The Young Turks

Ruth Marcus of the so-called "liberal" Washington Post achieved something truly remarkable today. 

Her opinion piece was the typical, run-of-the-mill, conventional-wisdom nonsense you see during these campaigns.  It had a lot of words but zero substance.  The premise was that Obama was too elite, too soft, and couldn't relate to the common man.  Her conclusion is he needs to do more to make people feel like he's one of us.

What is so remarkable about it is that I found it to be so typical, so standard, so brainless, so free of substance that I would argue it is the finest piece of crap I've read in a long time.  It takes talent to write an article so empty and stupid.  A lesser journalist might accidentally let some insight or substance sneak in, but Marcus keeps it 100% pure drivel.

Even if the brilliant Glenn Greenwald set out to write a parody of this kind of opinion piece, employing every tired cliche in the toolbox, I believe he would come up short. 

You should really read it yourself to appreciate its emptiness.  Her thesis is that voters can't be expected to understand all that fancy, nuanced policy stuff (doesn't that make her elitist?).  Instead, the ill-informed voters (who are ill-informed because of articles like this) need an image to be a proxy for true understanding.  Her trick, which she must think is quite sneaky, is to use Democrats to paint Obama as elitest and out of touch.  Clever, no?

She says they need Obama to act more like he cares (uh, you mean like being a community organizer?), not to seem too exotic or smart.  Ironically, Marcus graduated with a law degree from Harvard and has analyzed Obama's brilliant understanding of the constitution.  So she knows he seems elite because he is elite.  Isn't that a good thing?!?!

How could anyone who has suffered from the last 8 years of an administration run by a total dumbass say something critical about someone being too smart?  I loved it when John Stewart pointed out this dude as the kind of brain we want as  president.  Aren't we all tired of this dude?

By the way, how has John McCain shown he feels our pain?  By eating birthday cake with Bush while people were dying in New Orleans?  By not even knowing what kind of car he has or how many houses he owns?  By proposing a tax plan that cuts taxes for the rich dramatically more than for the middle class?

I'm sure if Obama bought a fake ranch or pretended he was a cowboy or started inviting his media pals over for BBQ or started getting Sunni and Shia mixed up, Ruth Marcus would feel he was becoming better candidate.  In the meantime, how can this exotic elitest arugala eater that can't bowl ever hope to connect with the dummies Marcus thinks we all are?