Imagine this dilemma: you are a completely incompetent boob whose solitary talent in all the world is reading a script out loud. If you try to actually speak on your own, using your own words and presenting your own ideas, people would be able to tell that you are really an imbecile.
How on earth could you possibly become the President of the United States?
Just like this:
Obama’s safety net: the TelePrompter
By CAROL E. LEE | 3/5/09AP Photo: Barack Obama is reflected in the teleprompter as he campaigns at the Seagate Convention. The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.
President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.
The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.
Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan. They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.
Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual — not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.
After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no such luck.
His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face. And it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of the Grand Foyer.
“It’s just something presidents haven’t done,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. “It’s jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.”
Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.
The president’s teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. “Kathy,” Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he’s been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
For purpose of clarity, I supplied the link to the video.
We have in this technological age created a device that can enable even a nearly complete idiot to get elected to the very highest office in the world.
And maybe that’s why the media adore him so much. They too are empty-headed fools whose sole talents are reading the news off a teleprompter. Thus they ooh and ah over his every speech as though he were actually the greatest rhetorician in the history of human civilization.
But if we can’t quickly figure out how to do a brain and a character transplant on this guy – and all the fools who voted for him – we will sadly be in for the Great Depression.
Start Thinking Right 
March 6, 2009 at 11:22 am
“President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.”
This line just gets my funny bone!
“AP Photo: Barack Obama is reflected in the teleprompter”
This way the narcissistic Imposter can always see himself, the object of his affection! This really is all about HIM after all.
Thanks for the comic relief with this post.
March 6, 2009 at 6:26 pm
It is simply amazing that the media so fawned and oohed and awed over this clown. He’s such a wonderful speaker! He’s so brilliant!
He’s so neither.
Sadly, we as a culture have degenerated to the point where if the media tells you X, you think X. If the media tells me that a guy who can’t even say hello without a teleprompter is a great leader, then I believe it. Because I lack the ability to think for myself.
It’s a truly sad indictment about media propaganda and individual and societal ignorance and apathy.
July 2, 2009 at 5:57 pm
All of you need to stop bashing Obama… He is simply doing what he promised! He promised to be the President of change, and when he’s done, that’s we’ll have! We’ll all have change in our pockets.
July 3, 2009 at 7:18 am
I appreciate your sarcasm.
But as John Paul Jones famously said: “I have not yet begun to bash!”