“Wee Weed Up,” Take 2

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

An update on Campaign Outsider’s earlier post about the rumpus over Pres. Obama’s “wee weed up” criticism of D.C. in August (normal people complain about the humidity).

The hardworking staff did further research (that is, read a Washington Post blog) and wants to amend the record, since CO initially thought the phrase meant “testosteroned-up.”

Here’s the official White House definition:

“I think ‘wee-weed up’ is when people just get all nervous for no particular reason,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs explained Friday.

“August of 2008, everybody was nervous about whether the entire presidential campaign was slipping out from underneath the hands of the president, who they previously didn’t think would actually be the nominee. So this is just — this is sort of an August pundit pattern between people getting overly nervous for something that still has a long way to go. Bed-wetting is — would be probably the more consumer-friendly term.”

Bed-wetting?

Okay.

I don’t want to have this conversation again.

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Paterson’s Pathetic Play

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

New York Gov. David Paterson (D-Fuggedaboudit!) is laying off his myriad self-inflicted problems on a racist media conspiracy, the Saturday New York Times reported.

Gov. David A. Paterson lashed out on Friday at critics who say he should not run for election, and he suggested that he was being undermined by an orchestrated, racially biased effort by the media to force him to step aside.

Puh-leeze.

Even Paterson quickly realized that was a gambit with a capital Goof. Hours later, he took a mulligan.

Mr. Paterson himself issued a statement on the matter later in the day, saying that not all the media criticism of him could be attributed to race. But he said he would not hesitate to point out even subtle stereotypes in news coverage, and repeated his assertion that America was not yet a postracial society.

Yes, and David Paterson’s not yet a postmoron politician.

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Rice and Wrong

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

While the Yankees and Red Sox play Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots at Fenway, newly minted Hall of Famer and born-again bigmouth Jim Rice has been in Williamsport at the Little League World Series.

As Saturday’s Boston Globe reported, Rice delivered a pre-game pep talk to the local LLWS entry, the (pride of) Peabody Western All-Stars. (Given that they promptly went out and lost 14-1, Jim Ed might consider lowering his fee for motivational speaking gigs.)

As part of his effort to rev up the Little Leaguers, Rice decided to run down some major leaguers, most notably the execrable Manny Ramirez.

Red Sox Hall of Famer Jim Rice swung away yesterday in criticism of the approach current major leaguers have to baseball, telling youngsters at the Little League World Series that players such as Manny Ramirez set a “bad example.’’

“We didn’t [have] the baggy uniforms; we didn’t have the dreadlocks; that’s not part of the game,’’ Rice said after mentioning Ramirez, who played nearly eight seasons for the Red Sox and is known for his large uniform and hair style. “It was a clean game, and now they are setting a bad example for the young guys.’’

Of course, Rice didn’t leave it at that; he had to take a shot at the Yankees to even the score.

At the same time, Rice mentioned New York Yankees Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter as he described a baseball culture dominated by huge contracts and the acquisition of wealth, with players more interested in Rolex watches than the game.

“What you see right now is more individuals; it’s not a team,’’ said Rice, a newly minted Hall of Famer who played for the Red Sox from 1974 to 1989. “Now you have guys coming in. They pick the days they want to play. They make big money. The first thing they see are dollar bills.’’

I’ll stipulate to any criticism of Rodriguez.  Mr. September is all about himself, and I’ve long said the Yankees will never win anything while he’s on the team. He’s bad luck.

But the shot at Jeter was totally unwarranted.  Sure, Jeter makes good money, but even Red Sox fans (at least the sentient among them) concede that Jeter is a class act who comes to play every day.

(Just recall Jeter’s heedless-dive-into-the-stands-to-catch-a-foul-pop in July of 2004 vs. NoMas Garciaparra’s no-show in the same Sox-Yankees series.)

Rice needs to talk less and think more, methinks.

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Newspapers: Stats Entertainment!

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

From our Whistling Past the Graveyard desk:

The Newspaper Association of America ran a full-page ad in Friday’s New York Times featuring a Rainbow Coalition of 18-34 year olds reading newspapers under the headline, “Numbers Like These Always Look Good On Paper.”

Body copy:

In the past two years, the newspaper business has faced unprecedented challenges, but make no mistake: newspaper media – print and digital – remains [sic] strong and will emerge from the current environment an even stronger multi-platform force.

To reinforce that wishful thinking, the ad marshals a small army of statistics such as, “104 Million: Number of adults who read a print newspaper every day, more than 115 million on Sunday.”

Excellent! Mazel tov!

But other stats are more problematic, like this one:

61%

18-24 year olds and 25-34 year olds who read a newspaper in an average week. 65% of everyone in those age groups read a newspaper or visited a newspaper website that week.

Raise your hand if you think the overall ratio of web to print among that crowd is under 90-10.

Then there’s this intriguing stat:

TONS

Number of creative options for advertisers choosing to utilize the newspaper. From belly bands, polybags, post-it notes, scented ads, taste-it ads, glow-in-the-dark and temporary tattoos, as well as event and database marketing, behavioral targeting, e-mail blasts, e-newsletters and more.

Usually I’m worried about the “and more,” but that ad copy is scarifying enough in what it says outright.

Event and database marketing? (See the Washington Post’s recent event debacle.)

Behavioral targeting? No thanks, I’m trying to quit.

The newspaper association ad bravely ends thusly:

This is not a portrait of a dying industry. It’s illustrative of transformation. Newspapers are reinventing themselves to focus on serving distinct audiences with a variety of products, and delivering those audiences effectively to advertisers across media channels.

Yes, well, if belly bands are the future of newspapers, I guess I’ll just have to swallow it.

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“Wee Weed” All the Way Home

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Barack Obama should never ad lib. He should cling to his TelePrompter like a bitter Pennsylvanian clings to guns and religion.

Exhibit Umpteenth: Obama’s Thursday address to minions of his front group, Organizing for America, in which he made light of his free-fall approval numbers.

Proving once again that Sarah Palin is the last refuge of scoundrels, Obama recalled other times he was counted out, as Breitbart.com reported (via Drudge).

Then Obama drew parallels to the media frenzy that greeted the nomination of firebrand Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008.

“The media was obsessed with it, cable was 24 hours a day,” Obama told a friendly audience of grass-roots Democratic activists at a Washington forum broadcast live over the web.

“‘Obama’s lost his mojo,’ you remember all that?

“There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee weed up!”

Raise your hand if you have the faintest idea what “all wee weed up” means.

So far, Google News has about 15 results for “wee weed up,” while the Googletron itself has 3200 (at 2 a.m. Eastern) and counting – fast.

Not least among them, a post from Mad Michelle Malkin titled “‘All wee weed up’ and nowhere to go.”

God only knows where Obama will go, but I’ll tell you where the rightwing gunsels will go.

That’s right: All the way home.

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Sean Fishin’

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider was all abuzz this morning when we emptied the old mailbag and up to one letter poured out.

But what a letter: The return address on the envelope said simply, “Sean Hannity.”

Whoa!

Sean’s letter carried the salutation, “Dear American Fellow,” which it was lucky I was sitting down when I read it ’cause it’s kind of backwards and made me dizzy.

No matter, here’s how Sean began:

With the government in Washington wholly controlled by liberals, do you think conservative members of Congress have what it takes to block their disastrous policies?

If you’re like the listeners to my radio show, your answer is an emphatic ‘No!’

What’s the solution? Sean says it’s The Heritage Foundation, “an organization located right on Capitol Hill that for over 36 years has been showing their allies in Congress how to put conservative principles into action.”

(Special bonus: The Heritage Foundation media center features not a few Sean Hannity videos, including Sean Hannity on Bettering Ourselves, Sean Hannity’s Five Suggestions for the GOP, Sean Hannity’s Challenge to Conservatives,  Sean Hannity on Blaming President Bush, Sean Hannity on Liberals, and – my personal favorite – Sean Hannity on World War III.)

Of course, all that Sean Hannity costs money, so the Big Man asked me to “join the Heritage Foundation by enclosing a contribution of any amount – $25, $50, $100, $1,000 or any other amount you like.”

Fair enough. Here’s my two cents worth: Keep those letters coming, Sean.

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The Bookmark Brain

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

It’s probably happened to you a thousand times: You’re reading a newspaper article or a book, you put it down, and – after some interval of a few minutes to half an hour – you pick it up again and your eye goes right to the place you left off.

Kindles do the same thing, but they’re programmed that way.

Some machine that brain, eh?

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Erin Go Brand

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The New York Times reports that a new ad campaign for the Sony Corporation of America features Peyton Manning, Justin Timberlake, and . . . Erin Andrews?

Mr. Manning returns to promote Bravia high-definition TV sets as the best on which to watch high-definition sports. He is joined by Erin Andrews, a reporter for the ESPN cable channel owned by the Walt Disney Company.

That would be Erin Andrews, star of a much-ogled Web video of her naked in a hotel room, which the news media feasted on for far too long.

But here’s the Times, back to business:

The [Sony] campaign is the first to feature Ms. Andrews of ESPN since the extensive publicity she received last month after video clips surfaced online from a tape made surreptitiously of her, undressed, in a hotel room.

(Of course, some might say “a tape allegedly made surreptitiously” – really, who irons in the nude – but why get technical about it?)

A Sony marketing exec put to rest the question of dumping Andrews by telling the Times she would “remain part of the campaign.”

The better question, though, is why ESPN allowed this in the first place. News Media Rule #1: Reporters don’t do commercials. That goes for sports reporters, too, despite the contention by certain media analysts (whose names I’ll withhold to protect the guilty, but you know who you are) that sports reporters aren’t real reporters.

The naked truth is, Erin Andrews just auctioned off her credibility.

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Wassermania!

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

I love Boston Globe editorial cartoonist Dan Wasserman’s work. (Exhibit A: Tuesday’s “It Turns Out, There Is A Death Panel” submission.)

Just wanted to say that.

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Barack Caramba!

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The jury is no  longer out on Team Obama. Which means the verdict is in: So sure-handed at campaigning, so ham-handed at governing.

As Peggy Noonan would say: Paging Jimmy Carter. Paging former Pres. Jimmy Carter.

Exhibits A and B (in the past 48 hours):

Obama’s abandon ship! excursion into countering criticism of the White House healthcare reform/overhaul/government takeover, as reported in Politico.

Following a furor over how the data would be used, the White House has shut down an electronic tip box — flag@whitehouse.gov — that was set up to receive information on “fishy” claims about President Barack Obama’s health plan.

It was also labeled by Texas chainsaw Sen. John Cornyn the “Obama monitoring program” (hat tip: George Orwell). Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs contended, “Nobody is keeping anybody’s names,” but nobody with a name believes that.

Then there’s Obama’s moonwalk on a public (translation: you pay for it) option in his healthcare reform/overhaul/government takeover. As in, he’s willing to drop  it.

The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate. [New York Times]

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said the public option was “not essential,” while Obama himself called it “a small piece of a broader initiative.”

Yeah, I got your broader initiative right here.

Noonan, for her part, says Obama’s problem is, he’s increasingly “slippery.”

When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems . . . pretty slippery. In [last week’s Portsmouth, NH] town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery.

Me, I’d downgrade Obama from slippery to – Paging Bill Clinton, paging former Pres. Bill Clinton – downright slick.

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