Wednesday July 14, 2010

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 52,822. I see an anti-Obama billboard is in the news again. This one, in keeping with the state of our national discourse, compares Obama with Hitler and Lenin, generally drawing a funny-cuz-it's-true response from the conservative belligerati.

This brings to mind the previous political billboard cause celebre, a Bush "Miss Me Yet?" one in Wyoming, Minnesota (no, not in two states, in a town in Minnesota called Wyoming), which was alleged to have caused "lib fury," and was the occasion of many claims like this one that people across America "miss Bush, not because Bush was a great president but because he was better than Obama," though the billboard was financed by a group of businessmen rather than by a nationwide groundswell of children sending in their pennies to overthrow the tyrant via outdoor advertising.

It also reminds me of those Obama Joker posters that were also supposed to be a big deal, though they went up in very few actual physical locations -- they mostly manifested on the sidebars of wingnut websites, yet were also alleged to represent widespread popular hatred for the President.

I wonder if, during the 2006-2008 Democratic ascendancy, anyone thought to make billboards, placards, broadsides, flyers, palmcards, or anything like that suggesting that the Clinton years were preferable to the Bush era of national financial ruin. Probably not, because no one in their right mind would think such a puny stunt would get national press coverage.

Though if you even considered comparing Bush to Hitler, that merited a nice blast of Fox News outrage.

UPDATE. I knew this story could use some Jonah Goldberg and, bless him, he delivers.

Some folks are asking me what I think of the latest billboard controversy. At first I was under the impression from readers that it was Obama with a Hitler mustache. I think that sort of thing is awful and indefensible. But I misunderstood...

I don’t like this billboard either, and I don’t think the Iowa tea-party chapter behind it should have put it up. That said, it’s not as bad as Obama in a Hitler mustache...

Why doesn't Goldberg just claim he's made a Godwin densitometer out of a stapler, and post numbers that defend his otherwise incomprehensible assessments?

Extra points for Goldberg lauding the St. Louis Tea Party "for taking a higher road than the NAACP" by trying to sic the IRS on them.