Wednesday May 04, 2011

THEY TRY, OH HOW THEY TRY. Ace O. Spades:

7 Minutes Vs. 16 Hours: How The Media Reports Delay

George Bush was relentlessly mocked for waiting seven minutes (actually waiting for his security detail to ready the exit and for his vehicle to be readied) before leaving the school he was visiting. He calmly finished reading My Pet Goat for the kids before going to his now-ready helicopter.

On the other hand, after Obama was told (most likely for the fifteenth time) that the CIA was really, really, really quite confident that Osama bin Ladin was at that compound in Abbottabad, he decided he needed to sleep on it.

Sixteen hours later (hours during which Osama might have fled-- bear in mind, his courier's name had just been outed by WikiLeaks), he made up his mind.

How does the media report this?

They report that, in stark contrast to his predecessor, Obama killed Bin Laden.

Further down, Mr. Spades shows why they're really paying him the big bucks:

If everyone including Jimmy Carter would have ordered this, then I'm afraid I don't see why President Made a Poopie should be so praised for doing what everyone else would have done. That is, why praise him for being ordinary?

Similarly, why do people cheer the achievements of pro athletes? If Mr. Spades had spent his younger days honing his athletic skills instead of lecturing his playmates on the evils of the Frankfurt School, he too might have been World Series MVP. Yet people act as if it's some big deal.

In a few days I expect Mr. Spades will be running fan fiction about President John Bolton giving the order to kill Bin Laden in a totally awesome way that transforms it from a boring administrative detail into something really heroic. It'll be like how Han Solo says "I know" to Princess Leia before they freeze him in carbonite -- the perfect reading, which you didn't realize until you saw a President you despise do it the wrong way.