Step up your game

I really am trying to find something in Lori Ziganto's writing that I can respect.  On rare occasions, I find a little something, like an argument, or a reliable source. But then she publishes more god-awful shit and my hopes are dashed.

Recently, she published this rant about President Obama containing one sweeping, unsupported, undocumented generalization after another. (Sorry, Lori: you can't support your claims by citing yourself and other bloggers.) Here's the lead paragraph:

In the past week, the Obama administration and fellow Democrats have let their true feelings for America known more than ever before. Well, at least more blatantly. They aren’t even bothering to hide it now and have lost all shame. No longer content with merely worshipping at the altar of multiculturalism, they are now going out of their way to boast that they believe that practically any other country is actually superior to America, and that the men and women who have died fighting for our country aren’t worthy of honor and respect.

Now, Ziganto's readers will accept all of the claims in this paragraph, but only if they already believe, as Ziganto does, that Obama is made of concentrated evil. You cannot infer from the mere fact that Obama was not at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day that Obama doesn't honor and respect the troops. President Obama did participate in the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington on Memorial Day of last year, I guess because he hates the United States and the troops. Obama was in a national cemetery in Illinois this year for Memorial Day, obviously because he hates the troops. (My father is buried in a national cemetery, and I don't see anything wrong with choosing a national cemetery as a venue to honor our fallen soldiers.) And, as it turns out, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all hate the troops, since they also missed wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington.

What's additionally obnoxious about Ziganto's post is its underlying assumption that Ziganto has the authority to determine who is and who is not a patriotic American.

(And if you really want to know who thinks being with the troops makes for a good photo op, Lori, just ask that prick who preceded him in the White House.)

Today, I was going to publish the following video of Matt Lauer's interview with President Obama:



Ziganto posted an excerpt of this video in which Obama talks about gathering information about the BP catastrophe so that he can find out "whose ass to kick." What follows is a representative sampling of Ziganto's remarks about the excerpt:

• "Obama cannot pull off that whole cowboy image."
• "Obama really should have rehearsed that line more; it was painfully obvious to all that he’s never uttered the phrase 'ass kick' before in his ivory tower swaddled life."
• "Did his teleprompter not let him know that pretending to 'ass kick' doesn’t work when we have all seen his baseball 'pitches' and when we picture him clutching onto a head of arugula, while whining about it’s price at Whole Foods? I now imagine him practicing his tough guy image. Rehearsing with Rahm, saying things like 'You won’t like me when I’m angry! But, may I please finish my yummy waffle and hitch up my Mom jeans first?' Pitifully feigning an attempt at opening up a can of whoop arse also fails miserably when we’ve all seen Obama daintily sip beer, pinkie extended."
• "Since Obama, by his own admission, can’t figure out 'whose ass to kick' on his own, I figure we should help him out. . . . I suppose even if he and his experts finally figures out a target like, say, the terrorists who want to kill us, he’d merely continue to fail anyway. It’s not like he has any practice manning up nor any practice actually kicking anything, ass or otherwise."
• "The only asses Obama has kicked have been unintentional. For instance, the candidates for whom he campaigned, the idea that experience doesn’t matter and, well, his own masculinity."

(By the way, Ziganto, it's "ass" around here, not "arse." I guess if I were a conservative prick, I would say, "If you want to talk like the British, why don't you just pack your shit and move to Merry Olde England? We speak American around here!")

Allow me to summarize. Ziganto's primary criticism of Obama is that he is not manly enough. You see, Ziganto would prefer to have a more manly chief executive. Many Americans feel the same way. Every four years, they take the question, "Which candidate would you most like to have a beer with?" seriously.  They want their president to do manly things, like watch baseball, hunt, and make fun of born-again murderers on death row. Obviously, basketball is not a sufficiently manly sport for these Americans, but I digress. Ziganto's latest post really does come down to the embarrassingly juvenile complaint that Obama is not manly enough to be president.

Anyway, I just wonder why Ziganto supports politicians like Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley.  I mean, they're not manly, are they? They're women! As "true feminists," they deserve our support, according to Ziganto, because they were not "busily pant suiting themselves and trying to become men." Indeed, should there ever be the need to kick anyone's ass or even mow a lawn and either Palin or Haley is in charge, Ziganto would have a man do if for them. As Ziganto writes,

I am a staunch Anti-Feminist. Seriously, mowing the lawn is almost as bad as changing your own car tire. Which is utterly unheard of in my mind. Far easier, and more womanly to use your wiles. Work up a good fake cry, pout prettily and watch while a man does the job. Who needs ya, Gloria Steinem? Not I and that is for damn certain.   

If you object to Obama's presidency on the grounds that he's not manly enough for the job, then how could you support a woman's candidacy for public office and yet require of women that they not be manly?

Believe me, no one is more confused about Lori Ziganto's position on all of this than is Lori Ziganto.

And I haven't even gotten to Ziganto's ludicrous claim that Obama has been unable to kick the asses of terrorists. During the presidential campaign, Obama made McCain look like a dove on the issue of attacking terrorists in Pakistan. Indeed, Obama's position on the issue aligned him with . . . Sarah Palin. And Obama's success in targeting and killing suspected Al Qaeda militants is well-known, except to conservatives like Ziganto, apparently. The use of unmanned drones for this purpose has even drawn the ire of the U.N. (So much for kowtowing to other countries.)

Ziganto, step up your game.