I know, I know; I shouldn't be surprised by drivel coming from the AP. But this one really takes the cake. It is currently the top story on my Yahoo page.
Jennifer Loven and Julie Pace gleefully declare:
Analysis: Chicago's loss is a blow to Obama, too
President Barack Obama's high-profile failure to win the Olympics for Chicago could feed negative narratives already nipping at his heels — that he's a better talker than closer, more celebrity than statesman.
Ah, do you mean negative narratives like the ones that the AP is only too happy to fuel?
And this could hamper his efforts on the weightier issues.
I see. Actually, I don't. I'd love to know just how Chicago not getting the Olympics will cause Obama to lose on other policy issues. I'll have to look elsewhere, though, since Ms. Loven and Ms. Pace never bother to spell that out. Take their word, though - if health care or Afghanistan or regulation of the financial industry goes down the tubes, it will be due to this Chicago debacle.
Despite Obama's fabled charm and powers of persuasion, his in-person plea for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Games fell flat. It was a hugely embarrassing defeat.
A hugely embarrassing defeat? Honestly? I wonder what phrases these ladies used in their articles about Bush's multitudinous screwups. How about that privatize Social Security thing - one of Bush's major policy babies. Was that hugely embarrassing? Did it, in the APs eyes, destroy Bush's credibility?
His adopted hometown — considered a front-runner heading into Friday's voting
I didn't keep up with every detail of the story, but who said Chicago was a front-runner? I hadn't heard such speculation. Could the writers be attempting to make this look even worse for Obama? Not only did he not bring home the prize, they imply, his very presence even worsened Chicago's chances.
However, almost every aspect of his involvement this week in the Olympics quest recalls a strain of criticism that has been gaining ground on him:
This is such a clever rhetorical device! It allows Loven and Pace to list their favorite beefs, just to remind us why Obama is a failure:
• He's trying to do too much at once.
• He doesn't have what it takes to close a deal.
• He is a celebrity, for sure, but is that always a good thing?
• He's too casual with the use of his own time.
• He's junior varsity-league, still learning on the job.
(I'm having fun reading this list and imagining these accusations tossed at Bush. "He's too casual with the use of his own time", for example. It's funny, see?)
The votes of IOC members are notoriously hard to count ahead of time. But so are those in the U.S. Capitol. Will Obama do as poorly predicting how health care votes are leaning in Congress, and make similarly ill-fated strategic decisions as that long and complicated debate unfolds through the fall?
Hmmm, I don't know. Putting in a nice word for your country in front of the IOC vs. passing health-care legislation that affects millions of your citizens: seems a case of apples and oranges to me.
But Ms. Loven and Ms. Pace, congratulations on your heavy-handed framing and barrage of words such as "defeat", "poorly", "ill-fated", "painful", "misstep", "hugely embarrassing", "failure", "negative", and "quixotic" (there's a good one). I'd really love to see whether the media in, say, Japan or Spain are castigating their representatives for being such total losers for their own "defeat" in not being selected to host the Olympics.
Too bad there isn't a parental control filter for the AP. I'd love to get their claptrap off my screen for good.