…Unless, of course, you cause Obamalot any kind of discomfort, embarrassment, or “outrage” — even if you happen to be completely on the side of the new Messiah. At which point, all bets are off.
From the LA Times blog:
There’s probably no connection whatsoever.But the New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose long, long article on Barack Obama’s early political days in Chicago’s ward politics (available here) was the reason for the magazine’s controversial cover by Barry Blitt depicting Obama as a Muslim, has been barred from traveling with Obama on his foreign field trip this week.
The elitist magazine claimed the cover’s depiction waThe satirical cover of the New Yorker magazine for the issue of 7-21-08s satirical of a Muslim Obama fist-bumping with a militant wife Michelle armed with an AK-47 beneath a portrait of Osama bin Laden while they burn a U.S. flag — in the Oval Office.
Initially, the Obama campaign and John McCain’s spokesman denounced the cover.
Later, a cooler Obama dismissed it as a weak attempt at satire amid much more important things to discuss.
More than 200 media folks applied to fly in Europe with the freshman senator. But, alas, the Obama campaign said it simply was not able to find a seat for Lizza.
Now, that’s Chicago politics.
— And as we all know, Chicago politics is the quintessential politics of hope and change.
Just ask the ghost of John Kennedy, who may never have become a liberal icon and martyr had it not been for Chicago’s commitment to a, well… let’s just call it a “progressive” get out the vote drive.
Remember: hope and change are not about falling in love; they’re about falling in line. Nothing looks more peaceful than a consensus — and what better way to ensure said consensus than to define out, by way of punishment or excommunication, those who don’t or won’t commit to the standardized narrative?
Can we fix it? Yes we can!
Comment by happyfeet on 7/21 @ 1:52 pm #
I think Baracky was kind of concerned that the trip might become a media circus is all. He didn’t want to look like he was showboating I don’t think.
Comment by Karl on 7/21 @ 1:55 pm #
BECAUSE OF THE UNITY!!!
Comment by Tim P on 7/21 @ 1:59 pm #
Coupled with the news in Karl’s post on the NYT spiking McCain’s response, I suspect that the only lesson that the democrats and their enablers learned from 2000 and 2004 is that they weren’t nasty, underhanded and dishonest enough.
Comment by McGehee on 7/21 @ 2:04 pm #
Isn’t that what the Kossite nutroots (who, of course, DON’T SPEAK FOR ALL DEMOCRATS) have been saying for the last several years?
Why, I’d almost be tempted to conclude that those who say the Kossite nutroots DON’T SPEAK FOR ALL DEMOCRATS are, perhaps, incorrect.
Comment by Jeff G. on 7/21 @ 2:04 pm #
The New York times probably spiked McCain’s piece because they feared losing access to The One.
Not particularly brave, the Times isn’t these days.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 7/21 @ 2:16 pm #
““progressive†get out the vote drive.”
So, ‘progressive’ is a synonym for ‘zombie’.
Who knew?
Comment by Challeron on 7/21 @ 2:16 pm #
Comment by Aldo on 7/21 @ 2:17 pm #
PW commenter Jonas will be very, very happy to see that you read the LAT Blog. I guess the on-line audience is their last desperate hope, so they have to grit their teeth and publish something unflattering about O! there occasionally. As the last non-prog reader of the print edition I feel cheated. Jonas, If I can’t get this kind of juicy stuff in the print edition couldn’t I at least get a promotional coffee cup or something?
Comment by Challeron on 7/21 @ 2:19 pm #
What would you expect? The Times is doing its damndest to destroy itself, it just doesn’t know how it’s going about it.
(Damn this handheld computer; how I managed my first half-assed comment, I’ll never know — hey! Maybe I could be a Times editor!…)
Comment by Aldo on 7/21 @ 2:20 pm #
Challerone,
#7 is a great performance art interpretive dance blog comment on media criticism of Obama.
Comment by happyfeet on 7/21 @ 2:27 pm #
The Times is doing its damndest to destroy itself, it just doesn’t know how it’s going about it.
Also people a lot overlooked this blow to their print distribution model.
Comment by DarthRove on 7/21 @ 2:27 pm #
My grandparents, dead for 12, 10, 9, and 6 years, will be voting for Obama.
That’s the Chicago way!
/Sean Connery
Comment by BJTex on 7/21 @ 2:28 pm #
If this is the case (if Obama’s staff is punishing Lizza) then, irony of ironies, Obama is ripping a page out of the Clinton handbook on press relations.
It’s to chuckle! There are a bunch of frizzy haired bra burners with their male Bubba idolizing Sensitive New Age Guys© still wailing over how the press turned on the Hildebeast faster than Irina Slutskaya can execute a death spiral. Well after years of battered reporters being slapped around over access, once the inevitable became the problamatic the press smelled blood and took revenge. I’m convinced this is why Bubba lost his mind in SC and elsewear during the primaries. The dirty fact that his disciplined but favored press minions would smack him around (much less Hil) must have caused Billy bob a petit mal seizure that lead to uncontrollable rage and a lovely reddish/pink facial hue.
Now favored, exalted, bouncing on the Hope Sponge of Change, Baracky grasps the opportunity to send a message to his legion of adoring newshound minions.
Don’t. F#*k. With. Me. Or. No. Access. For. Thee.
Thus the circle is unbroken or, more accurately, the press continues to be broken and ridden around the world like a herd of masochistic mustangs. Think of Baracky seated in a “pretty little surrey with the fringe on the top” and the MSM as part of the four team lead, with shortened reins forcing their heads high as they drive the Change Carraige.
What a joke and a laugh, if true.
Comment by Challeron on 7/21 @ 2:37 pm #
erm, Aldo, doesn’t PW already have an “interpretive dance” commenter?
I don’t want to, y’know, step on any toes, or anything…. I might get thrown under the bus….
Comment by Sdferr on 7/21 @ 2:41 pm #
R. Lizza’s reaction will be? Pick one:
1)Ritual public self flagellation
2)Deep bowing in the presence of the Master
3)Aimless wandering, gibbering, gnashing of teeth, scraping with potsherds
4)A new article replete with glowing depictions of Obama the Magnificent, the ONE, the TRUE
Comment by MarkD on 7/21 @ 2:42 pm #
I’ve been thrown out of better places than an Obama campaign.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 7/21 @ 2:47 pm #
My grandparents, dead for 12, 10, 9, and 6 years, will be voting for Obama.
I’m pretty sure that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are registered Democrats in Cook County.
Comment by BJTex on 7/21 @ 2:48 pm #
Hey, no worries, Challeron. The only reason I posted my comment was to have an excuse to type Irina Slutskaya, greatest figure skating name EVAH!
Comment by Aldo on 7/21 @ 2:49 pm #
#11 hf,
It’s too bad Starbucks is having trouble. The NYT was probably hoping that Starbucks would buy them out.
Comment by Karl on 7/21 @ 2:51 pm #
#11 hf:
Headline:
“Starbucks shutters 600 stores; Baristas, NYT hardest hit.”
Comment by billypaintbrush on 7/21 @ 3:04 pm #
you know, voting in chicago is just a fringe benefit. no need to trouble yourself with going to the polls. the work of voting has already been handled for us. its a real time-saver. assume its just another convenience the messiah will implement for the rest of the country
Comment by Ric Locke on 7/21 @ 3:05 pm #
#15 Sdferr: 1, 4, 2 in that order.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by dre on 7/21 @ 3:06 pm #
I really think that this whole O! thing was cooked up by unemployed sitcom writers.
Comment by dre on 7/21 @ 3:08 pm #
Is Mrs. O’Leary still voting in Chicago? How about the cow?
Comment by happyfeet on 7/21 @ 3:08 pm #
The New York Times Co was worth over six billion when they signed the initial deal, now it’s worth under two billion, and Starbucks’ brand is indelibly polluted. Kind of sucks for them.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 7/21 @ 3:12 pm #
They are very brave sheep, the members of the Fourth Estate.
Comment by Rusty on 7/21 @ 3:13 pm #
#24
Don’t be silly. Cows can’t vote. But if your cat has two names we can register him.
Comment by afall on 7/21 @ 3:14 pm #
Huffpo said some 200 news orgs applied for the 41 spots on the plane. That’s a lot of people he’s “barred” for causing ‘discomfort, embarrassment, or “outrage‒
Comment by Radish on 7/21 @ 3:16 pm #
Shit, I’m voting for O! in Chicago, despite having moved out in 1977. (Had the misfortune of being born there, and not even on an oleomargarine smuggling run.)
Comment by mojo on 7/21 @ 3:23 pm #
Reporters generally deserve more abuse than they get. Life just ain’t fair.
Comment by dicentra on 7/21 @ 3:46 pm #
I’m pretty sure that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are registered Democrats in Cook County.
The beast at Tanagra.
Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Comment by twolaneflash on 7/21 @ 3:51 pm #
When your world is comprised of the Obama garden of hope, the Obama flowers of change, and the Obama palm of peace, every Ship High In Transit utterance from him must seem like Miracle-Gro plant fertilizer. The Audacity of Crap and a Taste for S.H.I.T.!
The real question is: will Katy Couric jump Obama’s bones in Baghdad?
Comment by kelly on 7/21 @ 3:55 pm #
“The real question is: will Katy Couric jump Obama’s bones in Baghdad?”
For his sake, I’d hope not. She probably outweighs him by a couple stone.
Comment by TerryH on 7/21 @ 4:04 pm #
Given that his moral authority exceeds that of Saint Cindy, why isn’t Europe flying to O! ?
Comment by guinsPen on 7/21 @ 4:04 pm #
Agreed.
The greatest figure skater of all time? Eric Lindros.
Comment by psycho... on 7/21 @ 4:09 pm #
Maybe the Obamanites stategerized this show better than I thought.
The cartoon outrage was all fake, obviously, but maybe very smartly so. Everyone’s still all “Cartoon! Cartoon!” — talking like that was real (never mind the 50% or so who internalized the fake outrage and believe that shit; they’re fucking hopeless) — when the guy who’s getting jobbed here had nothing to do with that; he just wrote a slightly unfavorable article (with the tone of a favorable one) about the fuhrer-in-waiting. I’m sure The New Yorker gets the message.
Enjoy your reassignment to the flower show, unperson. Still-persons, stay on your
toesknees.Jesus.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/21 @ 4:09 pm #
Eric Heiden!
Comment by kelly on 7/21 @ 4:11 pm #
Sonia Henne!
Comment by dre on 7/21 @ 4:11 pm #
“Comment by Rusty on 7/21 @ 3:13 pm #
#24
Don’t be silly. Cows can’t vote.”
Please read “The Audacity of Mrs. O!’s Cow”
Comment by Mikey NTH on 7/21 @ 4:21 pm #
Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy!
Comment by Sdferr on 7/21 @ 4:21 pm #
Ease back on the figure skaters guys, as it’s starting to get a little flouncy in here, which, flouncy, that’s just not our Lord Baracky’s style, capisce? Otherwise you can expect to be hitchhiking your way back to the Obama’s Moneywoman thread and it’s promise of ABBA tunes.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 7/21 @ 4:59 pm #
“Comment by guinsPen on 7/21 @ 4:04 pm #
Irina Slutskaya, greatest figure skating name EVAH!
Agreed.
The greatest figure skater of all time? Eric Lindros.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!
Ooofff, I think I gave myself a concusion.
Comment by Carin on 7/21 @ 5:09 pm #
Where has our interpretive dance commenter been? In his absence, I offer the following:
~~///(((((((^
.
Comment by dre on 7/21 @ 5:14 pm #
Does anyone think Barry would be a good addition to the Village People?
Comment by Mikey NTH on 7/21 @ 5:24 pm #
#41 Sdferr – “The blonde chick’s a guy? Oh.” Blades of Glory
Comment by urthshu on 7/21 @ 5:24 pm #
“Y M C CHANGE!!!!”
nahhhhhh….
Comment by Mikey NTH on 7/21 @ 5:27 pm #
“Buddy, I don’t have a feminine side.” – Elvis Stojko, figure skater.
(No other comment offered by me.)
Comment by maggie katzen on 7/21 @ 5:31 pm #
w007!
Comment by RTO Trainer on 7/21 @ 5:34 pm #
The only response McCain needs to this is “Which of us should be Commander in Chief? Well if you notice, Senator Obama does what I tell him to…”
Comment by Carin on 7/21 @ 5:48 pm #
But if your cat has two names we can register him.
w007!
Drat. Iggy, Cosmo. Jenny. Hera.
Perhaps I could combine the four into two?
Comment by Aldo on 7/21 @ 5:56 pm #
#43 Carin
Are you sure that isn’t a Hawaiian grass skirt dance? Maybe in honor of THE ONE having been born there?
Comment by Sdferr on 7/21 @ 5:57 pm #
I count five if you’re including drat.
Comment by kelly on 7/21 @ 6:00 pm #
I had you down for five as well.
Comment by Carin on 7/21 @ 6:00 pm #
The beginning did have a bit of “Hawaiian grass skirt” dance in it … but I was mocking the Obamism. Of course, I may have done it wrong. I’m just a fill-in for the missing interpretive commenter.
Comment by Carin on 7/21 @ 6:03 pm #
“Drat” will be the name(s) of any kittens born to the cat (Jenny) that has decided we’re her family and won’t go away. She may have been in heat last week. DRAT.
Anyway, the tiny cat is just the funniest thing. Would STARE at us through the windows (going upstairs or downstairs – wherever we went) until my husband finally started sneaking her in behind my back. She lies with my dog (a one-year-old black German shep) on the couch, licking his ears lovingly. It’s too much.
Comment by maggie katzen on 7/21 @ 6:08 pm #
aaaaw, mine just hiss at the dog. but on the plus side, they already have grocery store cards. so where do we register them?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 7/21 @ 6:24 pm #
Drat Brattinsky. Iggy Pope. Cosmo Factory. Jenny 8675309. Heraldo Rivera.
Works for me.
Pingback by YES WE CAN!* on 7/21 @ 6:24 pm #
[...] *Scream, that is. [...]
Comment by dre on 7/21 @ 6:42 pm #
Is America The Roadrunner and Mr. O!Bama the coyote?
Comment by JM Hanes on 7/21 @ 6:49 pm #
Funny, but I don’t think the New Yorker’s cover was the real problem. I think the actual aticle Lizza wrote, exposing the new emperor’s clothes, was what got him shunted aside. The whole cover contretemps is what we would call a distraction these days.
Comment by Tman on 7/21 @ 7:05 pm #
I’m glad that at least the Ole Grey Lady has kept her bias out in the open. They aren’t even pretending anymore.
McCain wants to respond to the Messiah on our saintly dead trees?
The answer:
Fuck him. Hope and change that bitches. Go ask the WSJ.
Is anyone else beginning to wonder if the last few years have been rather cordial compared to what brotherly hope and change awaits us? Perish the thought.
CHIMPYMCHITLERBURTONSATANICHENEYNOOOOBLOOODFOROOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLL!!!!!!!
Ahh. That’s better.
Comment by ahem on 7/21 @ 7:09 pm #
Stojko is definitely a top.
Comment by serr8d on 7/21 @ 7:24 pm #
A new documentary, HYPE: The Obama Effect.
Crowded theaters, ya think?
Comment by Swen Swenson on 7/21 @ 7:44 pm #
Heheh.
Somehow, “flouncy” isn’t the term that springs to mind when I think of Eric Lindros.
Comment by guinsPen on 7/21 @ 8:11 pm #
Somehow, “flouncy†isn’t the term that springs to mind when I think of Eric Lindros.
How about, “oft-concussed?”
Comment by TmjUtah on 7/21 @ 8:28 pm #
Ya know, he can be Marxist. He can be ignorant. He can be racist. He can be gormless, empty, devoid of ethic, ethos, or soul…
… but he’s just damned and gone if he gets tagged as unlikable by the media that is slowly realizing just what kind of trap they are building.
It’s one of those Rube Goldberg things that start out as a waffle maker, then end up something too hideous to be found in Torquemada’s playroom.
And the thing is, you never know who will get hurt more… the person in the straps, or those who put him there….
Comment by cynn on 7/21 @ 9:03 pm #
As an aside, can I note that this was in fact not a cruel and unusual banning but rather a simple apportion of avialable seats? Of course, it’s still an outrage.
Comment by cynn on 7/21 @ 9:08 pm #
sorry, I am way behind.
Comment by David R. Block on 7/21 @ 9:54 pm #
Yeah, I know that there weren’t enough seats. Still, does the O! campaign want to even LOOK LIKE they keep score and have paybacks for coverage that they don’t like? And if this had been McCain’s campaign??
The screams would echo for weeks.
Comment by Cincinnatus on 7/21 @ 9:59 pm #
“It’s one of those Rube Goldberg things that start out as a waffle maker, then end up something too hideous to be found in Torquemada’s playroom.”
Dennis Miller? Is that you?
Comment by Jeff G. on 7/21 @ 10:07 pm #
Sure. Purely a coincidence. I mean, The New Yorker magazine? What kind of history does that rag have?
Complete coincidence. Really. Cynn says it’s so. And why would the LA Times presume to know more about how these things work than cynn?
Comment by EasyLiving1 on 7/21 @ 11:36 pm #
Hey, wait a minute here.
Do I smell me some sarcasm?
With, is that ginger?
Comment by Rusty on 7/22 @ 4:59 am #
#5Comment by Carin on 7/21 @ 5:48 pm #
But if your cat has two names we can register him.
w007!
Drat. Iggy, Cosmo. Jenny. Hera.
Perhaps I could combine the four into two?
Not a problem.
What was your mother’s maiden name and was she a registered democrat? Not living? Not a problem. Is she burried in Chicago or Cook County? If we can have the name of cemetary we can register her too.
Comment by alppuccino on 7/22 @ 5:15 am #
I thought Ryan got booted because he looks so goddamed good in green. It brings out the highlights in his worshipfulness.
But alas, just like on American Idol, it was either him or Sanjaya. “We gave it a tremendous amount of thought, and Sanjaya, you’ve made it to the next round. Off you go Ryan.”
Pingback by Andrea Mitchell blows the whistle on Obamaganda [Karl] on 7/22 @ 6:45 am #
[...] this story in the context of: excluding from the trip New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose Obama profile was the reason for the magazine [...]
Comment by Education Guy on 7/22 @ 6:54 am #
Andrew Malcolm worked for Laura Bush. Count on that being figured prominently in what we might think of as the rebuttal from the netroots, that is if angry feces throwing monkeys capable of something as low key as rebuttal.
Comment by Defenseman Emeritus on 7/22 @ 7:04 am #
guinsPen: figure skaters are more durable than Lindros. That guy is 250 pounds of tissue paper and eggshells.
Comment by afall on 7/22 @ 7:14 am #
“Sure. Purely a coincidence. I mean, The New Yorker magazine? What kind of history does that rag have?”
I’m not a regular reader, but I was surprised to find they’d be on the 40 or so seats that cover these international superstar travels. Seems almost too newsy. I wonder who else got cut.
Comment by mojo on 7/22 @ 8:54 am #
Still, pointing to the LA fishwrapper as an authoritative source?
It is to laugh. Ha Ha.
Comment by Freedoms Truth on 7/22 @ 9:12 am #
“Remember: hope and change are not about falling in love; they’re about falling in line.”
Well, its about the falling in love first and then getting in line.
I envision a YouTube:
- Marlene Deitrich’s “Falling in love again” in the bilingual German/English version, which BHO would surely approve as an attempt at teaching American yahoos some Euro-culture, we overlay …
- the adoring crowds throwing flowers and kisses on the original model for cult politicians Herr Hitler and mix in the soon-to-be adoring crowds in Berlin cheering again with the new cultic leader, the Oba-fuhrer.
“Falling in line again, what can I do? What can I do … I can’t help it.”
Comment by The Lost Dog on 7/22 @ 10:21 am #
Yup.
Was it Elvis?
“But I Can’t Help Falling In Line Again”?
Comment by Jeff G. on 7/22 @ 11:29 am #
For those who keep citing Lizza’s New Yorker connection, it should be noted that he has also written for the NYT and the New Republic.
For a Dem presidential candidate, it hardly gets wonkier than TNR.
Pingback by The end of the media affair with Obama? Yeah, right. [Karl] on 7/24 @ 7:07 pm #
[...] during the Obamaganda and fake interviews of the World Tour: Consider this story in the context of: excluding from the trip New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose Obama profile was the reason for the magazine [...]