I am so angry... mad, mad, mad! Observe as I stomp my feet and shake my fists at the sky. Behold my clenched teeth and the deep line between my eyebrows. See my body tremble with barely controlled rage as I let loose a long string of stream of consciousness profanity that verges on the poetic. I throw things, I break things, I jump up and down.OK, now lets check the oil gusher in the gulf; anything change down there?
Yeah, I didn't think so. Some pundits seem to think that the biggest problem with President Obama's response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been a lack of visible rage. That's right, the president has been too calm in the face of a nearly unimaginable environmental catastrophe. I'm not sure if he's supposed to go down and slash at the oil slick with a samurai sword or what, but I have my doubts that Obama's rage would be any more effective than mine was. Sure, he's more powerful than I am, but I think we can all agree that believing that reality changes to match our emotional state is a belief in magic. Obama can't intimidate the well into submission by displaying his rage.
What's happening here is that pundits, having no more idea what to do than anyone else does, have to say something. Lights are on, cameras are rolling, say something. They're paid to have an opinion, regardless of whether that opinion is helpful or even makes any damned sense at all. So they do what they do -- they make stuff up. Without any polling data to back them up, they take it on themselves to tell other talking heads "what the American people want." The actual physical problem is beyond them, so they cook up a political problem that didn't previously exist. In other words punditry, you're not helping. Not that you ever do...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
