The false choices of Skeet-gate

In response to Stop getting into the wrong argument!:

Speaking for myself, David, I wasn’t planning to let Skeet-gate distract me from any of the really important issues.  But it’s hard to resist having a bit of fun with it.  The original story was amusing; the defensive over-reaction of the O-bots is freaking hilarious.  You’ve got constipated Obama hatchet men like Plouffe running around and calling anyone who doubts the official Presidential clay pigeon narrative “skeet truthers” and comparing them to “birthers.”

The whole affair illustrates some of the worst features of the Obama era in a funny way that low-information voters can easily apprehend.  The pandering, the reflexive dishonesty, the hyperventilating when he’s caught out…  We’ve often made fun of the Left for building stuff like Sarah Palin’s tanning bed into absurdly over-hyped media crises, but who’s to say that stuff doesn’t work with a certain segment of the population?  The evidence of the last election would seem to suggest that it can gain traction, especially when it’s a blizzard of embarrassing little stories that fit together into a “narrative.”  That’s probably one reason the O-bots go completely bonkers when they think one of these silly little teapot tempests threatens to boil over into the public consciousness.

Also, I love the way the Obama team indulges their boss’ penchant for ludicrous false choices in their response to the Skeet-Gate story.  They think they’ve somehow defused the whole thing by producing (with an evidently heroic degree of effort) a single photo of Obama pulling the trigger on a gun.  But the “controversy” was never predicated on Obama never shooting at all; he claimed he does it all the time, as part of an offhanded pander designed to make it seem as if he has extensive familiarity and comfort with firearms.  That’s just like the “some extremists say” straw men Obama marches out in every speech.  This isn’t a binary choice between “Obama tells the truth” and “Obama never, ever shot skeet a single time.”

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