Fail Quote of the Day: Blame Obama for random stuff!

You made Tommy Lee Jones cranky with your stupid [click for full size [400×328]]

I usually trust the Washington Post to be one of the few reliable sources of information these days, but it does have its biases and faults. For one thing, it allows columnist Dana Milbank to publish this sort of truly mindless pseudo-journalism that joins conservative airhead Peggy Noonan in proclaiming that the recent stretch of bad luck that has plagued President Obama is the heralding of the end for his administration:

It had been probably the worst week of his presidency so far, his administration at the mercy of events: the failure to cap the oil spill in the gulf, the economic crisis in Europe, the new tensions with Iran and North Korea, the developing scandal over the White House's job offer to Joe Sestak and, finally, Israel's deadly interception of an aid mission to Gaza.

Then came the rain.

You’d think that one really has to work hard to fit such a compendium of nonsense into a single paragraph (and all in one sentence, to boot), but it’s all-too-apparent how Milbank did it with telling ease. There’s nothing that makes any shred of sense. How, exactly, is it Obama’s fault that the Gulf oil spill (or rather, catastrophic gusher) has not been plugged yet? Is Obama and his administration a group of oil well technicians or oil rig operators? Does he have a magic button or lever somewhere on his desk that can conjure a magical solution out of thin air?

Also, how is it the US President’s fault for the European economic crisis, exactly? Or that Iran and North Korea are ruled by hateful, war-mongering douchebags? And what about that Sestak job-offer, which wasn’t actually a “job” to begin with (and yes, semantics does count in cases like this) and that is obviously nothing more than the media’s attempt at latching its teeth into a new pseudo-scandal? How does this weaken Obama’s presidency?

And perhaps most critically (and idiotically) of all, how the hell does one manage to blame Obama for the actions of Israel and its monstrous and unprovoked attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla? Seriously? Believe it or not, fringers, Obama doesn’t control the world. (Or even most of his own country, judging by the current state of affairs with the GOP and other factions.) You can’t blame the president of one country for the actions of another, just as I can’t blame my restaurant waiter for the fuck-ups of my Internet service provider (and curses to them). That’s not logical, see.

But as if that wasn’t all bad enough, Milbank then devotes the rest of his piece to … the rain that forced Obama to cancel his Memorial Day activities. Because why stop at blaming the President for oil companies’ incompetence and the screw-ups of other countries when you can also extend his guilt to the weather?

I really hope to see a flurry of new articles and posts destroying this ridiculous column, otherwise I’ll have lost yet more faith in the media’s ideal for proper journalism.

(via @Media Matters)