January 25, 2009
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The Obama Love-Fest Begins
Current mood:
listless
In this week’s Chronicle (13-20 January 2009), the Official Love Affair with The Barack has been Kicked Off.
Article the First — On the front page of the paper, the article by Managing Editor Robert Casaus is titled Historic Presidential Inauguration gathers millions and inspires all.
I read the article, really a puff piece supporting Our President™, quoting parts of The Barack’s inauguration speech with snippets of commentary by Casaus.
The article fails with me at the beginning with the verbiage of the very title — “inspires all.” How Casaus does know that Obama “inspired all” with his speech? Is he a telepath? Has he polled each and every person who heard the speech or read its text? I’m guessing that the answer there is “NO.”
Let’s take a look at the election results. The percentage of eligible voters that turned out in 2008 was 61-63 percent. Let’s split the difference here and make it 62%. Of those people, 52.92 percent voted for Obama. Let’s do some fifth-grade math here — 0.62 x 0.5292 = 0.328104. Therefore, Obama was elected with about 33% of the elgible electorate casting ballots in his favor.
So the “inspires all” title was wishful thinking on Casaus’ part, as significant portions of the American electorate couldn’t be bothered to support The Barack. In fact, 38 percent weren’t inspired to show up at all. (Disclaimer — I put on the HAZMAT suit and voted for Bob Barr.)
Article the Second — Editor-in-Chief Scott Tillman follows Casaus’ thinly-disguised promotional piece up with the “Consider This…” column titled “President-Elect Barack Obama ushers in a new era.” (page 3) Tillman uses more column space complaining about Bush than praising Obama.
Much more useful was the article at the bottom of page 1, Q&A with the CNM Governing Board candidates by Kirsten Crocker, as these politicians can have a direct influence on student affairs.
