Looking Glass News: the Romney Gift Registry

I haven’t done this in a loooooong time, but let’s go back through the looking glass and pretend that the Republican candidate did this . . .

Governor and Republican Candidate Mitt Romney horrified people across the nation when he suggested that people donate to his campaign in lieu of birthday, wedding or anniversary presents.

“It’s creepy!” exclaimed Maureen Dowd. “What kind of weird, sick, religious cult does he belong to that he thinks we should give HIM money to mark important life events? Is THIS what the Mormon church calls normal?”

New York Times columnist Charles Blow was equally appalled. “Clearly, Governor Romney has no idea what is appropriate regarding private celebration and political panhandling. He should shove this idea in his magic underwear.”

Yale professor Harold Bloom wrote, “We have long been told to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — and ONLY that. Governor Romney must think that birthday parties and weddings fall into this category. I can be forgiven for dreading a strengthening of theocracy in our civil culture.”

There are those who say that Romney simply misjudged how this marketing campaign would make him and his campaign appear to the average voter. However, the rest of us are quite sure that this is an evil and scurrilous attempt to insert himself, his faith, his church and his filthy polygamist beliefs into the daily lives of innocent Americans. For shame.

*Thanks to Walter Russell Mead for collecting the examples
**Seriously. Wouldn’t all your liberal friends and family find it creepy as hell if Romney did this?

Newsweek sinks to another low.

I was finishing up the weekly grocery shopping when this literally stopped me in my tracks:

Good grief.

Now, do I think the modern president has to deal with a lot of issues? Of course.  And some of them — like police incidents with Cambridge professors, NCAA brackets and threats to kick corporate ass — would be better left to someone else.  ANYONE else.

And yet? I know a lot of people who deal with a lot of issues and solve a lot of crap.  I admire those people hugely, but I’ve never managed to mistake them for deities.

Shall we play Looking Glass News for a moment?  Would you like to think of some alternate titles that might be used for an overworked George Bush?

“He Can’t Handle the Workload.”

“The President’s Not Up To The Job.”

“Bush’s $87 Billion Mess.” (That one’s real. You can find a partial listing of all Newsweek Bush covers here.)

“The Distracted President.”

“This Guy’s Ugly, He Smells and We Don’t Like Him.”

(Was that last one a bit much?  Maybe that was a bit much.)

Note to the editors:

You may want to zip up your fly; your bias is showing.

lovelissa

P.S. I’m disgracefully behind on all things internet, so I’m sure all the cool bloggers have already hit this up.  Meh — you gotta start somewhere 🙂

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Looking Glass News 2-13-09

The recession is hard on a lot of families and demographics, but as usual women are being unfairly and disproportionately affected:

The proportion of men who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen women, who are heavily represented in areas like education and health care [snip].   Men tend to be employed in industries like manufacturing and construction.

“Given how stark and concentrated the job losses are among women, and that men represented a high proportion of the labor force in the beginning of this recession, men are now bearing the burden — or the opportunity, one could say — of being breadwinners,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress.

Riiiiight. 

In case you can’t tell (or didn’t click the link), I flipped “men” and “women” in that article excerpt (and snipped one mention of women inhabiting less business-cyclical sectors).  If 82 percent of the job losses had affected WOMEN, I’m sure they would have done a dispassionate analysis of the types of job the men were left holding, as well as mentioning that it might be an opportunity for men to attain or maintain their role as breadwinners.

In other news, gravity is now optional.

*Note: It wasn’t a bad article.  I think it made some good points and highlighted some of the options that women tend to take more often than men do — namely, taking lower-risk lower-reward jobs in exchange for having more free time and more stability.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But if you think that a similarly dispassionate article would have been written if the recession job toll flipped the other way — 82% women laid off to only 18% men — then you are out of your freaking mind.

(h/t from another Corner article)

Looking Glass News 2-4-09

McCain can’t hack it, runs away:

President McCain may have allegedly suffered mistreatment during his years as a prisoner of war, but he is proving anew that his courage has dissipated with age.

In the midst of his tumultuous third week — marred by his disastrous nominations of three well-known Republican tax cheats to cabinet positions — McCain simply ran away.

The grizzled old man stated publicly that this trip was a planned outing, though the convenient timing threw serious doubt on that explanation.  It is more likely that McCain did not feel equal to the task of taking questions from any harder audience than seven-year-olds.

Helen Thomas was among the reporters to deride McCain for his cowardly retreat.  “First Bush reads to children for seven minutes while the towers fall.  Next, his successor — Bush the Third, really — can barely take questions for seven days before running off to play with children.  It would be funny, really, if it weren’t such a damning black mark on his young-yet-old administration.” 

*Usual disclaimer:  Anything particularly wrong with the Obamas visiting kids?  No.  Sure, it’s a gaggingly-sweet kiss-the-baby type stunt — but that’s what politicians of EVERY flavor do.  I only note that, had McCain done the exact same thing — stating “We were just tired of being in the White House” and “We got out! They let us out!” — I don’t think it would be received with the awwww-how-cute! treatment the Obamas are getting.

UPDATE: Seraphic Secret’s take:

“He’s acting like a kid being let outside for recess. Who is the ‘they?’ He is the ‘they.’ He is the President, the ultimate authority in this country, not a kid rebelling. He’s not a child of the 60’s anymore. Doesn’t he understand that?”

Looking Glass News 1-29-09

For millions of Americans, the famous gaffes and idiocies from Former President Bush were a humiliating and constant torture during the last year.  It was fervently hoped that a new administration would bring a merciful end to this embarrassing chapter of presidential gaucherie.

Sadly, that proved not to be the case.  It appears that President McCain is every bit as inept as his predecessor:

On the way back to the Oval Office Tuesday, the President approached a paned window, instead of the actual door — located a few feet to his right.

Doors didn’t open automatically for McCain’s predecessor either. While making a hasty exit from a 2005 press conference in Beijing, former President George W. Bush tugged on the handles of a door, only to find it locked.

Bush laughed off the blunder, but the pictures still live on as part of Bush’s lame duck legacy.

Naturally, photos of this unbelievably stupid gaffe were immediately circulated world-wide.  Comedians Jon Stewart and Bill Maher hotly debated the meaning of the mistake: Stewart insisted it was because McCain was “too old and blind to realize that it made a better window than a door,” while Maher simply chalked it up to stupidity.  Understandably, such a dramatic and picture-worthy mistake by President McCain earned top billing on all major news networks for the next seven days; Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, along with many others, offered to send the president a new pair of spectacles.

We here at Looking Glass News have no doubt that this blunder will live on as part of McCain’s wasted-presidency legacy.

(h/t Bruce, directing me to the ‘Busters)

*No, I do not think it was an egregious nor stupid mistake by Obama, just a simple error.  I merely point out that if McCain had committed such a blunder we’d hear about it constantly for a week.  At least.

Looking Glass News 1-26-09

Within the first week of President-Select McCain’s term, he has proved that his aggressive, unilateral policies will follow in the footsteps of former President Bush.  Like his predecessor, President McCain seems to have little concern for world opinion; he looks to squander international goodwill at a record-setting pace.  The Times of London reports:

“Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since John McCain became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.

Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven “foreigners” – a term that usually means al-Qaeda – but locals also said that three children lost their lives. ”

Naturally, Op-Eds condemning President McCain as a warmonger have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post; McCain was excoriated on Hardball by Chris Matthews and declared the “Worst Person in the World” by Keith Olbermann. 

 . . . no?  That’s not how it happened?

Welcome to Through the Looking Glass News. 

Are there legitimate complaints to be made about the Obama government?  Sure.   Will there be impotent kvetching and whining regarding actions by the Obama White House that aren’t really important?  Absolutely!

But what really chaps my ass (besides the fifteen degree weather) is that McCain would not receive one iota of the understanding, the perspective, the nuance that the Obama government enjoys.  Can you imagine that McCain would have gotten an article like this from Reuters?

The News wrote that the ‘rather optimistic assurance” given by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani earlier on that the Predator drone attacks would stop once Obama took charge had been dashed. And it added that it wasn’t clear why or how Gilani made such a statement when he was in no position to issue a guarantee on behalf of the Americans.

The missile attacks, and there have been around 30 over the past year, have caused both physical and psychological damage in Pakistan, it said. But what is the way out? Islamabad must somehow persuade the Americans that fighting the militants on its soil was something best left to Pakistani forces. ”The U.S. decision-makers need to be persuaded of the damage caused by the drone attacks and how they contribute to the growth of militancy,” it said.

Somehow, I don’t think McCain’s treatment for the EXACT SAME ACTIONS would have been as favorable.

(In other news, I think the sun will rise in the East tomorrow, and set in the West.)

(h/t Michelle)

UPDATE: Teapot Tantrums linked.  Thanks!