I can’t get enough of this kind of thing. Rick Scott uses a teleprompter to make fun of Obama’s use of the teleprompter:
From the prepared remarks (complete with what appear to be prompter directions to emphasize the joke):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Presidency 5!
I have to admit, i was a little nervous When I looked out here.
i saw all the TV cameras and a teleprompter. I figured President Obama must be here – giving another speech about raising taxes!
Seriously, though, it’s great to see you all today.
When I was in college, I enjoyed taking arty-farty courses on literary theory. I didn’t understand them at all (is that stuff meant to be understood?) but I loved hearing about things like a narrative that re-narrate its own narration as an act of negation. Nearly everything contemporary Republicans do reminds me of this stuff.
Linda Featheringill
I really don’t think that any of the voters are worried about who uses a teleprompter. I have some very right wing acquaintances and I haven’t heard them complain about the teleprompter.
I think that using aids such as that shows respect for the audience and a willingness to try to get it right.
The Dangerman
What he really wanted to say…
…but couldn’t.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Dangerman:
I saw what you did there.
C.J.
The best part is, if you pointed this out, they would just ignore it and re-tell the joke.
Linnaeus
@The Dangerman:
Complete with a wreath and hearty handshake…
Spaghetti Lee
Man. Conservatives must have some really shitty standards for humor. I could get a paid gig doing stand-up at one of these things. I’d just have to say “Teleprompter! Arugula! Al Gore!” And they’d just be rolling in the aisles.
Spaghetti Lee
Also, Rick Scott is a slimy little shit who spent his whole life stealing money, no surprise that he steals jokes too.
Keith
@Spaghetti Lee: It’d be doubly awesome if Rick Scott stole his jokes from Dane Cook or Carlos Mencia.
fuckwit
Humor requires irony, a sense of self-awareness, and the ability to see logical contradictions.
Those are in short supply among das wingnuts.
MAJeff
@Spaghetti Lee:
dmsilev
What’s the Latin for ‘who teleprompts the Teleprompter?”
Amir Khalid
Obama is better at speaking off-the-cuff than most of these people are at reading from a Teleprompter. (John McCain, as I remember, was the despair of his 2008 campaign staff because he sucked Schweddy Balls at using the Teleprompter.) This is just the petulant whining of people who know, and resent, that they are being outclassed.
AA+ Bonds
IMO, that any of these teleprompter-bound idiots could successfully use teleprompters as a point of attack means that there is no recursive narrative structure here. The entirety of Republican rhetoric is a vast swallowing void, denying its own ultimate feminine identity
Southern Beale
This lacked a cue for a rimshot, and closing instructions to tip the waitstaff.
There is nothing more pathetic than a conservative trying to be funny. They just lack the DNA for it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir Khalid: definitely. remember Obama’s performance with the republican q&a or whatever with congress. he pantsed them.
JPL
Just ask Kim Delaney how hard it is to use a teleprompter.
Davis X. Machina
Is there one ‘g’ in the middle of ‘teleprompter’, or is it ‘gg”? I can never remember.
AA+ Bonds
@Spaghetti Lee:
There are plenty of funny conservatives but they are not allowed to speak to the grim retired actuaries in Orlando, because “jokes” would indicate that someone on Earth knew more about something than someone else on Earth at some point, which is a pretty un-Republican idea
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe subconsciously, but in their minds, they’re convinced he’s stupid. My brother — who is/used to be a pretty nice guy and pretty smart — thinks that Obama is dumb dumb dumb. Evidence? He uses a teleprompter, said 57 states and mispronounced “corpsman”. 10 years ago I never would have said my brother was a racist, but I think Obama touched something buried way down deep in my brother’s (and other folks’) aging white heart and brought it right up to the surface. For some of them — see watermelon on the WH lawn — it’s acknowledged and out in the open — but for others like my bro, they can’t believe it in themselves so they have to find fault with O.
JPL
When is the Florida Straw Vote? It could be Perry’s chance to shine.
AA+ Bonds
The Republicans don’t have it together enough to be fascists yet but they long ago moved into the Joseph Goebbels school of comedy where a joke is defined as “something stated by a properly vetted party functionary, followed by a pause for laughter”
AA+ Bonds
@Svensker:
To me it sounds like your brother knows that Obama’s well-educated, and so he repeats these mantras over and over to himself, because he has a vague idea that calling Bush stupid worked (because practically everything Bush did across his entire career proved his stupidity and incompetence, from running multiple million-dollar businesses into the ground to losing the 2000 election)
Amir Khalid
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s your problem with the word. Mine is, I keep having to remind myself that it’s not a guitar made by Fender.
AA+ Bonds
“As I look out across these teleprompters before me today in the great state of Florida, it reminds me of the teleprompter, an evil device used by incompetents” –Rick Perry, breathing in through his mouth
AA+ Bonds
“SMASH ALL THE TELEPROMPTERS HERE TODAY, DESTROY THE TELEPROMPTER PRIESTS ALL AROUND YOU, IF YOU SEE SOMEONE READING A BOOK, I WANT YOU TO RIP THAT SHIT OUT OF HIS HANDS AND WORK HIM AROUND THE KIDNEYS” –Rick Perry, beady eyes frantically scanning for the next line
handsmile
@Amir Khalid: (#12)
Now that Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has adopted “Schweddy Balls” as the name of its new flavor, the whole notion of McCain sucking Schweddy Balls seems far less repugnant or risible.
While the flavor (“vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and loaded with fudge covered rum and milk chocolate malt balls) is not appealing to me, I do intend to purchase pints of the stuff, simply to flip off the rightwing scolds, One Million Moms, who have launched a boycott drive.
Amir Khalid
@handsmile:
It’s really too bad they don’t sell Ben and Jerry’s ice cream here in Malaysia.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I took some literary theory classes myself, but contemporary Republicans never remind me of that stuff. Mostly they remind me of the lake of shit I saw at a pig farm once.
AA+ Bonds
I’d compare the Republican relationship with the teleprompter to the pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930s, in that Republicans need it now, but realize that eventually, they are going to have to march against the concept of “reading” and burn it to the ground
Hill Dweller
The teleprompter nonsense is obviously Rove’s strategy. Attack your opponent’s strength.
It also ties into the affirmative action/white guilt rationalizations, and white persecution complex that is prevalent among the wingers.
Roger Moore
@handsmile:
See! Both sides do it!
Hill Dweller
@arguingwithsignposts: Obama destroyed the Republicans so thoroughly during that Q&A, they refused to allow cameras at their subsequent meetings with him.
If Obama is as dumb as the Republicans claim, you’d think they would jump at any and every chance to pepper him with questions in front of a camera.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
True. Didn’t he go field questions from Fox News without a teleprompter a while back?
Remember how every time Bush had to speak without a teleprompter, he sounded like a ten-year old trying and failing to bullshit his way through the teacher’s questions when he quite obviously hadn’t done the reading? And we made fun of him mercilessly for it? They’re still sore about that one, and their teleprompter jokes are an attempt at payback for ours.
Chris
@fuckwit:
Also a sense of context: what’s funny in one context might not make any sense in another, e.g. repeating our teleprompter jokes and substituting “Obama” for “Bush” falls flat when the target of your jokes can, in fact, speak just fine without a teleprompter.
There’s a whole host of articles out there trying to puzzle out why exactly conservative humor isn’t funny.
gnomedad
@Svensker:
Maybe, but the “conviction” only matters for as long as it takes to laugh or sneer at the insult. The next moment, he can be a crafty stealth soshulist mooslim. The only standard is that anything bad or insulting about Obama must be true. Even consistency is irrelevant.
Chris
@gnomedad:
This.
Honestly, while it’s always a good bet to assume “racism” when the GOP’s lashing out at Democrats in general and Obama in particular, I think the “stupid” thing is less about race and more about anti-intellectualism – the insecure whining of the guys who’re afraid those fancy college educated nancy boys are looking down on them, and comfort themselves by saying that “yeah but it’s all BOOK learning, they don’t know anything about the REAL world, and besides, everything they learned has a liberal bias so really they’re useless and don’t know shit.”
Jewish Steel
Derrida, Foucoult, Guy DeBord. I’m certain I don’t understand half of it, but I love all that shit too.
eta, maybe I’ll take a class w/BGinCHI someday.
JCT
@Chris:
This.
This anti-intellectualism that runs deep through the Republican party at present is a nearly unassailable foe. I’ve had these conversations. It’s like believing in creationism writ large. No arguments grounded in data or rational thought need apply.
The worst part is that is if they gain the upper hand (e.g. take the Presidency and the legislative and subsequently the judicial branches) we will be driven into the dark ages in short order.
I’m not one to engage in apocalyptic thought, but really — the end result of anti-intellectualism at this level is an enormous step backwards.
My own teenage son asked me about “Democrats for Romney” the other day and started to argue that Obama was “weak” and hadn’t done anything. First time I felt I had failed as a parent until my husband pointed out that he was surrounded by idiots and Republicans at school. But still, I was fucking horrified. Finally had to threaten him that I would mention to this to his (real) soshulust grandmother. He backed off.
Chris
@JCT:
Yeah, I agree.
I think the first “good Lord, we’re doomed” moment I had was after reading a poll that said that fully half of the American public didn’t believe in evolution (of ANY kind – that’s not counting the “maybe,” “sort of,” “well not to the extent that you do” crowds of idiots).
Like, in the twenty-first century, we’re trying to compete with Europe, China and all the rest with a population this ignorant? That’s a third world statistic, or it ought to be. We’re in real trouble if that’s how screwed up our grasp on reality is in this day and age.
Davis X. Machina
@JCT:
He’ll grow out of it — it’s a phase. After all, what isn’t basically a dick-measuring contest at that age?
I assume ‘done anything’ means ‘start additional wars’. War is the killer app for the nation-state. It’s why you run out and get one. It takes imagination to see what other uses it might have.
Chris
@JCT:
You’re not a bad parent. If you taught him the basic values – tolerance, compassion, all the rest – and if he’s not being taught complete horseshit at school (might be an issue depending on what you mean by “Republicans at school”) he should turn out fine.
I leaned Republican when I started following politics as a teenager – mostly a byproduct of being a military nerd. I got over it when enough exposure to the Republican base revealed what a bunch of racist, ignorant, elitist bastards they were. Dad didn’t really mind my exploring politics, just kind of thought I’d figure it out.
JCT
Thanks guys– he’s a soft-hearted guy, so I haven’t lost hope. And heaven knows we’ve gone through our share of phases with him at this point (he’s 17). The “Republicans at school” are the horrid kids, basically the privileged spawn of Wall Street bankers, we’re surrounded here.
I was so pissed I emailed his older sister (her teachers at high school used to joke about her being a soshulist) — her reply was succinct and accurate. “He’s a tool like all the other 17-yr-old guys in town. He’ll grow out of it”.
If the rest of this country starts to emulate this idiotic town I live in we are in trouble.
Citizen_X
You must admit, they’ve gotten pretty good at being transgressive.
Citizen_X
Also, too: Rick Scott? Motherfucker wishes he could have Obama’s approval numbers.
jefft452
Chris
“…the insecure whining of the guys who’re afraid those fancy college educated nancy boys are looking down on them…”
They’re right, I do look down on them, deservedly so, and I didn’t even finish college.
“…and comfort themselves by saying that “yeah but it’s all BOOK learning, they don’t know anything about the REAL world,”
They aren’t just lacking in fancy book larnin’ they don’t have any real world skills neither, which is why I look down on them
Jeffro
Also, a $16 muffin breakfast is a near treasonous crime under Obama.
Couple billion (nicely shrink-wrapped, on pallets) disappears in Iraq under Bush: not so much.
Delia
Goopers (the ones behind the curtain pulling the strings) do indeed love postmodernism because it lets them invent their own reality and then change it when it doesn’t work anymore.
For those of you who thought it was kind of fun back in college, even if it didn’t make much sense, time for another ride on The Postmodernism Generator.
Dee Loralei
@Svensker: I think I met him in Nyak NY on Wed. night. Dear God, I went round and round with 5 guys sitting at the bar for 1 1/2. Very successful types, which explains the Republicanism, but damned if they didn’t all spout everyone of the stupid tropes about Obama that the idiots at teabagger events say. I kicked their butts too because I had the facts. I even got two of them to rethink some of the shit they said. And then one pissed me ff for the 10,000 time and I said, that the party was racist. Yea I was rude, but I was tired of their ganging up on me.
Lojasmo
@Jeffro:
Not to mention, “muffingate” was a wing nut lie.
rikyrah
they’re so stupid, it’s obvious.
Chet
@Spaghetti Lee:
Don’t forget “Adam and Steve”, if they happen to be churchy types.