Republicans Finally Admit Silliness of Obama TelePrompTer Caricature
Republicans Finally Admit Silliness of Obama TelePrompTer Caricature
Posted: 10/01/2012 7:16 pm
Chris Weigant
You'll have to forgive the pundit world of late. Political wonks are all in a collective breath-holding moment, as we all sit nervously awaiting the first presidential debate of the season. We tell each other that it's going to be a big event -- possibly the biggest -- in the race for the White House, whether we actually believe this to be true or not. But because we're all waiting for the main event, there is actually time to sit back and examine how Republicans are proving that one of their own put-downs of President Obama was laughable nonsense from the very get-go. I speak (without notes, to be snarky) of "TelePrompTer Obama" -- the caricature that stated that Barack Obama was nothing more than a good speech-giver, and absolutely could not function speaking in public without the crutch of a prepared speech scrolling past his eyes.
This caricature began approximately the day Obama took office, and has been used scathingly by Republicans over the past four years. Obama was nothing more than a puppet, Republicans sneered, tied by the strings of his TelePrompTer, and unable to form a coherent thought or sentence on his own.
This was all ridiculous nonsense, of course, but that didn't stop the Republican Party from having a field day with it. Politicians have been using these devices since the time they were invented -- yes, even Republican politicians such as (say it softly) Ronald Wilson Reagan. The whole slur made about as much sense in the modern world as denouncing a politician for speaking into a microphone. TelePrompTers are hardly "new-fangled" devices, to put it another way. They've been around and been used for decades (although, as we've noted before, the media still has a major problem with the odd capitalization in the brand name, much the same way they got confused over "Etch A Sketch" and "Chick-fil-A" of late... but I digress).
Republicans had all kinds of fun building their caricature of President Obama as somehow lost without his TelePrompTer crutch, for years. Until this past weekend. Watching the Sunday political chatfests on television meant listening to Republican after Republican extol to the skies President Obama's ability as a standalone debater. Obama was masterful, Obama was best talking off-the-cuff, Obama was one of the greatest political speakers of our time. This was coming from Republicans, mind you.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/republicans-finally-admit_b_1930814.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
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