SAY ANYTHING II - STARRING TEAM OBAMA 2012

No, there really isn't a sequel to the 1989 movie coming to a theater near you. But listening to and seeing the recent work products of Team Obama's presidential campaign, you'd think that the following dialogue from the Say Anything movie might have occurred during a recent staff meeting.

Diane Court: Nobody thinks it will work, do they?

Lloyd Dobler: No. You just described every great success story. 

But recent silly and factually inaccurate attacks on Mitt Romney by Team Obama look more like they came from the mind that brought us the movie, Plan 9 from Outer Space rather than from an accomplished political strategist. Plan 9 is arguably the worst movie ever made. So to carry the movie analogy a bit further, the 2012 Obama campaign is to the 2008 Obama campaign as Plan 9 from Outer Space is to Citizen Kane. 

The 2008 Obama presidential run was a well-run political campaign that took advantage of a sympathetic news media, John McCain's weak campaign, Bush fatigue, and carefully controlled information releases about the mysterious Candidate Obama. On the other hand, the Obama 2012 campaign is petty, immature, and reminiscent of an adolescent movie about a contentious high school student body presidential election. 

The first ridiculous attack on Mitt Romney came with the revelation that the cruel Romneys carried their dog Seamus on the roof of their car on a road trip to Canada. (See my post of April 18, 2012, It's a Man Bites Dog World and Bo is Nervous.) As it turned out, the President Obama's own autobiography revealed that the President as a kid had sampled canine cuisine--no he didn't eat Alpo®--he ate a real canine! The joke became, "Better on the roof of a car than on the roof of a mouth." By the way Team Obama front-man David Axelrod was the one that conceived the Plan 9-like "Dog Strategy" in which Romney is portrayed as cruel to dogs. David Axelrod, I'd like you to meet your intellectual doppelgänger, Ed Wood. 


Then came the 50-year old story of how Romney and several other high school "thugs" held down a fellow student that was suspected of being "gay" and cut his hair off.  The "victim's" family has disputed the characterization of the alleged victim, John Lauber.  The National Review cited an ABC News interview of Betsy Lauber one of John Lauber's three sisters. According to the ABC News interview, Ms Lauber stated:

“The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family,” she said.
… 

“If he were still alive today, he would be furious [about the story],” she [Christine Lauber] said with tears in her eyes.

But that didn't keep Team Obama from milking the story for all it's worth. Besides that, Democrats don't really care about facts, only the psychological impact of a story is important. Coincidentally, Obama announced his support of Gay marriage, although it was half-assed in that Obama left it to the states to legalize it. It was clear that it was a non-committal commitment designed to impact fund raising from the LGBT* community. It worked as the money flowed from the LGBT community after Obama's announcement. 


The latest Obama campaign ad being run in five battleground states portrays Romney as capitalist vampire, responsible for the closing of 100-year old steel mill. The capitalist vampire (or vulture) theme was espoused first by Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, two of Romney's Republican primary opponents. But according to the Christian Science Monitor:

... the [Obama] ad elides some facts: Romney left Bain [Capital] shortly after it acquired GST Steel, though he continued to receive profits from Bain payouts. He wasn’t around when GST went under. Also, it was an era when cheap foreign imports were hitting US steel firms hard, in general. It’s not clear whether GST would have survived in any case.

But that's the essence of the American economic system. There are risks and rewards.  There are winners and losers. And it was in Bain's best-interest to have had GST succeed and not fail. Besides Romney was long gone and was working to rescue the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. But that little fact doesn't seem to matter to Team Obama. Moreover, Democrats and Obama are rarely held accountable by the Lamestream News Media. 


Team Obama is counting heavily on the fictional view of businessmen like Romney as portrayed in movies like Pretty Woman. The movie is about a businessman in the legal business of hostile takeovers. He's in LA in connection with the takeover of a shipbuilding company and hires a prostitute to accompany him to social events connected with the takeover. Here's some illustrative dialogue from the movie between the hard-hearted businessman Edward (Richard Gere) and the heart of gold hooker Vivian (Julia Roberts):

[Fumbling with his tie, Edward tells Vivian about his business.]

Vivian: You don't actually have a billion dollars, huh?
Edward: No. I get some of it from banks, investors… it's not an easy thing to do.
Vivian: And you don't make anything…
Edward: No.
Vivian: … and you don't build anything.
Edward: No.
Vivian: So whadda ya do with the companies once you buy 'em?
Edward: I sell them.

[Viv reaches for his tie.]

Vivian: Here, let me do that. You sell them.
Edward: Well, I… don't sell the whole company, I break it up into pieces, and then I sell that off, it's worth more than the whole.
Vivian: So, it's sort of like, um… stealing cars and selling 'em for parts, right?
Edward: [sighs exasperatedly] Yeah, sort of. But legal.

Of course in the end, the hard-hearted businessman falls in love with the hooker and under the influence of her heart of gold decides to keep the target company intact building ships and preserving union jobs. A noble and "fair" ending. No doubt that if a sequel were ever made, "Edward" would be an Obama campaign contribution bundler who gets an Department of Energy grant to fund a wildly successful green energy company. "Vivian" would be the CEO running the company. If only Hollywood screenwriters could grant the wishes of Team Obama.


The bottom line, to use an overused cliché, is that silly tripe like dog on the car roof stories, bully boy stories, and the corporate vampire diaries are what we will be treated to until election day by Team Obama. It makes one dread an October Surprise from Team Obama, especially if it involves Mitt Romney being implicated in the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping.  


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*Nafta's Notes: According to Wikipedia, LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to the "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" community. It has been in use since the 1990s.