Up Close at an Obama Press Conference

Coming on the heels of perhaps the most insipid non-controversy ever, Doug Ross has unearthed the secret to how Obama gets himself through a press conference.

The idiots on the left can't offer a valid reason for Obama's pathetic crutch, so in the desperation they run with something as silly as this. Hey, when you can't refute what she has to say, get down in the gutter.

On another level, the prompter jokes took off because they reinforce the substantive argument that Obama is in over his head, because they indicate that he can't perform the the presidency's basic public-speaking duties without a major safety net. I'm not sure what substantive argument Palin's hand-notes are supposed to underline, and I suspect it's not an argument so much as an attitude. The attitude would be that writing on your hand is dumb and low-class. On the left, where this opinion of Palin already prevails, anything which reinforces it will be picked up and cheerfully passed around. And, to the extent that anyone not on the left notices this giddy snobbery, it will play to Palin's strengths.

For example, one might say: "Unlike the guy who needs a three thousand dollar teleprompter to get out of bed in the morning, Palin speaks from concise notes like everybody else. And, like other busy moms, she sometimes writes notes on her hand." The comeback is so obvious that, again, I really can't figure out why Palin's detractors are bringing this up at all.

A roundup of the idiocy is here.