Or: Wait, He Consumes Dogs?
Remember when the Obama campaign made dogs a campaign issue, blasting Romney over and over for putting his dog on top of his car in 1983? And remember how some obscure wingnut blogger pointed out that Obama bragged in one of his many autobiographies about eating dogs? (A fact that anybody could’ve found out by going to the nearest bookstore, but apparently people only buy Obama’s books for the covers.) And remember how we all laughed at Obama and pointed out his campaign was dumb for bringing up dogs in the first place?
And remember how the story started to die down and people started to move on to the next thing, as always happens, until Obama brought it right back in the most public way possible?
Neil Munro reports:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn0Gr1OufcYPresident Barack Obama took the dog jokes out for a walk at this year’s White House Correspondents Association dinner, and made sure to sic’ em on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
“What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” Obama asked, recalling a 2008 campaign joke told by then-vice presidential nominee Sarah Pain. “A pit bull is delicious.”
LOL! Thanks for reading the Daily Caller, President Dog-Eater.
Listen to that amazing reaction, too. You can almost see the thought balloons over the crowd’s heads:
“Did he really say that?”
“Wait, what?”
“Should I be laughing right now? What will happen to my reputation if Obama tells a joke and I’m seen not laughing at it?”
So that happened.
I win.
And now, the left is in a bit of a pickle. After spending years mocking Romney for putting his dog on top of a car, they’ve spent the last couple of weeks scolding us for talking about dogs because now it embarrasses the Democrats. But then the head honcho got up in front of the world and said, “If I can’t beat ’em, I’ll join ’em.”* What are his sycophants to do now?
Some of them have executed a complete 180 and are pretending to find “Obama eats dogs” jokes hilarious. Which is why we should stop telling them. I know this because that’s what they’ve been yelling at me on Twitter for the last 36 hours. Their floundering attempt to relieve their cognitive dissonance is wonderful.
Other lefties are choosing to ignore it entirely, as Munro reports:
President Barack Obama’s after-dinner dog jokes are missing.
They’re entirely absent from some media reports of the April 28 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
There’s a footprint or a faint howl of Obama’s two dog-eating jokes in other media reports, but no articles sought to highlight Americans’ cultural aversion to dog-eating.
An AP report issued after the speech ran for 25 paragraphs, but didn’t include the word “dog,” even though the topic of “President-eats-dog” is basically a guaranteed traffic-getter…
The New York Times’ article on Obama’s speech used its first paragraph to mention one of Obama’s anti-Romney quips. That quip used a mock attack-ad to show a photoshopped Romney standing in front of Air Force One with a dog-carrier strapped to the fuselage.
But the Times’ delayed any mention Obama’s main canine-cuisine quip until paragraph six…
Seven Washington Post reporters and some editors produced a 20-paragraph article that didn’t mention the Obama-bites-dog jokes, but did include Kimmel’s nip at Romney for placing his ill dog in carrier on top of the family station-wagon.
I’m told ABC News studiously ignored it too. Don’t know about NBC and CBS, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It doesn’t make sense, until you realize that these guys aren’t in the business of attracting an audience. They’re in the business of protecting Democrats from their own mistakes. Obviously, they think Obama joking about the fact that he eats dogs is one of those mistakes.
It’s just more proof that we don’t need these guys anymore. They’re not our gatekeepers. They’ve proven it over and over: ACORN. Rielle Hunter. Van Jones. Anthony Weiner. They keep trying and failing to cover up stories that don’t suit their agenda. They keep pretending they control the flow of information. They’re determined to prove their own obsolescence. And they’ve got the ratings and circulation numbers to prove it.
Anyway. Back to me! I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly acknowledge a few of the accolades bestowed upon me. It would be ungrateful not to, don’t you think?
John Hinderaker at Power Line:
Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.)
Mark Steyn at National Review:
I share John Hinderaker’s general line on the general loathsomeness of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner – I dislike both the self-flattering fake self-deprecation of the pols and the fawning defanged jabs of the comics. A ghastly business. But I also share his appreciation for the only novel aspect of last night’s affair. My weekend column addressed Romney’s dog-transporting and Obama’s dog-eating – the former referenced by New York Times columnist Gail Collins some four dozen or so times, the latter not at all by her or any other Times bigshot. And yet there was the President of the United States up on stage doing dog-eating shtick in front of the nation. That represents an amazingly swift victory for the man who, all but entirely via Twitter, injected the topic into the public discourse – Jim Treacher.
Indeed, as The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta wrote:
My favorite DC/world disconnect at #WHCD dinner lst nite was when frmr politico now in NY asked why Obama kept talking about eating dogs.
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) April 29, 2012
Thanks for getting the word out, Mr. President!
And finally, Tim Blair at the Sydney Daily Telegraph:
At issue in this year’s presidential contest between incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney is where Romney’s dog Seamus was kept during a family holiday to Canada in 1983.
Obama operatives discovered that Seamus, an Irish setter, had endured the 12-hour drive in a cage strapped to the roof of the family station wagon.
Realising the potential power of this story in a nation of pet lovers, Democrats worked the story hard.
Then another dog story surfaced, courtesy of Washington DC writer Jim Treacher – one of few people on Earth to actually read Obama’s 1995 biography Dreams From My Father…
Obama supporters quickly moved on from dog-based attacks on Romney – despite polls which at one point s suggested that up to 35 per cent of voters felt more negatively towards him – as their own man’s dog tale began to bite.
Leading the pack is Treacher, a wicked genius who took the matter direct to the White House via Twitter.
“Good morning, Barack Obama,” Treacher wrote. “When did you stop eating dogs?”
At Treacher’s Daily Caller website, it’s a riot of dog gags:
Q: What’s the difference between Obama’s speeches & his homemade chili?
A: One’s a bully pulpit, the other’s a pulpy pitbull.
They’re far too kind, not that I’m complaining.
By the way, as The Blaze notes, Obama’s hilarious WHCD set was opened with a toilet flush. What’s the big deal? He was just letting the dog out.
Oh, and I forgot about Jimmy Kimmel! That tends to happen. I didn’t watch him, but apparently he told a number of “Obama eats dogs” jokes too. My favorite: “Last week we learned that the president’s two favorite steaks are rib-eye and seeing-eye.” You can watch his set here.
Good luck figuring out how you want to play this, libs. I don’t envy you! 😉
*Or maybe, and I realize this is a remote possibility here, but maybe he was fueled by narcissistic spite. Maybe he’s driven by a need to strike back at anyone who thwarts him, even if he only ends up hurting himself by introducing an embarrassing topic to a much wider audience. Just maybe.
