Taylor Marsh is a jerk
Saturday, March 15th, 2008Don’t know why I put myself through this, but I just counted several instances where Taylor Marsh accuses Barack Obama of playing the “hoodwink” card in South Carolina and Mississippi–presumably some sort of political crime because he’s been caught speaking in coded language to his black supporters. Now, I saw Obama throw this line out, which has been a standard part of his stump speech for months, in Baltimore in front of an audience that was probably half-or-so white, but Baltimore’s a majority black city and Obama was trying to get out the vote for his largely black supporters in Downtown and West Baltimore, so I decided to see if there’s any veracity to T. Marsh’s claims (from what I gather, there generally isn’t, but let’s give her a fair shake).
Turns out, Obama’s used that exact language in practically every state he’s campaigned in since South Carolina.
Alabama
However, he rebutted efforts to besmirch his character in Birmingham, a cradle of the civil rights movement, where he addressed a cheering, racially mixed crowd of 10,000.
“That’s just the same dirty tricks. That’s old-style politics, trying to bamboozle you, trying to hoodwink you, running the okie-doke on you.”
“This election … it’s not a black or white issue, it’s not a young or old issue it’s a past issue versus a future issue,” Obama said in an impassioned speech at the University of Alabama. “… This is our moment. This is our time.
California
On stage in front of a “change” banner at a fund-raiser at the Avalon club in Hollywood, Barack Obama reprised his his ‘bamboozled” line last night for an audience that included celebrities. (Quentin Tarantino!). “It’s the typical response against a movement for change,” he said. “[It] happens, by the way, every time. It’s fascinating, you know, Bill Clinton was confronted with the same stuff back in the 90s. And now, you know, things go full circle.”
Missouri
Browsing the language news online recently, I found a lively debate under way at the MSNBC politics blog. The item sparking the discussion was a note on Barack Obama’s colloquial language; he was already telling voters not to be bamboozled or hoodwinked by his opponents, not to fall for the okey-doke. And in St. Louis, the MSNBC reporter said (mistakenly, it now appears), he added hornswoggled to the list.
Different context; don’t know where
Obama wants multi-year prison sentences for bankers and others who “hoodwink” poor people into homes beyond their means, and as with some in Congress, he wants bankruptcy judges to be able to change the terms of mortgage contracts.
Osh Kosh, WI
“They will try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you, run the okey-doke on you,” Obama likes to warn of his foes.
Boston, MA
I am not going to cower and quake because the big, bad Republican machine is coming. Because they practiced that old politics. Yes, we have had it with ???. We know the games, the tricks, the bamboozle.
Not only that, but look at this:
Camp Clinton shot back Tuesday that Obama was trying to hoodwink people into thinking Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., doesn’t want to start pulling out. “Sen. Obama is mistaken,” said Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson, who fired off an e-mail listing Clinton’s repeated calls for a “phased redeployment.”
