Skeet-gate mockery continues

The New York Post joins in on the merciless mockery of Obama’s skeet-shooting photo, including a couple of golden quotes from Team Obama:

“For all the skeeters, POTUS [president of the United States] shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in releasing the photo.

Obama political adviser David Plouffe tweeted, “Attn Skeet Birthers. Make Our Day — Let the Photoshop conspiracies begin.””Skeeters?”  “Skeet Birthers?”  

What a lovely exercise in Alinskyite judo, seeking to re-cast the people who called Obama out on his silly pander as paranoid nutjobs.  Perhaps this was intended to head deeper inspection of the photo off at the pass.  I’m not a skeet-shooting enthusiast myself, but some of them have been noting that Obama’s stance is more consistent with someone posing for a photo with a gun than actively participating in a shooting contest.

Was there really a large body of skeptics that doubted Obama had ever shot at a clay pigeon, even once?  The problem is that he claimed – or, given the language he used, strongly implied – that he does it “all the time.”

The true absurdity of this non-troversy, and the casual Obama exaggeration that started it, is nicely captured by the concerns voiced by unnamed “gun control advocates” to the Post:

Gun-control advocates — while understanding Obama’s attempt to show hunters and sportsmen he’s not after their legal guns — worry that he risks looking hypocritical.  “Being dogmatic on guns doesn’t seem to work, although pretending to shoot doesn’t work, either,” said a Democratic source who requested anonymity for fear of upsetting the White House.

Democratic sources are “afraid” to provoke the wrath of this supremely thin-skinned White House by making such a simple, common-sense observation?  Who but a Democrat political consultant would have thought a photo or two showing Obama holding a gun would reassure “hunters and sportsmen he’s not after their legal guns?”  They keep treating other groups like their own credulous, visually motivated low-information base.  

Proper respect for the Second Amendment does not require any personal familiarity with modern firearms at all.  It shouldn’t make any difference if you personally shoot skeet all the time, hang out at gun ranges every Saturday… or would rather handle a live anaconda than pick up a gun.  That’s the beauty of inalienable rights: they require no special personal sympathy from the good American citizen, or his loyal representatives in a Constitutionally-limited government.  The First Amendment is not honored exclusively by professional writers and priests; the Second must not be honored only by shooters.

Update: A suggestion for the Obama White House: if you don’t want people to make fun of you for being a thin-skinned arrogant elitist, try to refrain from ordering them not to make fun of you.