1. gq: “Obama Is Stupid”: The Stupid Thing Conservatives Love To Say Over at Death Race 2012, GQ’s blog about the presidential election campaign, we asked one of our favorite writers, a mischievous man who goes by the name Mobutu Sese Seko, to figure out what’s behind one of the conservative punditry class’s favorite attacks on President Obama: namely, that he’s dumb. Rarely has an argument that is so self-evidently, well, dumb gotten so much traction. What gives? A peek at Mobutu’s dismantling of it is below. Click here to read the full piece. Newt boasts that these debates will be conducted without teleprompters—a shallow dig at Obama that feeds the president’s critics two satisfying lines of assault. For conservatives and liberals infuriated by Obama’s measured cadences and insistence on rhetorical balance and compromise, it suggests that his unflappability is all pretense, unsustainable in the real world that real men inhabit, where spitting is permitted and there are Islamofascists to wrestle shirtless. But it also suggests something far more satisfying to the GOP base: Newt, ever the cherub-faced and gloating prick, is implying that Barack Obama is stupid. GOP pundits have trotted out the “Obama is stupid” charge regularly since 2008, but it’s always felt like filler—some meaningless lobbyist conjunction added before launching into another bit of pre-fab mendacity. In the last few months, however, it’s seemed more like rescue. As the GOP campaign swarmed to flat taxes, Iran and Israel—like children playing soccer, shambling slackjawed after the ball—the safe rhetoric of “OBAMA DUMB!” has risen to a kind of Hulk-smash ejaculation of thoughtlessness. It’s name-calling of such inane finality that it makes rational debate cease. It obscures unsustainable policy and off-message waffling. Whenever Mitt Romney’s think-tank goblins need to change the narrative from whatever message they can’t agree on, they can switch to the message that Obama’s a stone dummy. That’s what Romney’s really saying whenever he trots out his applause-line chestnut that Obama is a good man who is “in over his head.”

    gq:

    “Obama Is Stupid”:
    The Stupid Thing Conservatives Love To Say

    Over at Death Race 2012, GQ’s blog about the presidential election campaign, we asked one of our favorite writers, a mischievous man who goes by the name Mobutu Sese Seko, to figure out what’s behind one of the conservative punditry class’s favorite attacks on President Obama: namely, that he’s dumb. Rarely has an argument that is so self-evidently, well, dumb gotten so much traction. What gives? A peek at Mobutu’s dismantling of it is below. Click here to read the full piece.

    Newt boasts that these debates will be conducted without teleprompters—a shallow dig at Obama that feeds the president’s critics two satisfying lines of assault. For conservatives and liberals infuriated by Obama’s measured cadences and insistence on rhetorical balance and compromise, it suggests that his unflappability is all pretense, unsustainable in the real world that real men inhabit, where spitting is permitted and there are Islamofascists to wrestle shirtless. But it also suggests something far more satisfying to the GOP base: Newt, ever the cherub-faced and gloating prick, is implying that Barack Obama is stupid.

    GOP pundits have trotted out the “Obama is stupid” charge regularly since 2008, but it’s always felt like filler—some meaningless lobbyist conjunction added before launching into another bit of pre-fab mendacity. In the last few months, however, it’s seemed more like rescue. As the GOP campaign swarmed to flat taxes, Iran and Israel—like children playing soccer, shambling slackjawed after the ball—the safe rhetoric of “OBAMA DUMB!” has risen to a kind of Hulk-smash ejaculation of thoughtlessness. It’s name-calling of such inane finality that it makes rational debate cease. It obscures unsustainable policy and off-message waffling. Whenever Mitt Romney’s think-tank goblins need to change the narrative from whatever message they can’t agree on, they can switch to the message that Obama’s a stone dummy. That’s what Romney’s really saying whenever he trots out his applause-line chestnut that Obama is a good man who is “in over his head.”

Notes

  1. livnoezishiem reblogged this from gq
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  3. nonsugar-h reblogged this from gq
  4. auralanimal reblogged this from gq
  5. popularconscience reblogged this from gq and added:
    Since right now they’re trying...too corrupt or incapable
  6. anindiscriminatecollection reblogged this from gq
  7. jackstime reblogged this from gq
  8. ashrafaryankhan reblogged this from gq
  9. longwaytoric reblogged this from gq
  10. mmalone228 reblogged this from gq
  11. marshmallow-lazer reblogged this from infinityongay
  12. infinityongay reblogged this from hoonlives
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  14. roldankevin reblogged this from gq
  15. raysboomboomroom reblogged this from gq
  16. taylordoll11 reblogged this from gq and added:
    way through. it’s not an essay bashing obama trust me
  17. misterfancyman reblogged this from gq
  18. omiethehomie reblogged this from gq
  19. seasundersky reblogged this from gq and added:
    say, call ‘em stupid.
  20. daydreamntn reblogged this from gq
  21. thedecentman reblogged this from gq and added:
    Didn’t liberals do...Bush when he was in office? Where was
  22. chivalryneverdies reblogged this from gq
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