My two posts on the televised Obama/Biden burger joint visit and Obama’s request for Dijon mustard, MSNBC Hides Obama’s Dijon Mustard (aka Dijongate) and Thou Shall Not Mock Obama’s Mustard, generated enormous reaction.
Neither of these posts was about mustard as such, but rather, the absurd extent to which the Obama administration went to create a “real guy kind of quality” image of Obama/Biden eating “Hell Burgers,” and how MSNBC played along like a loyal worshipper through its coverage and editing.
Much of the first post and its updates were tongue-in-cheek to prove the point. It is beyond me how anyone could have thought I really cared that Obama used Dijon mustard in his Tuna Salad recipe, or that he had a Dijon mustard addiction. Did people really think I believed there was a “conspiracy of silence on Obama’s allegience to Dijon Mustard”? I have said before, and repeat, that the first victims of liberalism are satire and irony.
But there was a serious overall point, being the absurd image control and media fawning. Needless to say, the nutroots portrayed the posts as being a complaint about the type of mustard Obama used. A useful device of distortion straight from the Media Matters playbook.
Seeing how my posts were distorted was not terribly surprising; that is how things go on the internet. The level of vitriol was something I knew existed, but had never personally experienced. As crazed as the published comments were, there were others I didn’t publish telling me to kill myself and do other things, and plenty of bizarre e-mails. All of these people made fools of themselves.
The reaction proved one thing I already knew: The cult of personality surrounding Obama is real. And many of the cultists are demented, dangerous or both.
I also knew the mainstream media was biased, but the article written by The Canadian Press reporter Lee-Ann Goodman set a new low. Ms. Goodman e-mailed me that she agreed that the main issue was Obama’s image control, but her article went in the opposite direction. Another reason why people don’t trust reporters.
Through this episode, I also have learned the following:
- The nutroots move in crowds
- The nutroots mistake anonymity for bravery
- The nutroots consider distortion an art
- The nutroots preach tolerance to mask intolerance
- The nutroots are unhappy people who hate happy people
- The nutroots have no originality and hate original thoughts
- The nutroots need new enemies daily
- The nutroots do not know any of the above
- The mainstream media is no better
- Starting this blog was necessary, for all of the above reasons
- Continuing this blog is even more necessary, for all the above reasons
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Comments
“The nutroots have no originality and hate original thoughts”
Certainly see this. Good observations.
Reporters are bad. Canadian reporters are worse. The CBC isn’t called the Communist Broadcasting Company for nothing.
Loser don’t know how to act like winners even when they win.
God bless you, Professor Jacobson. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.
I am a “just say no to Kool-aid” liberal, and I find this whole thing hilarious.
You forgot one – The nutroots have no sense of humor.
I have always contended right leaning folks have a better sense of humor. Exhibit A: Mark Steyn.
I rest my case.
I have said before, and repeat, that the first victims of liberalism are satire and irony.Right, because we all know that the most successful satirical programs are conservative ones, like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
The reaction proved one thing I already knew: The cult of personality surrounding Obama is real.You and your commenters fundamentally misread the reaction to this.
In all the comments on that post, I didn’t see a single “cult of personality” criticism from liberals, nothing along the lines of all the “How dare you criticize our Commander in Chief!?!” pearl clutching that we saw for the previous eight years. Nothing akin to the moment where conservatives were burning Dixie Chicks CDs because they said mean things about the president.
Go back, read them again. You’re all convinced the liberals were outraged, so it should be easy for you to find evidence of it in the comments.
I don’t think you will. Most of the comments were utter disbelief that you wasted your time on this or thought it was a scandal. And your protestations that it was just humor fall flat.
As a liberal, let me say this — mock Obama all you want. The Daily Show and Colbert do it all the time, I think it’s hysterical. You, however, are not funny in the slightest.
Is the zombie invasion over? I wonder if they deliberately missed the point or if they are just stupid. Mustard was not the issue, it was that MSNBC felt the need to protect him by cutting the Dijon comment. The issue is how the MSM is no longer a free press, but is now, of their own volition, the propaganda arm of this administration.
But I suppose these are the same people who thought Clinton was impeached because of sex rather than perjury.
At the risk of too much generalization or reduction, I think that the righty and lefty bloggers encourage a very different sort of behavior on their blogs. Some of this has to do with the things they admire — the lefties admire “dissent” and disrespect as a concept, while righties regard it as best a necessary evil to which they have to resort, not something attractive in and of itself. In addition, many more of the big righty bloggers (whether or not anonymous) care a lot about their reputations in their professional lives. This is because they have professional lives. Nobody who cares about their career wants blowback from blogging, or at least blowback that reflects poorly on the blogger.
Professor Jacobson, I was surprised at the quality of content on this blog. Very good job, keep it up.
The nutroots move in crowdsYes, and no two right-wingers have ever shared an opinion (not even the multiple bloggers and Fox News barking heads who parroted your post — even their regurgitation of what you said was a sign of bracing originality and independent thought!)
I think the problem with your first post was that it was too close to reality. I really don’t see how caring about what mustard Obama uses is any different than that he likes arugula, and yet that was an actual controversy among many conservatives during the election. Maybe if you were parodying the hysterical overreaction by conservatives to everything Obama does, then it would have been funny. In fact, that’s what I first thought your post was until I read your responses and I realized you had some weird alternate message that didn’t really make sense in context. As for posts about MSNBC “cutting the Dijon comment:” Really? Come on, that’s just nonsense.
Let the man eat what he wants in the style he prefers.
It’s about the media, not the condiment.
haha…the first blog i’ve ever seen that has a author testimonials
“Cornell and the country need more educators like yourself to keep the flag of reason flying.”
oh man, that lolz
You think making fun of the messiah’s dijon mustard gets these lib wing-dings worked-up into a frenzy?
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHwPHvkrGrg
Real Americans doing what they do best.
Translation = Shove this up your lefty arse.
The fed gov has its b*lls amputated….wonderful!
This is both brilliant and hilarious and LONG overdue. Our forefathers would be exceedingly proud.
Please consider the possibility that people misunderstood the”satire and irony” in your posts, because they were poorly written.
While you complain of extremism and nuttiness on the other side, you encourage it on your side. What’s the point. Why not use your Ivy League position to bring the conversation up a notch on the Internet, instead of wallowing around in the mud like everyone else. Then your blog might really be worth reading.
You do an excellent job of setting up your argument such that people who agree with you support your point, and then when people don’t agree with you, it also supports your point.
It is beyond me how anyone could have thought I really cared that Obama used Dijon mustard in his Tuna Salad recipe, or that he had a Dijon mustard addiction. Did people really think I believed there was a “conspiracy of silence on Obama’s allegience to Dijon Mustard”? I have said before, and repeat, that the first victims of liberalism are satire and irony.Honestly? Have you already forgotten:
* All the times “arugula” was mentioned as if it mattered? (I mean, you reference it several times in your post, you must know.)
* How many times the press mentioned his crappy bowling form?
* The number of time three frames of one his many speeches was played back, Zapruder-like, to divine whether he was giving someone the middle finger?
* The “terrorist fist-jab”?
And these are just a few of the nonsensical details I can recall were pulled, exaggerated, and talked about over and over by conservatives as if it meant much of anything. Hell, even a prominent conservative talk show (Hannity) spent two minues on exactly the topic of the Dijon mustard, which is already funny because it’s made by Kraft and about as foreign as the burger it was on.
So, yeah, it shouldn’t be beyond you, because the body of work available shows that conservatives making a big goddamn deal out of nothing is entirely believable.
Post is totally on target.
People must not allow themselves to be intimidated by this absurd personality cult, lack of humor, poor reading comprehension, need to get a life, whatever it is.
The right is so deservedly irrelevant at this point in the game it’s almost beautiful.
Im getting a thrill up my leg.
“I’ll have a Bilderburger with cheese…hold the Illuminati”
You think making fun of the messiah’s dijon mustard gets these lib wing-dings worked-up into a frenzy?
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHwPHvkrGrg
Real Americans doing what they do best.
Translation = Shove this up your lefty arse.
The fed gov has its b*lls amputated….wonderful!
This is both brilliant and hilarious and LONG overdue. Our forefathers would be exceedingly proud.
In essence, the left can dish it out, like they did to poor George Bush, but they can't take it. How dare the right make fun of arugula, crappy bowling form, possible middle finger & terrorist-fist jab gestures! But Bush — every thing he uttered was "stupid" or "evil." Hey lefties, now you know how the right felt for the last 8 years.
Andrea: that’s a point of discussion, but it’s different from Jacobsen’s core point that I was answering. Whatever the Left’s reaction might be isn’t the point. He asked, “how could anyone possibly believe I was serious about this petty thing?” Answer: “because we’ve seen it happen over and over and over.” I’m not claiming the Left is faultless in this regard. But it is true, there are a lot of policy issues on both sides worth getting upset about that don’t involve how a guy gets his burger.
I wish it was possible to have an actual conversation about this, actually, because a lot of it is about overgeneralization (one guy’s blog somewhere does not equate to what the whole side of a political spectrum thinks). But this isn’t a forum for real discussion.
Though, I will give Jacobson credit for not only approving comments that are positive.
The left wants to itimidate all who don’t agree with them. You can sometimes feel you are the little kid with the bully at your throat and the crowd just stands there doing nothing. We must all speak our mind at all costs. Even if it is about Mustard.
Terrific work on this blog, professor. I think even after you’ve explained it, some folks still don’t get the point: it’s not the mustard; it’s the automatic MSNBC response to cover up Obama’s choice of condiment. This likely would have passed without notice from this blog or any other if not for the conscious effort by MSNBC to protect what it felt to be the right “image” for Obama as a man out for a burger. It’s not even about Obama, much less his mustard. MSNBC acted as crazily as the aide in Obama’s anecdote to help Obama avoid hints of latte-drinking elitism. But MSNBC is not supposed to behave as an Obama PR aide. When they do, it’s fair game to hit them for it. In this case, their action is also ridiculous, so holding them up to ridicule is also fair. The Left “nutroots” types really don’t understand this, because they don’t grasp how craven and silly the MSNBC folks are. They never will.
Latino hit the nail on the head. The original post was about the media’s fawning coverage of Obama, and the tradition of politicians trying to pretend they are regular guys with their fast food choices.
How could the original post have caused outrage?
The leftwingnuts really believe that conservatives care about whether some politician
eats French’s or Grey Poupon. But the truth is that the likes of Obama and Kerry are mocked for their fast food photo-ops not because they choose seemingly un-American condiments; it is because they really are elitists who are phonies.
If you read the responses to the original post, the leftists went wild in response to Professor Jacobson’s updates. But they failed to notice that the updates came as a response to leftist overreaction to the original post. More updates please!
Remember: Obama worship and Bush Derangement Syndrome are two sides of the same sick coin.
As mom used to say, “It ain’t a joke if nobody’s laughing”
“You can sometimes feel you are the little kid with the bully at your throat and the crowd just stands there doing nothing.”
Interesting analogy…and we all know that all bullies are alike from 2nd grade through adulthood..and there’s only one language a bully will understand…a bloody nose or a black eye.
George Bush understood this.
Though he made mistakes as all Presidents do, one of the things I admired about W was that when he took a stand the rest of the world was on notice and no doubt existed that he meant what he said. Sometimes it doesnt matter what a certain segment of people in another part of the world think of you…it only matters that they KNOW you mean business.
There’s scientific evidence supporting that conservatives have a better sense of humor than liberals.
What’s really pathetic is that you’re still getting comments trying to justify the hate comments. Yeah, it’s OK to threaten you life because they misunderstood you or you weren’t funny enough. Truly pathetic.
Good job in exposing Obama’s cult of personality to the public spotlight. We need to keep up the exposure and spotlight on Obama’s nutroots and the cult of personality until he is voted out for good in November 2011.
It’s the new keffiyeh kerfuffle!
“The cult of personality surrounding Obama is real. And many of the cultists are demented, dangerous or both.”
Demented and dangerous. Hmmmmm. And such people are attached to Obama because he is such a solid individual.
William,
these ratbag nutroots continue not to “get it”. I am from another country and I got it – that the issue was neither Obama or the mustard, but the issue is the stupidity of the MSM because they are reporting every tiny detail, salivating over the small stuff, diverting attention from very major issues.
Now I do not wish to be crude, but after reading how the reporters even had someone at the studio desk reporting on this very important purchase, I am just wondering if the panties of both reporters were not just a little damp. Sorry if that sounds crude, but I hope I am getting across the point about the absurdity of the level of reporting from the MSM.
As for the ratbags that have turned up at this blog, it would seem that someone must be doing a little bit of tweeting and telling them to go on the attack and to use the same points over and over again. Check the comments on your last entries and you will see some that are the same but allegedly from different authors. If they are from different people, then someone is feeding them the material to write. I cannot imagine that these Obotrons (like Cylons) can in fact write anything with imagination.
thinking about these comments, it looks like ACORN workers have been visiting William’s blog. I will say no more
Leftists have a genetic disability preventing them from recognizing hypocrisy and irony in themselves while fictitiously finding it in others when it does not exist.
Here’s two more:
1. The nutroots lack critical thinking skills
2. The nutroots are, in fact, parrots
I’m still amazed that after three full page explanations (posts) of what was wrong with the whole dijon/hamburger incident, they STILL do not get it. Why am I still seeing comments about mustard?
IT’S NOT ABOUT MUSTARD!!!
3. The nutroots main goal is to frustrate and anger.
They’re really good at number three.
The essence of true humor is the ability to look at oneself in the mirror and laugh. Ridicule is laughing at another.
Conservatives temper their ridicule with humor while leftists, having no capacity for humor, can only ridicule. This is why the whole Dijongate thing goes completely over their heads.
“Go on, laugh at yourself. And if you can’t laugh at yourself, then listen to me and laugh at me laghing for you.”
R.H. Limbaugh III
You’re the best, William!
Most of the comments were utter disbelief that you wasted your time on this or thought it was a scandal.Right, that’s why the liberals swarmed this blog like a flock of rabid penguins. They all just happened to be stopping by a blog they don’t normally read, by coincidence, and simply couldn’t believe that William thought that Obama’s mustard preferences were a scandal. It couldn’t possibly be that they were directed here by liberal bloggers, came with a preconceived notion of what the post was about, and carried out their attack orders in mindless fashion to protect their “prince”.
And your protestations that it was just humor fall flat.To the contrary, your inability to understand what was actually being satirized in the post, even after it’s been explained to you, seriously calls into question your ability to understand humor that doesn’t originate from within your very narrow liberal assumptions, and offers supporting evidence for the claim that the first victims of liberalism are irony and satire.
Hi Professor, do you have a post where you define ‘nutroots’?
It seems to me like it lets you critique people by connotation (depending on the audience, they might take it to mean leftists, or academics, or PETA members, or Marxists, or what-have-you in a guilt-by-association catchall scheme, but of course you avoid the dirty work of spelling it out yourself).
It thus means you can avoid being held responsible for your claims because you aren’t talking about any specific group. You can assert whatever you want about the ‘nutroots’ because it’s a made-up smear justified by confirmation bias. Am I close?
Use the default assumption:
All of the above.
William A. Jacobson: “But there was a serious overall point, being the absurd image control and media fawning.”
Latino: “MSNBC felt the need to protect him by cutting the Dijon comment.”
John Burke: “it’s the automatic MSNBC response to cover up Obama’s choice of condiment.”
No one has yet mentioned that MSNBC intentionally edited out the part where Obama and Biden went to the bathroom and washed their hands before eating. In fact, despite all the coverage of the hamburger purchases, the entire MSM has ignored the hand-washing part of the story.
Why the complete blackout? Obviously this is the liberal media protecting their guys from accusations of being, effete, sanitation-obsessed snobs.
Will you be brave enough to cover this buried bombshell, Professor? The people deserve the truth!
Ignatov if they did not wash their hands then that would show that they were dirty individuals not averse to spreading disease.
Your attempt to be funny fell totally flat because you continue to miss the point. It was about the hypocrisy of the MSM and the fact that they sweat the small stuff.
Really… who cares what Obama eats…. and this whole episode shows the absurdity of the MSM as well as showing how Obama continues to divert attention from the real and pressing issues.
Harold: Hi Professor, do you have a post where you define ‘nutroots’?
I think you qualify.
Cerebral density is one of the defining qualities.
You “progressive” lefty wing-dings are absolutely hilarious.
NOTE: COMMENTS on this post now are CLOSED.