I just want to echo The Field Negro’s take on the release of the photo depicting President Obama skeet shooting at Camp David:
Seriously, if those photos are in fact real, I personally have to wonder why they (the White House) even bothered releasing them. I don’t like the imagery, O. Pandering to the gun nut crowd is not cool. A picture of you at Hadiya Pendelton’s funeral would have been more like what I wanted to see. That, and I (sic) stirring eulogy along with a call for all of us in the black community to start taking responsibility for our children. You should be working overtime from the bully pulpit on that issue, but instead you are trying to prove to wingnuts that you actually shoot skeets every now and then. *scratching my very bald head*
Skeet shooting and bowling? Man the things you do to make some folks love you.
Yeah, pretty much.
Booman, your link to The Field Negro takes me to this post.
See if it is fixed now, please.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I think once he made the “we did some skeet shooting at Camp David” comment, this pretty much had to be done at some point. Not for any good reason, but just to shut up Politico.
I agree. I don’t see this as pandering but just something they did to stop the nonsense.
Here’s the thing. When you listen to his comments about hunting and family and tradition–these resonate with me as someone who has grown up in Maine.
He is speaking to a lot of people who are gun owners and hunters. They learned from their Dads and Uncles and Grandfathers. They are lifelong members of the NRA but they don’t agree at all with the more extreme views of the NRA leadership.
The President is speaking to them and those of us on the left who want some sensible rules should pay attention and learn something from the President. If we allow fricking GOP outfits like Politico to triangulate on this issue than we really are idiots.
“Pandering to gun owners” is beyond idiotic. There are gun owners and there are gun owners. The President is talking to the guys who hunt–those are different guys and guns from the special forces wannabes who buy AR-15s.
Not “stop the nonsense.” “Exploit the nonsense.”
Every time the White House can point to their opposition making fools of themselves, they advance their own political standing.
I think that the White House is loving the Wayne LaPierre freak show.
Dukakis,in a tank
I’m for gun control but I actually thought he looked pretty good shooting. Dukakis looked like Snoopy in a helmet.
I’d say Rocky Squirrel. That helmet over the unibrow was priceless.
Well, he certainly looks much more at home with a gun than poor Tundra Tammy. In that failed Alaska hillbilly show of hers, she looked like a fish on a bicycle holding that rifle. Obviously uncomfortable and artificial; not second nature, like it was supposed to be.
As to the PR aspect, I have no idea why he would have to prove bonafides NOW….. It’s not as if the fanatics on the right are going to let up on the ranting, or an election is coming up.
Have to admit it crossed my mind. To a much lesser degree but same thing.
That was my reaction, too. He looks awkward.
Not as bad as the bowling, but that is not a comfortable man.
The President owes these far right nut jobs absolutely nothing. He kicked their fucking ass, and he should just tell them to shove it.
In a Presidential way, of course.
He was not talking to the far right nut jobs. He was talking to the guys I know who are NRA members because their Dads made them lifelong members when they were little kids.
They will say to you “I’m a hunter. I own guns but I think there is room for gun ownership to be a lot more responsible.” They will tell you that noone needs more than 7 rounds in a clip. They support registration and don’t think anyone needs to own an AR-15.
We better get to know these folks and speak their language if we are going to get something done on gun control, background checks, high capacity magazines.
Our Governor Cuomo did a similar thing at the time the new legislation was put in place. He stated that he was the owner of a Remington shotgun but felt that the new safeguards were needed. It did him no good and his popularity slid.
I’m sorry, did you just say “at the time the new legislation was put in place?”
Screw popularity ratings. I want “new legislation…put in place.”
Agreed. I’m just saying that the release of the photo wasn’t going to change much.
The picture is from last August 4th. There’s no reason at all not to release it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Yup–the picture proves he wasn’t pandering when he made the skeet shooting comments in the interview.
Sheesh, sometimes progressives are so dense.
I keep reading that there is nothing scarier to these people than a Black man with a gun. Besides being very hot, it was completely in keeping with other sports-related photos taken of him. He looked way better doing it than any of them ever could. So in addition to scaring the piss out of them, he looked GUUD doing it. That’s my President.
He’s just trollin’
Holy shit. Can this guy fucking do anything without having everyone reading some kind of profound motivation behind it. The dude mentioned he enjoyed skeet shooting, and then, drum roll… released a couple of photos. Oh the humanity. He’s pandering to gun nuts. All is lost. Imagine a sitting President releasing photos of an activity he participates in. That’s just fucking crazy. Good thing there are no photos of him playing basketball or anything. I guess any photo of the President involved in an activity that he obviously enjoys should be hidden from public view if the activity in question might appeal to a right wing crowd. The poutrage never stops.
Neither Booman or the Field Negro are engaging in poutrage. They’re making an observation and registering a desire for alternative behavior. Poutrage is “If O. keeps on doing (thing I don’t like), I’ll support alternative candidate z in the next election.”
Without getting into the poutrage or not poutrage debate, my problem with this discussion is it assumes the President is an idiot who thinks that pandering is somehow going to win gun nuts to his side despite all evidence to th contrary. I think a much more plausible explanation is that the Obama administration is just trolling by releasing the photos. As to whether he’s pandering with the original claim that he shoots skeet? Maybe he is, but it’s probably not aimed at the NRA. There are plenty of ordinary Americans who shoot skeet and support the President’s proposals. Why not make them feel like the President is one of them?
I think the President’s comments where he mentioned skeet shooting show that he understands the hunting tradition–it is a tradition that is often passed down from father to child–not unlike a love for baseball or hockey or football.
Of course, after the interview the President was accused of pandering. The cynics figured he was lying about skeet shooting so the picture was released to stop the crazy.
The important thing is that there is a huge opportunity to separate the gun nuts from the traditional hunters and sportsmen. They are not the same at all! We could choose to be smart here and follow the President’s lead. If progressives see all guns and all gun owners as the same and dismiss them–we will screw this up.
The President is separating these groups. His interview comments showed that he ‘gets it’. We need to be smarter on this.
There are plenty of ordinary Americans who shoot skeet and support the President’s proposals.
This.
The whining about “pandering to wingnuts” assumes that people who shoot skeet and people who buy AR-15s to use as a “Second Amendment remedy” are the same people, and that is a fatal error in any effort to pass sensible gun control. Do you see a high-capacity magazine on that gun?
A photograph is not pandering. Using such a charged description is pretty close to poutrage. The white house releases photos all day every day. In general they have a public relations purpose.
How is this pandering? Pandering Would be if Obama, after the Newtown horror, took up Skeet Shooting, despite having no interest in it just to get some photos to release to look macho to the gun nuts.
This isn’t what happened. Obama enjoys skeet shooting. He’s been involved in the activity for a while and enjoys it. Photos were taken (as they are of everything he does). He then mentioned in passing how this is an activity he likes.
Someone then says he’s not telling the truth and so to to demonstrate that his accusers are full of shit a photo of the Pres. involved in the stated activity is released. Yep, you’re all right. What pandering. I’m so furious. I’ll never get over this.
How dare this President mention an activity he enjoys, only to be called a liar about participating in the activity, at which this piece of shit “President” actually had the unmitigated gall to release a picture of him involved in the activity to make his accusers look like the assholes they are. I’ll never get over this.
I agree with this and with other comments along the same lines. This is only a big deal if anybody makes it out to be. This whole story occupied about five minutes of my thinking before I moved on to something else. Nobody’s even going to care about this three days from now unless we keep shouting about it. Ground level supporters like us don’t spend every second of every day using our personal bully pulpit to achieve our ends. Sometimes we just want to have a little harmless fun, too. I don’t see why we should begrudge the President the same.
One good way to test this. Is he good at it? People don’t stick with things they’re terrible at “for enjoyment.”
He’s not pandering to gun nuts. He’s messing with their minds. AHave you never heard of “skeet birtherism”? It’s the latest craze.
Hint — skeet birtherism does not exactly help the GOP image.
http://www.politicususa.com/conservatives-jumped-skeet-gate-shark.html
I thought that photo was disturbing. Very nicely captured shot, wrong person in it.
I am not a gun person but that photo didn’t disturb me at all. I’m curious – what did you find disturbing about that photo?
I looked at the photo and the word “sporting” went through my mind. And then I noticed his arms and had this thought – is there anything the president doesn’t look good doing?
It kind of reminded me of the photo from 2008 or 2009 where Obama was getting out of some limo with his sunglasses on, and he looked pretty damn good.
Booman rightly called the optics on this. If releasing the photo after the comment was unavoidable, maybe it could have been done a little tongue in cheek, at something like the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. But it’s done.
It was released by two Obama advisors on Twitter with comments mocking the “skeeters” and implicitly comparing them to birthers. I don’t know how much more tongue in cheek it could have been.
But too, how idiotic is this advice?
Can you just imagine the response to any public figure saying such a thing?
to the gays.
????
If there was a photo of him smoking a cigarette he might have carried North Carolina!
I like Jon Stewart‘s take on it.
Not exactly an in-your-face Black Panther shot, but with some target practice scores or outshooting Marsha Blackburn, Obama could suddenly get the NRA to be for gun control.
Winning the legislative fight over gun control requires more than making liberal bloggers who are already on board feel awesome.
I’m kind of hoping that the successful mocking of the “skeeters” will help the birthers look even more foolish than they already do.
Oh, look, an actual picture of a troll, trolling.
(Obama may spend the whole second term trolling… This guy’s soooooo good; I hope the appropriate staffers got the weekend off, or whatever.)
and you both missed the point.
My husband’s reaction to the photo was explaining why Obama looks like a “wuss” and a “phony”. He’s apparently using the wrong type of gun for skeet shooting or something only a “lightweight wimp” would use. My mind hazes over when he starts identifying weapons by their numbers so I can’t repeat the particulars and don’t want to know them. But, this is a PR FAIL if it was directed at people who know guns.
He’s using exactly the right kind of gun. Looks like a very expensive shotgun.
Yeah because I’m sure the Secret Service will want him using the wrong type of gun for skeet shooting.
The picture should help prove the point, if you can’t hit your target within two shots you don’t need a 30 round clip/magazine. But it does rank up there with John Kerry hunting.