Cross-posted at Democrashield
Recently, Barack Obama went to a Pennsylvania bowling alley; during the campaign stop he bowled 7 frames and scored a 37. In other words, he made a typical campaign stop, met some voters and had a good time.
Unfortunately, that's not how the media saw it...
Deriding Obama's score, [MSNBC's Joe] Scarborough said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." He added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least." After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."
And then there's this:
On Hardball, discussing Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance at a campaign stop, Chris Matthews said to MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard, "You know, Michelle -- and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder." While showing the video of Obama's bowling, Matthews asserted, "[I]t isn't the most macho form there."
And this:
Discussing Sen. Barack Obama on the April 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO): "Let me ask you about how he -- how's he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?" Earlier in the show, referring to Obama's bowling performance at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Matthews teased the segment with McCaskill by asking, "[C]an Obama woo more regular voters -- you know, the ones who actually do know how to bowl?"
Now, I'm an avid bowler and I'm terrible on the basketball court. But if you had to choose which of the two sports was more macho, I'd have to go with basketball, hands down. And when it comes to basketball, Barack Obama excels:
(Obama's in the green jersey, number 23. Yeah, he misses the free throw, but he puts up an excellent shot and does a great job on defense).
Seriously, though, this is the kind of nonsense we've come to expect from our media. Time after time, conservative pundits try their hardest to portray Democrats as weak, feeble, effeminate, etc. They portrayed Al Gore as a nerdy, know-it-all adademic; they portrayed John Kerry as an effeminate, wealthy playboy.
Putting aside the irony that rich pundits with massive national audiences pretend to know anything about regular Americans, people like Scarborough and Matthews matter. Their take on the news influence a lot of people; they have the potential to move public opinion and even change people's votes. What we're seeing with the bowling strategy is the conservatives' favorite strategy--death by a thousand cuts. They create a meme about a Democratic candidate, then they repeat it as often as possible to reinforce it in the minds of voters.
This is how ridiculous our political discourse has become. Pundits ignore the issues, they ignore the things real Americans actually worry about, instead obsessing over a Presidential candidate's bowling score. The American people are suffering, but our lazy political press inside their D.C. bubbles wastes their time attaching over-inflated significance to Barack Obama's 7 frames of bowling.
I mean, haven't we learned our lesson from George W. Bush? Haven't we learned that idiotic, fake-significant culture war garbage like bowling scores or what kind of coffee you drink or who people want to have a beer with isn't the best judge of who would be a good President?? After 8 years of George Bush--the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with--you think the press would look more a candidate's record, or their positions, or anything else of actual substance. Are we going to have to suffer through the same media nonsense this time around, resulting in (at l east) 4 years of disastrous Republican governance?
When is this nonsense going to stop, once and for all?