This is an outgrowth from the Rush Limabugh attacks going back to the campaign: "I've constantly noted, ladies and gentlemen, you take the prompter and the written speeches away from Barak Obama and you have nothing."
I've noticed Rush has pulled away from this recently compared to a couple of weeks ago when he would cite this blog a lot. Perhaps it's because it's such a ridiculous charge to try and make stick. Have you seen President Obama at a press conference? Or on the Tonight Show - other than the ill-fated Specials Olympics line?
His winged answers sound like they were carved in marble too. So I don't get the strategy here.
If they're going to attack Obama on the basis of him not being able to talk, it's tremendous news for the Democratic Party.

To me it mirrors the right wing's sudden embrace of liberty versus tyranny. They just came off 8 years of supporting flat-out tyrants in a bloody, Constitution-shredding torture spree that just grows uglier every day as new details emerge, so of course, they are now talking about themselves as the guardians of our liberty. It's the blatant lying to the American People that wins them their solid 30%: Their dumb-ass base. You know, the ones who still insist Saddam caused 9/11.

Using this model, how do you handle the problem of a President who's great at speaking? Especially when you just gave us 8 years of a guy who created a whole industry with his fractured sentences? A guy who was so dumb that he couldn't hear what he was saying so he wouldn't even correct himself?
How does the Rush Limbaugh crowd handle that? By going after Obama saying he can't talk without a teleprompter.

It's a pathetic doomed attempt to create public opinion with spin rather than the truth. After 8 years of W, you would think they'd have had enough of that.

I would bet that right now the same crowd of Palinite morons who believe Obama is a communist who hangs out with terrorists, are now convinced that without a telepromoter, President Obama can't speak at all. And the experts wonder why the GOP has turned into such a party of losers.

Where's the funny? Tens of posts about "Fancy Nancy" and "Gibbsy" and "Big Guy" doesn't make for very exciting reading. It's the humor equivalent of paint-by-numbers: you're supposed to laugh because you used the right colors in-between the lines.

On a different note, I have to admit I'll be pretty amused if the proposal to change Broadway to Ceasar Chavez goes through if for no other reason than to see one of the tallest buildings in town get referred to as "the 1000 Cesar Chavez building".

What Bill McD said.

I would bet that right now the same crowd of Palinite morons who believe Obama is a communist who hangs out with terrorists, are now convinced that without a telepromoter, President Obama can't speak at all. And the experts wonder why the GOP has turned into such a party of losers.

x2

Take out Obama and insert Bush, Palin, or McCain, and I think folks here would be singing a different tune. Having listened to the right wing bigots and read their drivel on the Internet, I can say this one is a step above. Several steps above. Unlike Town Hall or NRO, this is well written and coherent. The author doesn't take any cheap shots and keeps it mostly respectful and above the belt. Having read TOTUS for a week or so now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, like me, they voted for Obama and might even do so again. At the very least, it's mature dissent, unlike Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and their ilk, and should be encouraged.

Oh, yay. Smug, cranio-rectally inverted lame humor tearing down the actually-elected President of the United states crafted by some numbnut conservative who'd either rather die poor and without opportunity or see to it that the President's plans fail and do it to their neighbors.

And, to top it off, they're only about a month old and they get ... nearly 1200 followers?!?! WTF? There are lots of decent blogs who deserve a chance who get roundly ignored but this bozo goes straight to the head of the class.

I tell you, some days it's enough to make you want to go find a peanut butter sandwich and take a chance of ending it all.

But wait ... maybe that's what they're trying to make some of us do, who knows.

Also, I sure hope using the initialism *OTUS has finally jumped the shark. I'll certainly never use it again.

Take out Obama and insert Bush, Palin, or McCain, and I think folks here would be singing a different tune

Doubtless some would, but there was a lot of incredibly unfunny Bush humor, too. Personally, I thought both of the Comedy Central attempts to do humor about the White House: "That's My Bush" (which came out before 9/11) and the animated "L'il Bush" (which was thrown up on the doorstep a couple of years back) were simply unwatchable. Then again, the guys from "South Park" were responsible for the former, so why should I have expected wit?

There's reportedly a "l'il Barack" series in the works.

Take out Obama and insert Bush, Palin, or McCain, and I think folks here would be singing a different tune.

I wonder what the media or the blogosphere would have said if W had gone on the Tonight Show while in office?

Are you implying that people treat a situation differently if it's their side or the opposition? Wow, that's deep.
I'm just pointing out that your spin had better have some relationship to the truth. Rush's depiction of President Obama as someone who can't think to talk without his teleprompter telling him what to say, is workable, but only because his base are a bunch of dumb asses who'll buy anything. Obama clearly is very intelligent and can answer questions extremely well without any help.

Now contrast that with the endless humor about George Bush's fractured sentences, that often consisted of just playing the clip of him talking. There was less of a stretch between the idea that George was a hopeless moron, because he was saying dumb things literally everyday. I mean it. There are books full of these dumb quotes, and they're not just little mistakes that we all make. They have a kind of advanced level of screwed-up that sort of tantalizes the mind as you try and follow what he said, before just breaking into the laugh.
Incidentally, one of the fun parts was watching the people standing with him try and keep that serious look after George had just launched another bonehead classic.
If the point of the teleprompter jokes is that Obama is too dumb to talk it's just not going to fly. I wish it would. I'm a comedy writer and if there were truth to it, I'd be right in there with the jokes. But the audience wouldn't laugh - they'd just be puzzled because they know it's not the case.
Sooner or later Obama will give us the comedy riff. The fact that his cabinet nominees hadn't paid their taxes was one. Rush should wait for a real one - this teleprompter thing is bogus.
In this case the sides really were different: Obama can talk, Bush can't.

If the point of the teleprompter jokes is that Obama is too dumb to talk it's just not going to fly.

The teleprompter is a jumping off point. It could be the president's dog. It could be his barber. That part doesn't matter. The author is talking from the point of view of a bit player, yet a privileged insider who's been there from the beginning. The idea of a teleprompter sitting in the back window of Barry's car, throwing up inverted text so O could read it in the rear view mirror while he was out on a date with Michelle, is funny.

Yes, Obama can talk extemperaniously about any number of subjects without doubling back on himself and getting bogged down. And yes, eventually the Obama jokes will write themselves. That doesn't mean there's not room out there for someone to take him on with intelligence and decorum.

Bill M, calling people who disagree with you "dumb-asses", "morons", and "losers" doesn't make you smart. You seem like a guy who actually cares about personal liberty, at least when you were afraid Bush was infringing it. Any government that can take by taxation all of the proceeds of a validly completed contract (that was even acknowledged in the Bailout Bill) can do whatever the hell they want to anyone the hell they don't like. Obama could have loudly condemned Congress for the attempt, and Cuomo for his "naming names" bullying of the recipients of the AIG bones, but either he didn't believe that Congress and Cuomo were wrong, or he didn't have the guts to stand in the way of the mob. The "Obama is dumb" stuff is just as much propaganda to get the right off their asses as the "Bush is dumb" stuff was red meat for guys like you and Jack. It's all smoke. The fire is what this government is doing to liberty right in front of our faces, to the cheers of a lot of "smart" people. Obama is plenty smart (maybe not so much Reid and Pelosi) and that's what I'm afraid of.

I wonder what the media or the blogosphere would have said if W had gone on the Tonight Show while in office?

Well, if he'd done stuff like the time he went on Letterman during his first presidential campaign and used the hem of the producer's sweater to wipe his glasses as she was bending over the desk during one of the commercial breaks, I suspect they would have found a number of things to say about him.

Not that he ever would have gone on a talk show he didn't have a lock-down on. Bush didn't do well in uncontrolled situations. If he'd been able to handle going on something unscripted like the Tonight Show without looking like a complete buffoon, I'm sure he would have done it.

The idea of a teleprompter sitting in the back window of Barry's car, throwing up inverted text so O could read it in the rear view mirror while he was out on a date with Michelle, is funny.

"Barry"? Really? You're stuck on that?

The joke in the back window context is only funny if you thought Obama "needed" prompting, which is at odds with your presumed acknowledgment that he's not stupid enough to need the teleprompter in the first place. Now, that's not to say the premise couldn't have been funny. For instance, if the teleprompter had been been messing with him by throwing up distractions in the back window. Or even if it had gone with a kind of "Karate Kid" routine with the teleprompter in the Pat Morita role, training Obama from a young age. That might have had the kind of logical internal consistency that actual humor contains.

But this is just the equivalent of mashing up every right-wing theme about Obama ("Obama thinks he's God", "Obama's a tool of the Iranians!") into a pabulum, then sculpting it into a sort of Devil's Tower shape to try to make it look more substantial than it is.

How about a retired Bush in the wings writing cue cards for Obama who, for once, is speaking gibberish? Now that's fair and balanced, eh? Add Hannity and Bill'O praising his prose.

Original Bob,
The problem with the right is that they believed their own spin that the left thinks Obama is the Messiah. It's a classic case of create the myth and then react to the myth.
I'm already running a fairly long list of things he's done or hasn't done that ticks me off starting with the drones that killed children in Pakistan the first week of his presidency.
The part about calling the magic 30% who believe anything Rush says, dumb-asses, is just an honest opinion. The right wing has gone out of their way to embrace being stupid. How else do you explain W or Sarah Palin?
Turning around and trying to sell what they're doing as the same thing as what we did to W is very flawed. Obama is smart and can talk eloquently. Bush was a moron who could barely get through a sentence without saying something majestically idiotic. There's a difference.
I'd also avoid believing your own spin on Obama as this sudden new enemy of our liberty when your guy trashed the Constitution for 8 straight years and you went right along. It's reasoning like this that makes the GOP appear to have a brain shortage right now.

Obama is smart and can talk eloquently. Bush was a moron who could barely get through a sentence without saying something majestically idiotic.

Wow, Bill, it's amazing it only took you approximately a million words, the usual name-calling, and your preternatural inferential wizardry to come to such a sophisticated, succinct conclusion. Let's just ignore what Obama says 'cause, boy, can he talk.

Oh, and NO JOKES about Him, please - the Joke Czar forbids it.

I write jokes about him everyday.
All I do is write jokes. That's why I go on these blogs. To try and save my brain from writing too many jokes.

I apologize for the tone. Venting is not fair right now because everyone is cranky at the way things have turned out.

I'll tone it down. W is gone. Only the damage remains.