Sometimes they don’t take the bait
Perry Bacon today during an online chat:
Rochester, N.Y.: BlagoGate, BurrisGate, CommerceGate, PanettaGate….is is too early to declare the Obama presidency a scandal-ridden failure?
Perry Bacon: In a word, yes. We’ve made a big deal of the Commerce flub for instance, but how many people,even in Washington, could name the current Commerce Secretary? (Carlos M. Gutierrez) Burris has been an interesting story, but if the governor or the lt. governor of Illinois end up getting someone in that seat who they appointed, it will be a liberal Democrat who will vote with Senate Democratic leadership most of time, just like Obama did before. These are all interesting stories, but the most important thing happening in Washington is the debate over spending $800 billion, a very large amount of money, to help the economy.
Oh, well.
dmsilev
Can we please retire the FooGate construction? It’s well past its sell-by date.
-dms
Dave
Kudos to Bacon, but that is one of the most retarded questions ever asked. PanettaGate? WTF??
I would love to know who sent that in. Undoubtedly someone who frequents Free Republic and has a "Drill Baby Drill" bumper sticker on their rusted-out Chevy pickup.
Evinfuilt
"PanettaGate" sounds like some form of bacon, now I’m hungry.
DougJ
Undoubtedly.
gypsy howell
Some of these hardly qualify as "-gates" (PanettaGate? Did I miss something, because otherwise, since when does having a couple of Senators get their noses tweaked count as a "-gate?"), one of them ("BlagoGate") has nothing to do with Obama other than he’s from the same state, one of them ("BurrisGate") has only a tangential connection to him (the filling of his empty Senate seat, and the general douchebaggery of the Senate majority leader, which surely can’t be laid at Obama’s doorstep.)
So, that leaves "CommerceGate", and uh… didn’t Obama pretty much cut that one off at the pass by having Richardson withdraw before he was even formally appointed?
The move to define "scandal-ridden failure" downward has begun in earnest.
Dreggas
@gypsy howell:
For those suffering from ODS it’s almost like the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon". Anything, no matter how loosely Obama may be connected with it, is fodder and thus a "gate". Someone shoots someone and the shooter lived on the same block as Obama, it’s Obama’s doing. Just like the "Obama death list" and the nut-jobs saying Bernie Mac’s death was caused by Obama (there were a few).
Garrigus Carraig
Perry Bacon still has a long way to go after devoting an entire front page article to the Obama-is-a-Muslim internet smears. As Bradly No said at the time, "That entire paper needs to fire itself."
DougJ
These people really are nuts.
bedlam UK
What is it with you Yanks and your ‘gates’ ?
I understood that the Watergate name came from the Watergate Office Complex that was broken into? so why not use ‘panini-office’ or ‘blago-complex.
Better still you could start on variations ; Commerce-sliding door, panini-fence, blago-doggydoor.
That question is crap anyway. Them dems have been pretty damn disasterous, but that list is of either non-scandels or non-Obama related issues.
Shawn in ShowMe
By this criteria, there were 7,863 "gates" during the Bush Administration. Give or take.
Dreggas
@bedlam UK:
Blago-complex sounds like a mental condition, kinda like megalomania mixed with narcissism and delusions of grandeur. That’s a keeper.
demimondian
@DougJ: Absolutely. Hey, don’t you live in Rochester? Might you know the guy who posed the question?
BenA
I think you’re understimating. :-)
DougJ
Not everyone here is aware of all internet traditions, demi.
Comrade Dread
Attention political commentators, this is your last warning.
Stop using the suffix ‘-gate’ to describe every single bloody political scandal or the Overused Cliche Police will, without a doubt, be dropping by your house, before you know, it to repeatedly slap you in the face until you die, and then they will continue to beat you fat dead hacks into the ground.
That is all…
Dave S.
Someone shoots someone and the shooter lived on the same block as Obama
Shootergate! Shootergate! The MSM-in-the-tank is totally ignoring this!
DougJ, would you really rather be in Rochester? Does it, in fact, got it?
Dave S.
Comrade Dread, that is a slap in the face to fat dead hacks everywhere.
Will Danz
GOP BullshitGate.
DougJ
I do live in Rochester. I’m not sure sure it’s "got it". In the winter, it definitely doesn’t, in the summer, it does, and in between I’m not sure.
Xanthippas
To be fair, many wise commentators here at Balloon Juice are supremely interested in the economic stimulus package.
What do you mean that doesn’t count?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
Damn, the administration hasn’t even started yet and it has more gates than a microprocessor.
[/hardware geek]
cleek
Rochester has it. or used to. until i left for sunny NC.
NonyNony
@bedlam UK:
I understood that the Watergate name came from the Watergate Office Complex that was broken into?
I suspect this makes you more knowledgeable than many Americans, who probably think "gate" is just a suffix that means "scandal". And that for Nixon it was "Watergate" because he was involved in some kind of water scandal. After all, he did employ plumbers to do his dirty work, so it must have been some kind of plumbing-related shenanigans. Q.E.D.
In fact, linguistically speaking we probably have already passed the point where the "-gate" suffix actually does mean "scandal" in American English. I wonder how long it will take before the dictionary folk recognize it as such?
Rick Taylor
On the subject of the 800 billion dollars, we haven’t talked about it here, but I was disturbed when it was leaked that 40% of his stimulus plan will be geared towards cats. I say this as someone supportive of Obama, and who hasn’t been at all concerned over most of the sturm and drang over his appointments and who would serve during his inaugural. Assuming the economists I’m reading are correct, we are in deep trouble, it’s not at all certain the stimulas package will avert catastrophe, and it’s imperative every dollar spent be spent as effectively as possible. And while there is an argument to be made for some tax cuts, Krugman among others argue that this is high, as some money spent on tax cuts will be saved rather spent, making it an inefficient use of the money.
What’s more disturbing the reported rationale for the tax cuts; to get Republican’s on board. Number one, if we’re really on the edge of financial armageddon, it’s appalling we may be undermining the effectiveness of the stimulus to satisfy these clowns. And number two, we all know that it won’t work; that compromising before the bargaining even begins will only encourage them to move the goal posts further, to demand the majority of the funds go to tax cuts, or the capital gains tax needs to be rescinded, or who knows what. These people are not arguing in good faith. This is bringing back all the things that worried me most about Obama in the primaries, his paeans to unity, his deriding of the old left, etc. I’m hoping there’s more than meets the eye here.
Laura W
@Rick Taylor:
Tunchgate.
Delia
I can haz dem skandl? PLZ? PLZ? PLZ?
Dave S.
DougJ, I grew up outside of Rochester and loved the Western NY winters as a kid; now I’m not so sure.
Way back when, there was a PR campaign with the slogan "I’d Rather Be in Rochester – It’s Got It!" We always wondered what "it" was. On the other hand Rochester has it all over Syracuse, although perhaps that isn’t saying much.
Sorry to hijack the thread. I will behave according to all Internet traditions from now on.
Jason
I like the thoughtful hedge that starts the answer. Really he should’ve just written "In two words: yes, dumbass."
Ronnie P
I’ve spent the last hour searching new sites to find out if a Leon Panetta scandal just broke. PanettaGate is what, the fact that some people don’t want him to be confirmed?
Delia
@Laura W:
If this is true, it is indeed a scandal and one Obama will not easily live down. He will quickly lose the dog and the dog-loving portion of the population over Tunchgate.
Laura W
@Delia: Never underestimate the power of a pack of angry ferrets.
ImJohnGalt
[Waves at DougJ from the other side of Lake Ontario]
miss_kiyyt
Yeah. I don’t get the ‘-gate’ thing. Never have. ‘Watergate’ was not about water.
Andrew
Apparently DougJ also lives in…
and
John PM
@Comrade Dread: #15
Here, here
I have been saying that for years. As others have pointed out, the Watergate was a building. I guess if people would not use the suffix -gate to connote the existence of a scandal, they might have to actually explain why it is a scandal.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Oh, well, you can’t always get the fish to bite. Maybe next time, we can reel in a big one.
Cyrus
You’re from Rochester, DougJ? Wow. Come to think of it, I might have read that once upon a time, but forgot about it.
But anyway, the reason I’m surprised is that I went to UR. Small world.
Cyrus
I think the "scandal" is that Dianne Feinstein and maybe some other Senators supposedly weren’t told it would be Panetta before his name was leaked. She’s an obstreperous DINO, Lieberman without the fame, so if there’s anything more to it than her feeling left out, I don’t know what it is.
SixStringFanatic
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
So, can we call this one "DougJNeedsBetterBaitGate"?? No? Fine, I’ll see myself out, thanks.
R-Jud
@Rick Taylor:
CATGATE! Where is your Obamessiah now, libs!?
Smith
Already the wingnuts are doing everything possible to try and taint the Obama presidency before it even begins. The next four (hopefully eight) years are going to drive them absolutely batty, moreso than during the Clinton years.
I live in Rochester and the thought that this asshat (the question asker) lives in the same city makes me want to beat something. Although if judging by the letters to the editor in our local paper (The Democrat & Chronicle), this isn’t surprising. We have an awful lot of wingnuts who write LTE’s to the local paper – the worst LTE I ever saw was from someone who claimed that people who get welfare should be forced to get arm tattoos like the Jewish people did in the Holocaust so that they would be recognized and shunned on the streets. I shit you not – those were the person’s exact words entirely. I still can’t believe the D&C printed that letter. It haunts me to think I share a breathing space with some of these people.
DougJ
Do you have a link for that? My friends at the blog RochesterTurning would have a field day with it.
DougJ
Yup, that’s where I live now, for the past five years.
DougJ
Toronto?
gypsy howell
That leaves 60% for dogs. I’m cool with that.
Mnemosyne
As the owners of two cats, clearly my family will be getting twice as much of the stimulus as you lame-ass single cat owners. Which might, just barely, start to pay off the bills we had when Keaton decided a poisonous tiger lily looked really scrumptious.
(He’s perfectly fine now, thanks, but NO LILIES in your house or garden. They are deadly to cats within 48 hours without prompt medical treatment, and they don’t look sick until it’s too late.)
demimondian
@Andrew: Naw—DougJ comes from Rochester. I was just wondering if he might know which of the wingnut luminaries from up there asked that particular question.
—demi "lived in Ithaca for seven years" mondian
gypsy howell
That’s it—I’m getting another dog. My current dog could use some stimulus.
Paul
Bill-o was HILARIOUS yesterday trying to get anyone who would listen to agree with him that "if there’s a terrorist attack on America, the Obama administration is DONE. It’s over."
Dr. Squid
Are there any IROCs still being driven in Crapchester, or has the constant flow of salt dropped after lake-effect snows rusted them out?
Ack, Sysadmin of Evil
As someone who grew up in the Crapchester area, and managed to escape, I think Patterson Hood said it best:
"I ain’t never goin’ back to Buttholeville"
slag
Bummer. Well, it was a good try, DougJ. Try again in a couple of weeks, and I’m confident the answer will change. The very fact that he took your question seriously is a promising sign.
Smith
DougJ:
The letter was from a few years ago. I’ll try and see if the D&C has it on their website. The only reason I still remember it so vividly was how much it shocked me plus the tone and content of the letter. The sadder thing is that I don’t think there were any rebuttal LTEs to the idiot’s letter.
DougJ
Thanks.