Pres. Obama: Celebrities Are “The Ultimate Arbiter”
President Bush’s comment that he was “the decider” received much mockery for its unique combination of arrogance and clumsiness. Yesterday, President Obama topped it, declaring that Hollywood celebrities are “the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.”
While Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are beloved by millions of fans, especially in the critical demographic that came of age in the 1980s, most Americans see Hollywood as a collection of monstrous egos that live in a fantastically unreal fantasy world that is detached from the day-to-day struggles of real people. They may decide the direction of hemlines and hair styles, but I wouldn’t recommend consulting with them about the best way to respond to the European debt crisis. Hollywood is quite simply on the far left extreme of the American political spectrum and in no way determines how the balance breaks on anything other than the Academy Awards.
Declaring this collection of coddled drama queens to collectively be the representatives of the whole country is a gaffe custom-made for Mitt Romney’s advertising machine. Expect to see President Obama’s gaffe repeated endlessly in campaign commercials for the next four-and-a-half months.
The gaffe feeds into an emerging pattern of tone deafness in the Omaba reelection campaign. Last week, the President inspired guffaws when he declared that “the private sector is doing fine” even as hiring slowed and consumer confidence began to crumble yet again. The President’s economic speech in Ohio, trumpeted by his campaign as a transformative address, turned out to be a bumbling, overlong rehash of themes from his stump speech.
It is increasingly beginning to appear even to many of the President’s supporters that his campaign is in a downward spiral reminiscent of the 1980 Carter reelection debacle. Mitt Romney’s best friends may be running the President’s campaign.
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Even a turnip could understand he was talking about their money being the tie-breaker. This distortion is all over the right wing blogs, so it was inevitable it should bleed into TMV, I guess.
Sorry, I do try not to get roped into this author’s trope, but…I’m weak.
Speaking at a private fund-raiser, this is what the President actually said:
“Because ultimately you guys and the American people, you’re the tie-breaker. You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes in. Do we go in a direction where we’re all in this together and we share in prosperity, or do we believe that everybody is on their own and we’ll see how it plays out?”
You see, someone conveniently left out “and the American people”
Shame!
Haha, this is a funny post. Anyone could look up the real quote and see what he meant. Cute soundbite though. I love (where love = fills me with ragey giggles) that this is held up against the Bush “decider” quote. Obama says the American people, including celebrities, are the deciders, Bush says he is the decider. And somehow Obama comes out as the loser on this for the OP? Yiiiiikes.
More utter nonsense from someone who seems to specialize in it.
Logan, do you claim to be an honest person? This is pretty blatant.