Stupid is as Stupid Does!

I really shouldn’t take more than two days off from this labor of love because, when I do, there’s so much stuff that I want to talk about that, if I did it in chronological order, I’d be posting stale comment. Just like the drive-by media. So I decided to leapfrog a couple of days because my thoughts now are too precious to go into my mental refrigerator and simply won’t keep. And, of course, I can always go back to the stale stuff later if it still has legs.

I’m not sure how much traction this incident has gained in American newspapers or cable news but I do know that it caused a furor in the UK and Ireland. Plainly, as far as those foreign news outlets are concerned their “honeymoon” with Obama is over both as a reaction to it and the recent snub to Gordon Brown.

Here’s the story of “Telepromptergate”.

Tuesday was St Patrick’s Day and Obama decided to host an evening soiree at which the Guest of Honor was the “Taoiseach”, the Prime Minister of Ireland, Brian Cowen. To Obama though, just like no crisis should go to waste, no event is complete without a little politicking and in Obama’s case there can be no politicking without his security blanket, the ubiquitous teleprompter.

Well, Obama opened up the proceedings by delivering his speech as dictated by the omnipresent device and then it was the turn of the Taoiseach. Now, it was St Paddy’s Day, and it is not unknown for adult beverages to be an integral part of that joyous ritual and it could be that the teleprompter operator had got into the spirit both actually as well as figuratively. Anyway, when the honored guest began to speak, the operator was asleep at the switch and so Mr. Cowen began to deliver Obama’s immortal prose over again. It took a while for the speaker to realize this oversight but eventually he turned to Obama and said, “This is your speech”.

Then the Leader of the Western World, ever eager to help, ran back to the podium to make amends but by this time the teleprompter operator had regained his composure and had switched the text to that intended for Mr. Cowen. Old habits die hard though and so Obama just couldn’t help himself and began to read. He did eventually realize his error but not until after he had found that he was thanking himself for throwing his own party.

Can you imagine with what glee Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann would have reported the gaffe if “Bush the Stupid” had been the gaffer?

Where are you Forrest Gump?