How can they call Obama both "too cerebral" and "too inspirational" ?

[Armstead]

Watching the pundits, it seems the new meme about Obama is that he is too cerebral, too disconnected from people, too dispassionate.

Wasn't the old meme that he was too emotional, too inspirational, too much show and charisma?

Are not these assessments mutually exclusive?

[Kutjara]

1. The shills are grasping at straws.

As I've said before, if Obama was shown giving a lollipop to a little girl, the pundits would accuse him of wanting to give America's children diabetes.

[LaurenG]

2. There are NO words for Obama he's a rare person and they don't know

what to say about him. I'm sure it blows their minds to see someone walk the talk...


typo

[lurky]

3. Too much like Spock? too much like Kirk?

All I know is that McCain is Bones.

[kestrel91316]

5. Hey, I knew Bones, and it's an insult to the good Mr. Kelly to compare

him to McSame.

[melody]

11. Amen, same here n/t

[kestrel91316]

12. Ol' Dee was a true southern gentleman. RIP.

[melody]

13. Probably the most down-to-earth member of the cast

Just a very sweet man.

[lurky]

24. My apologies.

I didn't mean to slander a fine actor.

[SOS]

4. So Americans prefer a stupid and discouraging leader?

Like McCain? That seems to be the Wall Street-owned media spin.

[Phredicles]

8. Hey, it's called "continuity",

plus the establishment media certainly did their level best to promote our current stupid and discouraging leaders.

[No Elephants]

6. When the worst things you say about someone are that's he's too smart and too inspiring, you are

REALLY desperate to find something wrong with him and failing miserably.

[Phredicles]

7. Tom Toles had a cartoon of Obama derided as "too good",

which sounds about right. Have I mentioned lately that Tom Toles and Obama both rock?

[Cosmocat]

9. to answer the OP - yes ...

they are mutually exclusive.

You have to have a complete disconnect from reality to say that someone who packs tens of thousands of people in to see him speak, who has raised more money than any candidate in history - by FAR the most money from small donations from AVERAGE folks, who has 1000 different T-shirts, bumper stickers and computer screen images, to say that person can not connect with people on an emotional level.

I am a moderately cynical person, who is not prone to hero worship, and I feel very real and genuine PRIDE when I see or hear BO speak - only other time I feel that sense of pride, my 5 year old daughter.

[melody]

10. Someone you can't understand can't inspire you

Which pundits are saying this stuff? I've fortunately only seen good debate commentary.

[Starlight]

15. OP must be watching Faux news. I'm not hearing those comments either.

[Cresent City Kid]

14. They're all over the place

First he's too "professorial", then he has to show he's knowledgeable about foriegn policy in the debate. Having done that, now he "doesn't connect emotionally".

Please provide Barak Obama a complete list of all the qualities he's supposed to display simultaneously. If he had such a list, I'll bet he could pull it off.

[BlooInBloo]

16. Just call him "too good", and be done with it.

[Starlight]

17. LOL

[Marsala]

26. Or maybe "Too hard to criticize"

The pundits could whine that Obama is so perfect, there's nothing they can really complain about. No weaknesses they can focus on, so they have to invent them.

[Telly Savalas]

18. JS Bach was cerebral and inspirational.

[ClarkUSA]

19. Because saying "uppity" would get them fired.

Media whores.

[kenny blankenship]

20. What they mean is that he doesn't pretend to be a hayseed chewin' gentleman farmer

who really wants to all spend time down on his ranch with his cows, clearing brush, or chopping wood and mending fences, or fishing with a rocky shoreline for a backdrop far, far away from the corruption of the big city. America is so used to leaders who inhabit an entirely fictional nostalgic persona of folksiness and small town values, that head-in-ass pundits don't know what to make of a politician, black or white, who thinks he can just TALK directly to Americans about their aspirations and values. They know what he's supposed to do: he's SUPPOSED to con voters into believing he's the embodiment of ideals because he came from some PLACE where the complexities and corruptions of their modern lives have never yet invaded and taken root. If they believe the image he doesn't have to talk directly to them. He asks them to cast their minds back to that time when everything in America was clean and pure. Morning in America. Pundits know that's how politics works.

Hence, all kinds of people you'd never guess to be agrarian types show up in political life wearin' overalls : Connecticut native George W. Bush who is a product of the most exclusive East coast boarding schools and universities pretends to be a fucking rancher/cowboy who just stumbled into the job of America's Sheriff!

Ronald Reagan spent his adult working life in fleshpots of HOLLYWOOD but presented himself as a man who rose at dawn on his ranch to chop wood and collect the new laid eggs. One wonders what the wood was used for later - heating the orgy hottub?

Americans are so addicted to the political deployment nostalgic images of a rural past (a past that almost none of us have 1st hand memories of) something just doesn't set right with the political experts when a figure comes along and doesn't bend one degree in the direction of the officially mandated, nostalgic rural horseshit. His success is so anomalous he makes their wisdom seem outdated and useless; it becomes an irritant. He can't pass without criticism. Sure he's successful, they allow, but he's doing it wrong. It's this , it's that, they don't know but it's too something to be quite right.

[goodgd_yall]

21. How can you be "too inspirational"? n/t

[sandnsea]

22. That's what they do

They just pull out the playbook, election after election. John Kerry had charisma in 2000, wasn't chosen VP because he had a history of dating a lot of women after his divorce. It's true. The media turned him into a corpse.

That's what they do.

[OmahaBlueDog]

23. Here's what's stupid from my perspective

If you are choosing any professional service -- lawyer, doctor, dentist, engineer -- you want the person with the most education and ability. You want someone with intellectual accumen who knows what the heck he/she is talking about.

But for the POTUS, for the last 8 years, we've reduced this to the student council election. OMG -- not the smart kid! We don't want the smart kid! We want the jock and the prom queen.

Then we wonder why we're 9 trillion in debt and we can't get anything accomplished in this country.

[kevinds13]

25. Its the media taking the RW approach...

When one argument doesn't stick, try a completely different one. The kitchen sink is literally the last thing they've got. No one in the media or on the right can understand that Obama's an honest, straightforward guy with intelligence AND passion for people like us.

[CarbonDate]

27. It's called "doublethink".

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

[bobd0]

28. What do you expect? They criticized Obama for being a "celebrity"

then immediately went into full celebrity mode with that idiot Palin and suddenly it was OK to be a celebrity again. They're going to criticize anything Obama does because they don't have anything to offer. They have to keep pointing the finger at him in hopes of keeping anyone from looking too closely at them.