"When you were asked, 'What's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America,' you said 'Russia.' Not al Qaeda; you said Russia. And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

Said Barack Obama, in the third presidential debate in 2012, quoted by Chris Cillizza in "It's time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia" (CNN). 

So many people took the cue and laughed at Romney, who had been focusing attention on what Obama had said to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier that year: "This is my last election. And after my election, I have more flexibility." 

Obama's joke — "the 1980s are now calling..." — overshadowed Romney's statement, which was: "Russia is not a friendly character on the world stage. And for this President to be looking for greater flexibility, where he doesn't have to answer to the American people in his relations with Russia, is very, very troubling, very alarming." 

Now, Cillizza says: "What looked like a major flub during the 2012 campaign -- and was used as a political cudgel by Obama -- now looks very, very different. It should serve as a reminder that history is not written in the moment -- and that what something looks like in that moment is not a guarantee of what it will always look like."

How about telling us what you actually said at the time? Because you, Chris Cillizza, were part of the "political cudgel" that — passive voice — "was used." You had the ability at the time to be more than semi-conscious, and as a writer at The Washington Post, you had a responsibility to do more than cheer-lead for Obama, something more than glance "in the moment" and say "what something looks like." 

It was time at the time to say who was right and wrong! And here's what you said at the time:

 

Oh, the superciliousness of "methinks"! It looks so awful now — that supercillizziousness...

Here's The Week celebrating Obama and Cillizza's wit at the time:

4. The '80s called....

After Obama noted that, earlier this year, Romney had called Russia, not Al Qaeda, our greatest geopolitical threat, the president unleashed his other zinger of the night: "The 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back — because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s." Boom, "that '1980s called' line was the best line of the 3 debates methinks," tweeted The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

Yeah, "boom" yourself. I'm sure the zinger amused Putin.

And, as you know, hot dog is Mitt Romney's favorite meat.

My favorite meat is hot dog 🌭 Happy #NationalHotDogDay! pic.twitter.com/xrForVbLOF

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) July 18, 2019

Meat 'n' Mitt — America's favorite combo.

Actually... if I were Mitt, I'd worry about prodding people with "dog"... If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's an entire Wikipedia article, "Mitt Romney dog incident." From that article:

Responding to Democrats who emphasized the Seamus story, conservative bloggers such as Jim Treacher drew a comparison between the Seamus incident and Barack Obama sampling dog meat as a child in Indonesia, where it is a local delicacy, as mentioned in Obama's autobiography. While an Obama spokesman called it an attack on a small child, Obama himself has displayed a sense of humor about it.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner saw Obama saying that Sarah Palin's stint guest hosting The Today Show reminded him of an old query: "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? A pit bull is delicious." Delaney, Arthur; Stuart, Hunter (April 30, 2012). "Obama Ate Dog, And He'd Do It Again To Remind You Of Seamus Romney". Huffington Post (Video).

Ah, I got to use my old "Obamedy" tag again. And it's interesting to see Sarah Palin again. She's been off the radar screen for quite a while. Do we ever hear of her these days? Well, there's this outré acknowledgment from Sacha Baron Cohen, who just got an Emmy nomination for that barely watchable show he put out:

"While I am flattered at these nods, it is a shame that my co-stars were not recognized," Cohen wrote on Twitter. "Particularly Dick Cheney, who I had hoped would come across on camera as someone who’d gleefully sent hundreds of thousands to their pointless death — and boy did he deliver." He added, "There’s one more person I need to thank even though she didn’t appear in the final project, Sarah Palin. Sarah, if you are out there, and you are WAY out there, please know the last time unseen footage generated as much interest, was when Donald Trump visited a Moscow hotel room."

Well, this post went down the rat hole. Here we are in the Steele dossier!

"In a perverse twist, Trump may even have run for President as payback for a comedy routine..."

"Obama’s lacerating takedown of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner."

From "How Jokes Won the Election/How do you fight an enemy who’s just kidding?" by Emily Nussbaum (in The New Yorker).

Here's video of the "lacerating takedown" (including the unsmiling Trump).

"President Obama ridiculed on Snapchat by daughter Sasha."

But that's only something we know because Obama talked about it. That is, he ribbed her.

Philippe Reines is playing the part of Donald Trump in Hillary Clinton's debate preparation sessions.

Or so 2 unnamed sources have told NBC News.

Remember him? He's a longtime Hillary Clinton confidante, most famous for coming up with the "reset" button that Hillary Clinton gave to the Russian Foreign Minister to symbolize our supposed new relationship with Russia in 2009. Reines is responsible for getting the word "reset" wrong and making it say (in Russian) "overcharged."

It's funny to think of that reset button now, with Clinton so critical of Trump for his interest in working with the Russians. According to Hillary's own memoir, the "bright red button on a yellow base... had been pulled off the whirlpool in the hotel" — the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva.

Also from the memoir:

Philippe is passionate, loyal, and shrewd. He usually knows what Washington’s movers and shakers are thinking even before they do.

Reines's name comes up in a few old posts of mine, including "When Phillippe Reines — the man behind Hillary's 'reset' button — said 'fuck off' and 'have a good life' to Michael Hastings — the reporter who died recently in a mysterious car crash."

Hastings was asking questions like "Why didn’t the State Department search the [Benghazi] consulate...?" and "What other potential valuable intelligence [besides Ambassador Stevens's diary] was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds?" Reines became extremely defensive and abusive...

Here's a CNN video from 2014 about Reines's getting testy when Buzzfeed — having heard that Clinton hadn't driven a car since 1996 — wanted to know about whether Clinton had done various other things that ordinary people do (like using an ATM or eating at Chipotle):



It's interesting to hear those commentators talking about how presidential candidates have felt the need to show that they do what ordinary people do — e.g., candidate Obama went bowling (really badly... and made a terrible joke about it) — but we haven't seen much of that sort of thing from either Trump or Clinton. I guess those 2 protect each other from needing to seem like a commoner. But way back before Hillary had that immunity — back in April 2015 — she made a point of eating at Chipotle. And remember the "Scooby Van"? Those were simpler times.

Did Obama laugh at Hillary's slogan?

The line from the speech is:

Most of all, I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together – black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young and old; gay, straight, men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance, under the same proud flag, to this big, bold country that we love.

Obama laughs — scoffingly? — just as he says "stronger together," which is Hillary's slogan. 

I don't think the White House Correspondents Dinner people enjoyed Larry Wilmore very much.

Everyone looks so uncomfortable. Which is a good thing, right? Why should he make these people comfortable? Here's the transcript. I'll try to excerpt what I think this crowd may have disliked the most:

And I have to admit it’s not easy to follow the president, man. You got some jokes. Mr. President. The president’s funny. Stay in your lane, man. You don’t seem me going around president-ing all the time, right? I don’t go around passing health care, and signing executive orders, pardoning turkeys … not closing Guantanamo. Oh wait, maybe I did do that.

But I have to say, it’s great, it looks like you’re really enjoying your last year of the presidency. Saw you hanging out with NBA players like Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors. That was cool. That was cool, yeah. You know it kinda makes sense, too, because both of you like raining down bombs on people from long distances, right? What? Am I wrong?

Speaking of drones, how is Wolf Blitzer still on television? Ask a follow-up question. Hey, Wolf, I’m ready to project tonight’s winner: Anyone that isn’t watching “The Situation Room.”...

But I have to say, about the first lady, it’s so nice to have dinner with you. She is the epitome of grace, class and poise, isn’t she? She really is. Not to be confused with future first gentleman Bill Clinton, whose three favorite strippers are named Grace, Class and Poise....

I’m impressed with the people in this room. There are so many rich, powerful people in this room. You know, it’s nice to finally match the names to the faces in the Panama Papers. It’s very nice....
MSNBC — MSNBC here tonight? No? Which actually now stands for “Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents.” Am I wrong? They like fired Melissa Harris-Perry, they canceled Joy Reid, they booted Touré. I heard they put Chris Hayes on probation because they thought he was related to Isaac Hayes.... MSNBC got rid of so many black people I thought Boko Haram was running that network. What was going on…?

You know, I should say some of America’s finest black journalists are here tonight. Don Lemon’s here, too. Hey, Don, how’s it going? Alleged journalist Don Lemon, everybody.

The camera shows Don Lemon giving him the finger.

I'll bet the audience was expecting more and harsher focus on Donald Trump. There was a reference to "his genitalia" — which took a shot at a Democrat (calling it "his President Johnson") —  to his "little baby hands" — the reason "everyone treats Donald Trump with kid gloves" — and an attack on "Morning Joe" for giving him so much favorable TV time — "Morning Joe: has their head so far up Trump’s ass they bumped into Chris Christie." But Wilmore delivered more pain to Democrats — politicians and the press.

There were also the transgressive racial words, from the beginning middle and end of the speech: 1. "negro" ("Well, welcome to 'Negro Night' here at the Washington Hilton, or as Fox News will report, 'Two thugs disrupt elegant dinner in D.C.'"), 2. "jigaboo" ("Ben Carson... praised Jackson... From the grave, Andrew Jackson replied, 'What did that jigaboo say?'"), and 3. "nigga" ("So, Mr. President, if I’m going to keep it 100: Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga. You did it.").

Obama did a great job of laughing and looking like he had a sense of humor about everything. Why shouldn't he? He had his speech too, and it was already done and — probably most people would say — funnier and better delivered. Check it out:

The "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" with President Obama as one of the comedians.

It just went up. Here.

ADDED: "I'm appreciably cooler than I was 2 minutes ago." That's the only quote I wrote down. It's something Obama says after he's driven the 1963 Corvette Stingray for a couple minutes. Obama notably drives with one hand draped over the top of the wheel. He observes that you "can't do 10 and 2" with a car like that.

There's a nice beginning where Obama is at his desk in the Oval Office and Jerry comes up and just taps on the window. Obama claims to have some work to do — like he's always at the desk working — and Jerry flops down on the sofa to wait. Jerry takes an apple from the big bowl of apples on the coffee table and — after taking a bite — asks the President: "Are these washed?" I liked that, because that's how I feel about bowls of apples too.

They end up having coffee in what looks like the White House staff break room. Obama tells Seinfeld to make the coffee, which he does. It's a Mr. Coffee machine. Is that always there? I bet not. I bet they have one of those push-button, single-cup machines. The tables in the place all have those red-and-white checked table clothes that used to be the mark of a neighborhood Italian restaurant. I'm skeptical about those too. I bet that was staged, like the 2 women at the table sitting behind Jerry — although maybe not, because I got tired of that one woman who was positioned to seem like a head growing out of Jerry's neck.

Jerry tried to get the President to be funny by asking him about his underwear (which, I learned, is all the same color) and whether he's somehow haunted by all that's gone on in the White House over the years (Jerry pushed the notion that it's like "Night at the Museum"). There was some talk about whether it's bad to be famous. The President claimed to miss anonymity, but Jerry said he remembered not being famous and it's not that good. And Jerry worked on the idea that those who hold power for too long become crazy, but certainly didn't get the President to concede that he's losing his mind at all, though the President did say that quite a few world leaders are mentally disordered. That's just paraphrase. I'd have to watch again to get the precise quote. Should have written that one down, but writing while watching would have ruined the pacing and I like Jerry too much to do that to him.

"I am just fine with a few hecklers, but not when I'm up in the house. You know what I mean?"

"You know, my attitude is if you're eating the hors d'oeuvres... and drinking the booze..."

Obama's standards on heckling are site-specific.

By the way, I'm fascinated by Obama's mannerisms and facial expressions in this video clip. They're quite elaborately comical.

POTUS on Twitter... joking about Twitter...

... I don't believe in Twitter.

"Six years into my presidency some people still say I’m arrogant, aloof, condescending. Some people are so dumb."

See, that's funny. It uses truth and self-deprecation — traditional attributes of humor — in a fresh enough, edgy enough way.

I also liked:

I have to stay focused on my job. Because for many Americans this is still a time of deep uncertainty.  For example, I have one friend just a few weeks ago, she was making millions of dollars a year and she’s now living out of a van in Iowa.

He takes a shot at Hillary that minimizes her current "Clinton Cash" catastrophe and relaxes us into laughing by opening up a channel to that dark place in our souls where we harbor disgust for the poor.

SEE: "Lessons Learned From A Year Living In A Van":

Prepare to be judged: By your friends, your family, co-workers. Both past and present. And pretty much everyone you'll meet along the way....

"Being president is never easy. I still have to fix the broken immigration system. Issue veto threats. Negotiate with Iran. All while finding time to pray five times a day."

President Obama at the White House correspondents' dinner.

Sasha and Malia are bored...

... with Obama's turkey-pardoning jokes.

Obama will walk your dog.

Even if you don't have a dog.

He will walk your metaphorical dog. He'll do whatever it is you need done.

"I told John Boehner, you know, I'll wash your car. I'll walk your dog, whatever you need to do."

Feel free to make that the first line of a comic monologue, Obama's Offer.

I thought only "yes" means yes: Did Obama get true, verbalized consent from that woman before he kissed her?

No. He did not. People are focusing on Obama's interplay with a man who said "Don't touch my girlfriend" as Obama was voting in Chicago, demonstrating how to vote.

But let's talk about the woman. Obama orders her to kiss him: "You're gonna kiss me. Give him something to talk about. Now, he's really jealous." As you see in the video, he makes that declarative statement and immediately grabs her and kisses and hugs her.

Why is that acceptable? He's using her in an effort to regain dignity and to humiliate the man who humiliated him. It might all be dismissed as play humiliation and play counter-humiliation. But the woman's body was used as an object of that play, a means of communication between men.

Help me make a list of people who have been imitated by a President of the United States.

The previous post has video of Harry Truman doing an imitation of the radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn. And I can remember Barack Obama imitating Al Green. Or maybe that shouldn't count. He was just doing his best at singing "Let's Stay Together." Oh, I see that later he joked: "Tonight, I am speaking not just as a President, but as one of America's best-known Al Green impersonators." Obama also imitated the Seahawks' Richard Sherman: "I'm the best President in the game!"

I couldn't think of anything else. I googled people who have been imitated by presidents, and the first hit was a NYT pieced called "The Spirit of the President. Let it be Imitated." which I misread as promising for my list-making purpose. Turned out it was from November 12, 1864. Abraham Lincoln had called upon "all having a common interest [to] reunite in a common effort to save our common country," and the NYT editors recommended an imitation of his "forbearing and generous spirit." That's an immensely interesting detour, profound when I'm being lightweight. I'm only mentioning it because it's my way to blog about the process of blogging, and today, especially, has been a day of blogging details.

I'm genuinely trying to make a a list of people who have been imitated by a President of the United States.

Caption contest!

Putin calls Obama "chicken."

No, not really. It just looks that way on Drudge:



The link goes here.

Thanks to the multiple readers who, knowing my love for Drudge juxtapositions, emailed me about that.

3 Pinocchios to Harry Reid's claim that the Koch brothers are "one of the main causes" of climate change.

Why only 3 and not the maximum of 4? Glenn Kessler explains:

Certainly, Koch Industries contributes to climate change, but the relative impact falls well short of being a “major cause.” We understand Reid’s overall point, but it’s important to stick to the facts when making such claims. Given that Reid did not accurately describe the U-Mass. report, our rating on this statement tips toward Three Pinocchios.

Paraphrase: An old politico with his heart in the right place is entitled to a little hyperbole.

I don't agree with that statement, by the way. That's just my translation of Kessler's analysis. What I think is that those who've got their hands on government power should never evince partisan hostility toward private citizens. They should always take pains to appear neutral toward the people they are in a position to harass, and shame on them when they don't.

Writing that made me look up Obama's speech from last weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner, because I remember that he mentioned the Koch Brothers and my reaction was outrage, expressed (out loud) in just about the words you see in the previous 2 sentences. Looking at the text of the speech, I see the precise words were:

And speaking of conservative heroes, the Koch brothers bought a table here tonight. But as usual, they used a shadowy right-wing organization as a front.  Hello, Fox News.  (Laughter and applause.)

Doesn't that seem rather mild? Was I unduly cantankerous late at night, listening for trouble? Or was I right to be outraged? This is the President of the United States, in a position to impose endless anguish on the citizens whose names he called out. He sounds good humored, as though we're supposed to somehow believe that he'd never do any mischief, but look at the IRS scandal, and remember that Obama joked about auditing his enemies.

How bad was Joel McHale, the (official) comedian at last night's White House Correspondents Dinner?

At last night's White House Correspondents Dinner, the official comedian — insert typical joke about how they're all comedians — was Joel McHale, whose comic gimmick seemed to be reading bad jokes off cards and then ad-libbing about how that was a poor joke. For example:

I am a big fan of President Obama. I think he’s one of the all-time great presidents, definitely in the top 50. Please explain that to Jessica Simpson. You’re right, that was low.

That came early on and was followed by what might have been his only rough treatment of Obama:

All right, how about the president’s performance tonight, everyone? Sir, it’s amazing that you can still bring it with fresh, hilarious material. My favorite bit of yours was when you said you would close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. That was a classic. That was hilarious, hilarious. Still going.

Detainee Obamedy. Obama laughed and laughed. I think he mouthed something like "I'm still workin' on it."