Remember when we met Barack Obama's "body man" this morning? The improbably named Reggie Love? Remember how Obama consoled him when "embarrassing pictures of an inebriated Mr. Love from a fraternity house party surfaced on the Internet"? It took like 20 minutes for people to find these photos! They ought to play well with the "drunk frat cracker" demo. Here's one of the incriminating photos. The NSFW one is after the jump.
That Barack Obama picture-on the cover of this month's issue of the men's magazine-looked familiar. Slightly less of Obama's hands are visible; the Democratic candidate's shoulders are weirdly hunched; and the picture's rendered in black and white. But it's obviously from the same Platon shoot as the one that illustrated Time's December cover story. Embarrassing, though it's hard to condemn Esquire: determined insurgent politicians have a limited range of body language; the photo editors can safely assume readers have short memories; and the likely Democratic nominee needs the support of Scots-Irish racists in Appalachia more than he does the goodwill of Esquire's photo department or metropolitan readers.
Reggie Love is Senator Barack Obama's amusingly named "body man." He's a 26-year-old former college football and basketball player. Also he's really cool! The Times has a total crush on him, and they tell us all about how Mr. Love is totally good at sports and got Obama into hip-hop and fist-bumps reporters. (Or, as they put it, he "offers closed-fist high-fives to members of the news media.") He's with Barry all the time, and has pens and Sharpies and nicotine gum and stuff. He also makes sure no one ever tries to give the senator mayo or a second beer. And they play basketball! Soooo cool! No, seriously, he's really really cool.
Fox News correspondent Liz Trotta said on air this weekend that she'd like to try and kill Barack Obama now that Hillary Clinton has wussed out on her comments about Obama's impending, Robert Kennedy-style death. Trotta started to talk about the idea of an "Osama" assassination, then corrected herself, saying "Osama, Obama — well, both, if we could." Then the former Washington Times bureau chief laughed like a brainwashed Moonie assassin. Trotta apologized in a later broadcast for her "lame attempt at humor," adding, "it is a very colorful political season." Immediately prior to the apology, Trotta had just spent a few minutes pontificating about Clinton on-camera again, because she isn't fired, because Fox News stands behind their crazy talking heads. After the jump, a clip with both the assassination comment and the apology.
Barack Obama's campaign for president has raised a staggering $200 million from contributors through the Web, tapping Valley talent like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Mark Gorenberg, a VC with Hummer Winblad. Obama has surpassed fundraising efforts by his primary opponent Hillary Clinton, even though she's raised more money for her campaign than her husband, former President Bill Clinton, ever did in winning an election. And he's doing it under the rules put in place by the Republican candidate, John McCain, under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. You can read all the details in The Atlantic's 5,243-word feature by Joshua Green, but a summary, 98-word paragraph is all you need to read.
Oh Senator Hillary Clinton, would you please, please, please, please, please stop talking! When the Sioux Falls Argus Leader asked her why she's still campaigning, she mused, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." Hinting, in other words, that, you know, that Sen. Barack Obama, who's young and beloved and Kennedy-y, might get straight-up murdered in the coming weeks. Today she's apologizing for that, but now everyone's pointing out that she's been peddling that scenario for months!
John McCain is in mostly good health. He's had melanoma three times but now "appears cancer-free." He's arthritic and takes cholesterol meds and has precancerous lesions removed periodically, but his heart is super-strong! He also has vertigo. The cancer probably won't come back within the next 8 years, though there's a chance of it. Also, "aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years and none was included in the documents." Meanwhile, have you heard that Barack Obama is terribly unhealthy? It's true, some guy at HuffPo says the Senator is totally unfit for duty.
Last weekend Barack Obama once again revealed his anti-Americanism when he told a crowd, "We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees all the time, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK." Hey, maybe Barack can speak for the Muslims who won't eat as much as they want. But Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Patrick McIlheran is sick of you arugula-scarfing elites telling him and his family what to eat. And his trip to some Jewish restaurant in New York proves he's right, somehow!
Jews! They hate Obama! That's according to today's Times, in which we learn that Florida's Jews are almost as misinformed as West Virginia's everyone. Anyway—old Jewish retirees all think Obama is against Israel, even though he's just as solidly pro-whatever Israel wants as every other major American politician from either side of the aisle. What can Obama do to win them over?
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded states again last night, but Obama is only a handful of delegates away from securing the Democratic Party's nomination. The latest Web metric — widgets embedded on social-network pages — puts him firmly in the lead against John McCain. If only widgets counted as much as having a Republican running voting-machine maker Diebold. [ReadWriteWeb] (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)
This flier has reportedly been circulating throughout Puerto Rico, which holds its primaries on June 1. As you can see, it features a poorly Photoshopped version of Barack Obama dressed up as dreaded Dominican. There's no indication the Hillary Clinton campaign is actually connected to this flier. And really, why would she go to the trouble? The lesson: West Virginians and Puerto Ricans have more in common than they think. Click to enlarge. [via Ad Age] [UPDATE: A tipster points out that this flier is a spoof! It comes from the all-day-jokers at 23/6. There are some anti-Hillary ones too, so let's just say everyone everywhere is racist and sexist and leave it at that.]
Remember Barack Obama's mysterious Abercrombie posse? The sticker cultists behind the Clintons? Doesn't anyone screen the people who sit behind candidates anymore? Our esteemed videographers put together this collection of all the loonies mugging for the camera and distracting from the candidate. Just one more thing we'll miss about the primary season, until it begins again in 2010. (If this one actually ends. Kentucky and Oregon were last night. Obama won Oregon, as predicted. Clinton scored a ridiculously large victory in tiny Kentucky, as predicted. Clinton didn't drop out, as predicted. John McCain did something quasi-unethical with some lobbyists too, probably.)
This YouTube clip of a pet parrot saying "Obama! Yes we can!" over and over looks sort of like any other viral video from a supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate. "The closer we come to the final nomination the more excited he's become," the bird's owner writes in a caption. But to Republicans, it must look like the perfect illustration of what will inevitably become one of their key lines against the almost certain eventual nominee: that his supporters tend to be superficial lemmings, short on real policy knowledge but full of strong, vague feelings about where the country needs to go, and thus not rational enough to pick the country's next leader. This attack vector did not do much for Hillary Clinton, but you can bet operatives for elderly Republican John McCain are working overtime to write it into Obama's media narrative. Clip after the jump.
Now that he's the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama no longer has to attract voters with meaningless pleasantries and promises of ponies. No, now he's free to switch to real talk. No bullshit. At his Saturday rally in Oregon, Obama told the United States to stop whining and go on a goddamn diet: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," he said. But we want to drive around eating corn all day! Can we at least continue criticizing your wife for hating America? Apparently not, as we learned on Good Morning America. Clip of that attached.
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is a slick, smooth, charming guy. He would've been a dangerous nominee, because he's TV-friendly and quick-witted in a folksy, unthreatening way. But he's actually a rar-right nutcase. And sometimes his jokes fall flat. As in the clip above. If you can't get a laugh from telling a "someone is going to shoot Barack Obama" joke in a talk at the NRA then your delivery needs work, we say. Oh, also we say: wtf.
If you're going to accuse Barack Obama of appeasement, it's useful to know the origins of the expression, in Neville Chamberlain's abandonment of Czechoslovakia to Hitler at the Munich conference. Watch spluttering right-wing radio host Kevin James struggle to deal with an ambush question from Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday: "What did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in 1939?" Of course, if you're planning to demonstrate a Republican talking head's ignorance of history, as Matthews was attempting, it's also useful to remember that Munich was not in 1939, but in 1938.
John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama tonight in a masterstroke of Clintonian gladhanding. The timing of the endorsement certainly shouldn't improve Edwards' reputation as a slick, ambulance-chasing lawyer. He waited until the Democratic presidential hopeful had a virtual lock on the nomination, but not so long that his endorsement would be totally useless. Thus, he preserved the chance to be a part of Hillary Clinton's cabinet for as long as that looked possible, but still managed to score some points with Obama. I'm not saying he planned it all along, because who knew Clinton would stay in the fight this long, but he certainly seized the opportunity she presented to offer a very-low-risk endorsement with significant potential personal upside. Also: Major gripe with the Edwards endorsement coverage in the Times and Washington Post:
So. Obama has a bit of a problem with the Jews. Some suspect he doesn't support Israel. Or support it enough. Some suspect he might have sympathies for certain antisemitic Black leaders. Some are worried that he will make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his Vice President. And basically, the Jews who think these things think them because Obama's black. Is that unfair? Yes. To everyone. But seriously, the man has never said a discouraging word about Israel and his demeanor and political style is notable in its opposition to older, more radical Black leaders. Still. Jews are paranoid people! And it doesn't help that they're all being encouraged to be scared of Obama.
