Monthly Archives: March 2012

I know who’s etchin’ a sketch: Seth Meyers.

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"Obama's president. Dat's what I heard."

I’m going to continue to beat this room temperature horse at least one more time to suggest what potential there would be if Seth Meyers and the writing staff at Saturday Night Live applied there impressive creative talents equitably across the political spectrum.

Of course this morning’s news narrative was the “Etch-a-Sketch” remark by one of Mitt Romney’s advisers. I’m sure the SNL writers are already etching a sketch with hilarious Jason Sedakis as I type this. Meanwhile, there’s an entire spectrum of real news reported in places outside the traditional media (The Blaze, Michelle Malkin, Breitbart, Pajamas Media, Townhall to name a handful) whose stories would lend themselves nicely to the gang at SNL, if only they were interested in parodying not one but both political sides.

Michelle Malkin has especially been covering the President’s green energy boondoggles (on the collective dimes of the 53% who pay Federal Income Taxes). She’s throwing out the term “pond scum” to encapsulate the seemingly absurd notion that we can supplant fossil fuel production with algae.

So I sent my Weekend Update suggestion to Seth Myers this morning that showcases the potential jokes that could be rendered if only he would go there. My example was:

Tragedy struck today when hundreds of ducks vital to President Obama’s algae fuel delivery system were shredded by windmills.

See how easy that was?

Here’s a related joke I penned and this one isn’t even a direct insult to the President (we know they won’t go there; can’t be branded a racist):

The Audubon Society estimates that roughly 70 endangered Golden Eagles are killed each year by Northern California windmills – or as I call it: Green with Irony.

I mean this stuff is just screaming to be parodied. Green energy-producing windmills are killing off eagles. But that’s not newsworthy to the Left because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Only Caribous are displaced by oil-gas pipelines. Spotted owls are displaced by home-building. But hey, a green windmill kills an endangered bird and so what? The ends justify the means. It was worth it – is the Left’s Machiavellian view.

Way back when the Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, I imagined how Weekend Update recurring character Anthony Crispino (played by Bobby Moynihan), the guy who hears bits and pieces of the news via the grapevine and then gets the stories completely wrong, would cover the Bin Laden news. I came up with this possible line:

So, uh, d’ya hear the news, Seth? After all these years they finally found Obama’s birth certificate. Yeah, it was hiding out in Pakistan. It was under water, too, because they had to send seals in to capture it.

Well, wouldn’t you know? That week, they DID do a Crispino bit on Weekend Update, and he did, naturally, cover the Bin Laden story. He did it this way (paraphrased from memory):

Did ya hear, Seth? They finally killed Oksana Baiul the Russian figure skater. Yeah, Nancy Kerrigan’s really happy about it.

When I heard that joke, I laughed and thought their concept was better than mine (that’s why they’re the pros and I’m an amateur). It still somewhat buttresses my point, I think, that even if they hadn’t come up with Oksana Baiul, they’d have never done the Obama birth certificate line I produced. Wasn’t gonna happen. Nor has any joke that could be perceived as even slightly anti-Obama been done since.

I propose that there is one person who would’ve had a whole string of Obama birth certificate jokes as Weekend Update host, and that is Norm MacDonald.

The problem of only following one side of the news is twofold. First, you limit the pool from which funny jokes can be crafted, but second, if your audience relies mostly on that same side of news reporting, then you run the risk that the audience won’t even get the joke aimed at the Left. I call this the Norm MacDonald phenomenon. He was the only person who actually paid attention to Conservative media as he formulated his Weekend Update scripts during his mid-90s run as anchor. Many of his jokes - Bill Clinton murdering Vince Foster is the prime example – were totally lost on the audience. How would they even know who Vince Foster was if all they read were the New York Times and all they watched was Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather or Peter Jennings (or John Stewart) for their news?

Ultimately, I believe this is why MacDonald was let go. Literally, the NBC Execs didn’t think he was funny – most likely because they didn’t get the joke because they didn’t have the proper frame or reference in terms of news sources. (There was a more moderate premise floated by Don Imus that MacDonald was fired not so much for the anti-Clinton jokes but because NBC Sports Exec at the time, Don Ohlmeyer, was buddies with O.J. Simpson and didn’t appreciate all the O.J. jokes Norm perpetrated.)

Last point: Another phenomenon I find that rings true pretty unilaterally: Conservatives don’t have a difficult time laughing at jokes about Conservatives (as long as their based on truth). Heck, Michelle Malkin and many other Right Wing pundits had a field day with the Etch-a-Sketch story. Twitter hashtags were started with the purpose of naming which toy (e.g., Silly Putty) or which games (e.g., Twister, Risk) Romney best portrayed. I suggested Tinker Toys for the toy based on Romney’s ever-changing campaign themes over his last two presidential bids and suggested that, at least based on the Media’s Obama Re-election Inevitability narrative (O.R.I.N. as I’ve dubbed it), Romney’s candidacy is a Trivial Pursuit. I added that, based on the Media’s narrative of Romney as the out-of-touch multimillionaire, he’d be the board game “Yachtzee”.

In a similar fashion, I have patted myself on the back for being able to support the Left Wing entertainers’ work even if I think their political views are nutty and heinous. (See here.) I can still enjoy a Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Morgan Freeman or Jeannine Garafolo movie and separate their performances as actors from their nonsense-spewing politics.

How can I prove this? Well, despite everything I’ve just written about SNL, I still watch it, by God. Wouldn’t you think a stark-raving Conservative like myself would not be able to tolerate such onesidedness from the Left? As Belushi would say, but NOOOOOO! I watch SNL. Always have, probably always will. It’s funny. I’m merely pointing out that it would be even funnier if they were more fair and balanced with their comic references.

Meanwhile, you would be hard pressed to find members of the Left who are able to laugh at their own shortcomings. Hence, all the jokes from the Left are about Conservatives. They don’t seem to have the ability to laugh at themselves.

Really.

Art fabricrates life in ‘Lies of March’.

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Party of Lies

Over the weekend I saw one good George Clooney movie and one bad one. No surprise the good one was the Indie film (“The Descendants”) and the bad was the one where Hollywood lives vicariously through its own fantastic view of politics.

It’s a simple game when watching films like “Ides of March”. Whenever someone says, “Republican” replace it with “Democrat” and then you’ll have an accurate picture of reality.

In “Ides of March” you are presented the standard projection by of liberal Hollywood writers about evil,  mean-spirited Republicans playing dirty politics. You saw it in “Bob Roberts” – you saw it in, “The American President”.

In the cathartic scene, two Democrat campaign strategists, played by Ryan Gosling and Paul Giamatti, talk about how “this is the crap Republicans pull” and lament the too many times they’ve scene their altruistic and decent candidates lose because they wouldn’t “get down in the mud with the elephants”.

This, by the way, is the Democrat Party of Chicago politics. The one who fraudulently stole the 1960 presidential election and tried to steal the 2000 election by overturning the actual vote count into a inaccurate one. It’s the party of Axelrod – who took down multiple Obama opponents with rumors of sexual misconduct (possibly including Herman Cain).

The backdrop of this bizarro word, up-is-down, day-is-night conversation is an organized campaign by evil Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to have Republicans cross over in an open Ohio primary to vote for the more liberal of the two Democrat candidates because they’d rather face him in the general election.

Oh, you mean like what actually just happened in Michigan, where Democrats in an organized effort crossed over and voted for Rick Santorum because they thought the President would have a better chance against him in the election. So it’s life imitating art, with a twist. It’s Democrats in life doing that which Republicans are portrayed to do in art.

In the Hollywood fantasy land of the Left, the Republicans are so power-thirsty to start wars for oil and tell women what to do with their bodies (whatever that means), that they’ll do anything to get into power. Yet, in life, it is the Democrats who exploits tragedies for political gain. It is Democrats who turn a funeral service into a political rally. It is Democrats who want giant government solutions to control every facet of our lives (except for what women do with their bodies, apparently) – and this philosophy, as opposed to that of limited government espoused by Republicans – is more likely to manifest itself in doing whatever it takes to obtain power.

Another unintended comical moment is when Chris Matthews of MSNBC is shown reporting the Republican effort to vote for Clooney’s opponent with the caption, “March Surprise” incorporated. Yep, this is of course based on the common “October Surprise” phrase to denote those 11th hour news stories that are withheld up until a few days before a November election. According to Wikipedia, the phrase was indeed based on a Republican announcement about peace in Vietnam by Henry Kissinger that may have helped Richard Nixon win by a point or two more in his drubbing of George McGovern in 1972.

Since that time, which party is known for its deployment of this tactic? You guessed it. In art, it’s the Republicans. In life, it’s the Democrats.

The last two October surprises I recall were both against a GOP candidate named Bush. In 1992, a false story was reported that George H.W. Bush had made some secret deal to get hostages released in exchange for weapons in Iran Contra (my recollection of this story involving prosecutor Lawrence Walsh conflicts with that which is described on Wikipedia). In 2000, a Democrat defense attorney released DUI records in Maine against George W. Bush.

It’s always projection with these people. Always accusing the Right of doing what the Left does on a regular basis. Not only is it projection; more importantly, it’s propaganda. It’s trite, it’s cliche, it’s hackneyed…. and most of all, it’s crap.

But hey, they did get one thing right in the art-imitates-life category: the Clooney character has sex with a 20-year old intern.

Take THAT, Media Narrative Parrots!

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In your face, 'Parrotives'!

There’s nothing I enjoy more than when the conventional wisdom is turned on its head.

That’s why I’m such a fan of the Stossel brand.

This morning I saw on the Fox News Channel ticker the results of a poll that would accomplish just that. Seemingly everyone was of the mind that the removal of Newt Gingrich from the GOP primary race would push Rick Santorum over the top against Mitt Romney.

Makes sense, right? Romney is seen as the most moderate of the candidates, there seemed to also be a “Romney ceiling” of support which rendered the Gingrich-Santorum supporters perceived to be representative of the anti-Romney bloc. Also, there’s the whole theological “Catholic vs. Mormon” factor – with Gingrich and Santorum representing the former.

All along, though, I wasn’t convinced. The reality is that no one knows exactly why a candidate appeals to the voter. There are so many factors. Personality is one, electability is another. In the case of the top 3 GOP candidates, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference in terms of their ideology about the role of government. Many of the debates got sidetracked over who said what and who voted for which bill and who signed what bill into law as government. Amid all those sidebars, there really wasn’t much difference among the 3 – both in their records and their rhetoric.

As this poll – whose source I did not catch – was being conducted, coincidentally I had been formulating my own theory, which went like this: one thing people probably like about Gingrich is his potential to mop the floor with the President in a debate. Now, if that happened to be a person’s primary determining factor in supporting Newt (we don’t know because I doubt any poll derived the answer to this question), then I contend that Romney, not Santorum, would be the person’s second choice.

What’s more, if you were supporting Gingrich because you figured he probably wouldn’t beat Obama but you’d love to see him eviscerate him in the debates, but Gingrich didn’t go on to win the nomination, then at that point I’d think you’d go with the guy you think would stand the best chance against Obama. Again, I think more people who’d be of this mindset would also opt for Romney as their second choice.

Further, it sort of stands to reason that if Romney is the guy he’s portrayed to be, I.e., a decent, amiable, experienced man who doesn’t exactly elicit the “wow factor” of excitement, then he’s probably the de facto “second choice” of many GOP voters.

Whatever the case, I am smiling because I love to see the conventional wisdom shattered – as Stossel likes to say.

You also need to pay heed to another of my axioms: that the media has a narrative, and no poll result or any other type of evidence to the contrary can jar them from this narrative, and despite this news that shows Gingrich supporters would not necessarily flock to Santorum if he dropped out of the race, you can expect the media to continue to parrot that sentiment anyway. (I call them Narrative Parrots or ‘Parrotives’ for short. #Coinaphrase)

Same as it ever was.

Really, Seth? No Obama jokes in 3 years? Really?

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President Who?

The more time that passes, the more absolutely astonishing it is that, amid week after week of Saturday Night Live episodes overflowing with anti-Republican skits and jokes, that we are still awaiting the first skit to paint the President in a negative light.

It’s a given that SNL has always leaned to the Left, but there are times when you can’t pass up the comic opportunity and you’ve simply got to take shots at your own. Carter and Clinton were not immune to this, but the current president is. Untouchable.

Really? With all that material – Solyndra, Fast and Furious, teleprompter mishaps, blaming Bush, the countless vacations, golf, fundraising, beer summits and bows. Really? All this bungling incompetence and not one joke during a weekend update newscast?

And that’s not even accounting for bunglin’ Joe Biden the Vice President. The only time we’ve seen a parody of him was after the Palin VP debate. Ol Joe’s been locked in a backstage closet ever since.

Seriously, you watch a weekend update segment and you wouldn’t even know who the president is. He never gets mentioned. But it’s Richie Rich and outta-touch Romney this, Open Marriage Gingrich that, Santorum the Square and on and on and on week after week of the same tired Liberal narrative. Last week they did yet another Palin skit, plus good old Rush kicked off the festivities. Never a crazy Chris Matthews skit though. Don’t see much of the bizarre Ed Shultz or macabre Maddow on SNL either. Funny how that works.

Have some guts! Heck, have a real sense of humor. It’s time to man up and quit ignoring the wealth of comedy this president is handing to you on a silver platter. STILL not gonna go there? Really, Seth. Really?

This phenomenon also buttresses my perpetual point that the Left writes a narrative and sticks to it no matter what evidence there is to counter the voracity of that narrative.

SNL is right in step with the rest of the Left media with the narrative that Obama is the greatest, most supreme human being in human history and his GOP adversaries are a bunch of hateful, ridiculous, buffoons – merely the fact that they would even run against the Supreme One shows their a bunch of racist ingrates who better get in line and worship this Almighty Savior and this Utopian world he is on track toward creating (one that weakens America because that’s what fairness is all about).

So, with this as the narrative, no evidence – not even the fact that the President’s approval ratings seemingly haven’t been higher than 50% through the entirety of his presidency, can disrupt them from parroting the narrative.

Republicans: weak. Obama: strong. Don’t forget it! And don’t let anyone, especially not the GOP candidates or the haters over at Fox News or Breitbart.com, lead you to think otherwise.

Another point is that, while SNL paints Mitt Romney as out of touch, it is SNL who is out of touch with mainstream America, who is evidently having buyer’s remorse over the President they elected, according to any approval rating you can find. Buyer’s remorse: that could be the theme for a skit, yeah, that’s the ticket.

As a sidebar, the Associated Press only seems to report Obama’s approval ratings when they go up. Recently his approval rating hitting 50 was big news; no perspective – President George H.W. Bush had a rating of 90 following the Gulf War. Yes, the following year he was defeated in his re-election bid by Ross Perot, I mean Bill Clinton. That shows how volatile the approval ratings can be. But you know whose approval ratings haven’t been volatile? Obama’s. They’ve been staggeringly low from the beginning for such an annointed saint, and that is despite the fawning, gushing media coverage he’s received from the get-go.

Meanwhile, I just watched the 3/3 and 3/10 SNL episodes and neither contained even a single mention of the president. Ironically, among the barrage of Republican sketches, it’s Obama who is the elephant in the room.

Really.

Oz fans like Clockwork

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Hugo's Clockwork Man

After having earned my Ozmology degree for reading all 14 canonical L. Frank Baum books about the Land of Oz, it’s not uncommon for me to hone in like radar on anything in the culture that relates to the great Fairyland.

In that regard, I found myself intrigued by the Automaton or “clockwork man” depicted in Martin Scorsese’s award-winning “Hugo” film. That’s because the Land of Oz produced its own clockwork man in the form of Tik-Tok. No, Tik-Tok was not featured in the Wizard of Oz movie (nor the Wonderful Wizard of Oz book on which the movie was based). He was, however, featured in the 1985 “Return to Oz” Disney movie that was based on the 2nd and 3rd books in Baum’s Oz series, “The Marvelous Land of Oz” and “Ozma of Oz”, respectively.

Tik-Tok was not as sleek or futuristic as Hugo’s clockwork man. He was more old school; including a handlebar mustache that was Rollie Fingers-meets-Wilfred Brimley.

Tik-Tok of Oz (Return to Oz, 1985 Disney)

While Hugo’s clockwork man was designed for the sole purpose of writing/drawing, Tik-Tok was more versatile – he thought, he spoke and he walked; and he had a separate windup program for each function (thought, speech and action). As you might imagine, each function was ephemeral, as he required frequent rewinding to properly function – a phenomenon that lent itself to entertainment in both the books and movie in which he was portrayed.

Also noteworthy of Hugo, which, as far as I could tell, was set in the late 1920s, was that a reference to Oz was made - along with comparable fairylands Neverland and Wonderland. This marked a legitimate reference as the Oz books began in 1904 and were popular among children.

According to Wikipedia, Tik-Tok is credited as one of the earliest robots in literature – though the term “robot” wasn’t in effect at the time he debuted in 1907. Here’s the Wikipedia link for more info on the lovable windup clockwork man from Oz.

As for the Hugo movie, it was primarily a tribute to the mostly-forgotten original filmmakers who preceded even the silent era that is romanticized today (Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, etc.). It was done so within the context of a pretty neat setting for such a story. Wasn’t sure why everyone had English accents when it was set in Paris – but that beats the old English-with-French accents cliche of which we’ve seen to much among English-speaking films set in foreign countries.

I could see why the film won the Oscar for cinematography; that’s both a compliment and a knock. The cinematography was indeed spectacular and in my opinion worthy of the accolades. The story was not award-worthy though I found it intriguing nevertheless. I can see where some might find the film a bit boring though. It’s quite a drawn-out process to get to the film’s ultimate intention.

But any time I can take a film and draw analogies to the great books of Oz, I find it compelling and a worthwhile endeavor.

NBC weekend golf coverage fair and balanced

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"This is AC. I've got Tiger in the Benz."

Funny thing happened on the way to Tiger Woods’ leg injury and subsequent helicopter camera coverage of his departure that was reminiscent of a TV news police chase: the golf coverage was very equitable and not so Tiger-centric as we’ve become accustomed to seeing.

Indeed, with Tiger out of contention on Sunday and with so many players in contention, NBC did the right thing and covered the tournament they way it ought to be covered – with a focus on the final pairings and occasional recorded shots of Woods’ Round 4 adventures.

Yet again, NY Post columnist Phil Mushnick was validated in his repeated remark that even golf tournaments without Tiger in the field or when he plays but doesn’t contend can produce compelling drama. Though I will point out that today’s finish did expose a pitfall of Tigerless golf, where we don’t always see great shots made to win but rather guys holding for dear life under Sunday pressure. Eventual winner Justin Rose bogeyed the 18th and Bubba Watson missed a putt on the same hole that would’ve tied Rose and forced a playoff (the type of putt a Woods-in-his-prime would not have missed). Nevertheless, it was compelling, dramatic, worth-watching golf.

The severity of Woods’ injury remains to be seen, so we don’t yet know if his major championship record pursuit will take another step backwards. One also can’t help but wonder whether becoming as muscular (with or without the help of illegal PEDs) as he has is taking its toll in terms of these nagging injuries – we’ve now seen knee, neck and now foot and leg injuries since 2008.

If you’re a golf fan, though, there’s plenty to look forward to this year; lots of drama ahead, with or without Tiger’s presence.

So “Three Weeks of Tiger” – as it was dubbed by Golf Channel on NBC, had its ups and downs. It featured a 2nd round exit at the Accenture Match Play, a final round 62 and 2nd place finish at the Honda, and an unceremonious culmination with today’s final round injury withdrawal at the WGC Cadillac at Doral. The number of ensuing weeks without Tiger – which will doubtless include plenty of coverage – remains to be seen.

As for this week’s winner Justin Rose, needless to say, there won’t be much talk about him in the post-event coverage as the Woods injury will grossly overshadow his accomplishment. That’s Tigermania, post-2008 version.

Wouldn’t a warmer planet make solar more viable?

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My vote for Energy Secretary

I had convinced myself that this is the type of irony that the Left Wing faces on a perpetual basis. Here we are pumping tax dollars into solar energy at the same time we are trying to stamp out the fossil fuels whose emissions supposedly cause global warming (and cooling as well, given that the term has been modified to ‘climate change’).

However, it turns out that mother nature must have a sense of humor, because, in terms of solar energy from the capture of photovoltaic radiation standpoint, a warmer temperature actually hinders the energy viability. It should be noted, however, that this phenomenon is at least somewhat offset by the fact that the thermal energy from the sun can also be captured and converted to energy, though not very effectively.

Until I discovered this, I had been ready to unveil my simple two-step energy plan.

Step 1 – Profusely pump as many fossil fuel emissions into the environment as humanly possible.

Step 2 – If the planet ever gets warm enough, convert to solar energy. (And if it doesn’t, then no harm done. Seems fool-proof to me.)

Nevertheless I still pose the general question, solar energy viability notwithstanding: what’s wrong with a warmer Earth? There’s even one theory that contends that the reason the dinosaurs got so big in the first place was because the climate was warmer and consequently vegetation they ate thrived.

What seems like common sense logic, however, always gets met by the Left’s “You don’t get it” response. You know the one. Sure it seems perfectly logical, but that’s because I’m not enlightened in the manner the Left is. I’m an unenlightened imbecile and hence I can’t comprehend that it’s not that simple. A Bible-believing bumpkin like myself just couldn’t understand the often torturous complexities and nuances of Liberal orthodoxy.

That’s what they always tell me anyway. This time, the joke was on me – because, at least on this occasion, it really wasn’t as simple as I thought it was. (Most of the time I find that it really is as simple as common sense would tell us.)

Jack and Jill: I got ‘Rob’bed.

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"You can do it! Without me?

I was convinced after having watched “Jack and Jill” that the streak of Rob Schneider appearances in Adam Sandler films had finally ended. For all the cameos – and this one must’ve set the Sandler record with John McEnroe, Dana Carvey, Johnny Depp, Regis Philbin, Christie Brinkley, David Spade, Norm MacDonald, Dan Patrick, Bill Romanowski and all the other Sandler pack including director Dennis Dugan – somehow I missed Rob Schneider’s.

I went to imdb.com just to double-check, and there, deep down in the credits, was Scheider’s name as “Alan”.

I missed it.

In fact, I thought it was kind of funny that the ethnic character normally played by Schneider was played by Schneider’s CBS ‘Rob!’ costar Eugenio Derbez. That made me think that couldn’t have missed the movie because he was busy shooting his TV show because his costar was from that show was in the movie.

Further, I thought the fact that David Spade’s character even mentioned Rob Schneider by name was another sign that Schneider did not appear in the movie.

But apparently he did, so my entire premise for this post was blown out of the water.

As for the movie? It was pretty much the prototypical Sandler/Happy Madison goofiness but with some sentimentality. There were a few laugh-out-loud moments, most of which provided by Al Pacino – who, at first I thought would appear as a mere cameo but turned out to be a central character who essentially stole the film. The PG rating also meant that the kids could enjoy it, which they did.

NBT: Nothing But Tiger

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All day, all night on Golf Channel

I call it the “Tiger snapshot” phenomenon. On Thursday I saw none of the WGC Doral tournament coverage. I finally got around to flipping to Golf Channel at about 10:02 PM PST, and it’s as if no matter what time you flip to TGC, Tiger will be the topic. It takes less than a sentence from the time you flip the channel to hear “Tiger”. So I flipped over at the start of 19th hole program – in time to hear the host say, “We’re all just waiting for Tiger to break out.” (We are?) Then came the hole-by-hole highlight reel of his even par round today. Incidentally, it took the program 20 minutes before the panel mentioned the 2 leaders from Round 1.

They may as well change their name to the “Tiger Golf Channel”. All Tiger all the time – as NY Post columnist Phil Mushnick often writes.

I believe it was on Tuesday when TGC Tweeted a link to Tiger’s press conference from the Doral course, to which I replied, “What about (Rory) McIlroy’s press conference? You know, the guy who won last week and is #1 in the World Rankings?

By God, they might have been listening because on Thursday morning they Tweeted: “Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods. WGC coverage starts now.”

Wow! They actually listed three players, and in order of their world ranking! Tiger wasn’t first – and I don’t think they were giving him the, “And Tiger Woods as the Beaver” opening credit treatment either.

This weekend, I encourage you take the Tiger snapshot challenge. Flip on NBC and count how many seconds it takes for you to either see Woods or hear the word, “Tiger”. I’d recommend turning it into a drinking game, but you’d all be passed out within 20 minutes. Also, see how many times the coverage shows Woods walking around the green, looking at both sides of the hole to prepare for a putt. Then notice that the rest of the players, even those ahead of Woods on the leaderboard and the rankings, are shown (usually recorded) the second before they’re about to take the shot.

I also posed the question, which went unanswered, to the Golf Channel’s biggest Tigerphant (affiliated with the same marketing firm), Kelly Tighlman: “Why are we all supposed to worship Tiger after what he did to his family? The media wants us to hate Gingrich, right?”

I mean I get that Tiger isn’t running for president so there’s a different standard, but in terms of media coverage – they trumpet him, they tout him, they treat him as if he’s all that matters - ironically, at a point in time when the game of golf has never been more globally competitive. I also get that he’s still chasing history in Nicklaus’ major victory record as well, so of course he’s a big story.

My point is… he’s not the only story.

The AP’s “Obama Re-election Inevitability” narrative

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AP: "Always Propaganda"

What I’ve dubbed the “Obama Re-election Inevitability” – call it “ORI” – narrative is in full swing with the folks at the Associated Press. (I’m considering adding the “Narrative” to the acronym, thereby making it “ORIN”.)

The AP, which feeds the Mainstream Media, has a narrative and they tailor their news stories to fit that narrative – typically by cherry-picking which items to highlight. This is never more prevalent than in the AP radio’s top-of-the-hour news reports heard on AM radio stations. Time is short in this particular medium; thus, only stories that fit the overall narrative need be applied.

The economy is improving! The stock market it up! Things are great! (Nevermind an unemployment rate that is higher than when the President took office and gas prices that have “necessarily” skyrocketed.)

A major part of this narrative is that no one whatsoever is excited about the Republican alternatives to the President, whom one could call the AP’s boss. So on Super Tuesday’s top-of-the-hour early news reports, the AP zeroed in on one particular primary voter in Ohio who was a ”less than enthusiastic” Romney supporter. No one could deliver the “less than enthusiastic” line in a more droll and sarcastic manner than AP radio’s John Belmont.

For all we know, the AP interviewed 20 or 50 or 100 other people who were highly enthusiastic about the candidate for which they voted, but the AP found their “less than enthusiastic” guy who went on to say there were no good leaders among the Party’s candidates.

Mission accomplished.

If you believe their reporters didn’t specifically go seeking that individual who fit the ORI narrative, then, sorry, pal – you are naive. This is the storyline they want to portray, and no story – no Solyndra, Fast & Furious or MF Global (which would’ve been Enron x 10 if it were linked to a Republican President) – can stand in their way.

I wish that guy in Ohio realized what he was doing in feeding the beast and its agenda. Or maybe he did. Maybe he really wanted to hear is voice on the radio and thus he was savvy enough to realize the only way that would happen with MSM is if he voiced his displeasure with the Republican candidates.

Later that day, Belmont cited early exit polls that showed the economy was the top issue on primary voters’ minds, and that they were angry with “the government”. This is another tactic they use. In order to downplay the President’s consistently low approval ratings, they use the more generic term ”the government” as opposed to “the President”.

This is especially the tactic when Republicans control at least one of the two Congressional bodies. It is a concerted attempt to make us believe that Republican primary voters are just as angry with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives as they are with the President.

Nonsense!

But it doesn’t have to make sense or appeal to logic; it simply needs to fit the narrative. The AP also does it’s darndest to cite low Congressional approval ratings whenever it cites those of the President’s. This has particularly been the case since the Republicans took control of the House in 2009.

Remember, this is also a deliberate attempt to make YOU believe that you too better think like the guy in Ohio they targeted to highlight. If you want to fit in with your friends at the office or gym or bar, you too should be “less than enthusiastic” about any non-Obama candidate. Don’t fall for the trap, or else… mission accomplished.

UPDATE: This morning, AP radio found another guy they liked, a former Bob Dole and Rick Perry presidential campaign advisor who parroted the Left narrative that this dragged out GOP primary can only weaken the eventual nominee in the general election. Nevermind that Newt Gingrich already put the Left, via George Stephanopoulos, in its place by citing the 2008 Democrat campaign that dragged into June and had no such damaging effect to its nominee. (Reagan 1980 followed a similar model.)

See, facts and evidence don’t matter. Only the “GOP is weak against the Great One” narrative matters. Sadly, there are some Republican advisers/pundits who seem eager to facilitate the Left’s perpetration of this narrative.