such vile things and the majority of the population Does Not Care? (Or calls accurately pointing out crimes, character failings, and/or immoral behavior "hyperventilating".)

What truly blows my mind is when people who wave off Obama's bad behavior are personally harmed by some of that bad behavior, yet continue to believe that it is okay for him to misbehave. In other words, pretty much like this.

GuardDuck said...

Ahh, two differing first principles.

What Mark sees as 'hyperventilating' is people looking at the things that are 'pretty bad'.

Those people see 'pretty bad' as pretty bad and should be measured on the scale of pretty bad.

Mark's side of the coin sees 'pretty bad' not on the scale of pretty bad but rather on the scale of 'can he get away with it?'.

It's 'hyperventilating' to Mark not because it's 'pretty bad' but rather because, in Mark's probably correct assessment, he will be able to get away with it.