Blogfather John Hawkins’ list of 10 Biggest Amateur Mistakes Made by the Obama Administration So Far, has been green-lit on FARK. And if you’re familiar with FARK, it will not be news to you that the regulars are pretty damned unhappy about it. The three biggest slices out of the opinion pie appear to be 1) It’s a bunch of nitpicky crap, 2) Republicans are retards and 3) George W. Bush is much, much worse.

Planet Obamafan is a fascinating place. I notice when the subject under discussion is Rush Limbaugh wanting Obama to fail, the conversation is all of a sudden, what’s right for the country, nevermind whether you belong to the same party as our new President — He’s Your President Too! And then when PresBO starts screwing up left and right, all of a sudden, in unison, we’re supposed to veer in lockstep off from this “what’s best for the country” stuff and think long & hard about that other guy.

Perhaps the ego of a liberal can be harnessed to solve our energy crisis. If you harbor some skepticism about that, what’s going on at the “Talk” Page behind the Wikipedia entry for Barack Obama, might have a purging effect on that. Consider…

Barack Obama is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community.

Then you scroll down a bit, and see…

Controversy

Where is the controversy page… My dad had to rub in my face today that, “Your precious wikipedia is getting a lot of negative publicity for reporting nothing negative about Obama in fairness.” —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.181.241 (talk) 16:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

No, wait, we’re just getting to the good stuff…

No Mention of Wright

This is shameful even for wikipedia standards, not even talking about the fact that he sat and listened 20 years to borderline racist statements and the only thing wikipedia users show fit to say is that he left the church, Reverend Wright is Obama’s personal friend, what would it take to put more about their relationship on his page? Oh wait I know, it would be perfect if it were a white Reverend and he was George W. Bush’s friend, this is cowardly bullshit and blatant favoritism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Husk3rfan9287 (talk • contribs) 03:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

While the policy in A5 (not mentioning “fairly minor issues [that had] no significant legal or mainstream political impact) would seem to keep any mention of Obama’s citizenship controversy out of his article, I don’t think the same can be said for his association with Reverend Wright and the church where he preached. Those had both significant and mainstream impact. Does someone disagree? Lawyer2b (talk) 09:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It’s probably worth somewhere between two words and a sentence, as a matter of proportionality. It currently has a sentence, but in a footnote. If moved back into the main section it should be posed in a way that focuses on the relationship to Obama, and his decision to leave the church in light of the controversy, as opposed to focusing on Wright himself or the relatively modest campaign issue. However, it may be difficult to achieve any kind of consensus for a little while here given the editing issues.Wikidemon (talk) 10:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggest waiting a couple days for the wnd and drudge trolling to die down and then posting a proposed edit here for consensus discussion. cheers, –guyzero | talk 10:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
With the amount of press that this had, including Obama having to address this publicly, there must be some mention in the text itself, perhaps a sentence or two, with a wikilink or a {{main}}/{{see also}} to the proper article. While it should not, and cannot be allowed to take an undue role here, its only mention coming in a footnote smacks of POV hagiography which expressly violated WP:NPOV. — Avi (talk) 12:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I would respectfully recommend three mentions of Wright. First, as Obama’s mentor. Obama himself said so, and Wright’s role in Obama’s person life, as marriage officiator, baptiser and spiritual advisor. Seocnd, “The Audacity of Hope” title comes from a speech from Wright. This should be mentioned. Third, the leaving of Wright’s church because of a swell of controversy. These three points should be understood by the reader. It tells the full arc of Obama and Wright’s relationship. By putting each point in the article in places where it relates, we can avoid POV as none of these ponts directly relate to the views and controversial aspects of Wright and therefore we can avoid making the page about Wright directly. Bytebear (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well if you feel those should be in the article, then you are going to need to find a couple sources to back each of those parts up. The ref’s cannot be World News Daily, Free Republic, Blogs, etc. The ref must pass WP:RS and WP:V and if you are not sure, post it up on the RS/N for a check. Also, the ref’s must exactly say each of those points, nothing can be implied. There cannot be any synthesis or original research. If you can find ref’s that passes all then, post them here and we can discuss the changes. Brothejr (talk) 16:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The tragedy here, is people who are biased toward the left side and don’t know it. As the maligned and slandered World Net Daily points out, members of the “Wikipedia community” have been repeatedly banned for up to three days at a time for their attempts to upload factual information not favorable to His Holiness.

The concern, ostensibly, is to keep what is intended to be a workable encyclopedic resource from becoming a mirror for tabloid trash. Quite the laudable goal. And so, standards are in effect for sourcing. Thou shalt not scribble in what thou hast read from contraband sources until thou art corroborate it from something respectable.

All fine and good. But the letter of the rule has been implemented above its spirit, if the facts being reported aren’t even in dispute. And much of what’s involved in the “eligibility” controversy is beyond dispute. Barack Obama has a Hawaii birth certificate; an electronic reproduction has been provided; the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed it is genuine; so far as I know (not that I care), an original has not been provided, and you can draw your own conclusions about whether that would be worth mentioning if Obama was a Republican. Or something a few steps less evolved than a radiant media demigod.

My point is, this particular Wikipedia policy invites human bias like a computer power supply invites dustbunnies, while going through the motions of clearing it out. Wikipedia won’t allow any “facts” to creep in if they’re reported from the wrong place. Which facts are those? Mentioning that Obama’s birth certificate is a reproduction and not an original, as reported by World Net Daily, is a completely different thing from mentioning, let’s say, that Obama was actually born in Kenya as reported by World Net Daily.

It’s like reading that someone died in the National Enquirer. All fine and good if you don’t respect the name of the Enquirer; but the dude’s dead, or else he isn’t. It’s not reasonable to take the position “as far as I’m concerned, he’s just as alive as you or me until I see his obituary somewhere else.”

This is not a trifling complaint on my part, I don’t think. Even with all the noise from last year, there are still some people who don’t know that much about Barack Obama; no, they aren’t from Mars, and they haven’t been living in caves, they simply have other things to think about on a daily basis. It seems if they hear the names “Barack Obama” and “Jeremiah Wright” in juxtaposition with each other in the same sentence, and wonder what’s going on with that, they ought to be able to bring it up on Wikipedia and make their own decisions based on the facts. The facts…once they have ’em. That is, as I understand it, in keeping with the online encyclopedia’s primary mission.

The Wiki editors should realize this, and act on it, on their own…or at least after some of the complaints, above. The very most benign explanation available to me, as far as why they don’t, would be: They’re worried about appearances. Suppose they publish the pertinent and verifiable facts about the birth certificate controversy. Someone reading, decides there’s something to this, and launches a new wave of legal challenge. History then records President Obama had to battle a second outcry, a second hubbub, about the birth-in-Hawaii thing thanks to a lawsuit started by Hoozeewhatzit Whatzisface, who had read about the issue in Wikipedia. Unacceptable. And so Wikipedia opts to present no information at all, as opposed to presenting information that could cause…problems.

That’s a case of confusing the mission of being a valuable and impartial online resource, with looking like one. Aw, but it’s a little worse than that — it must be a case of being proud to make that kind of Faustian exchange, because this is a featured article…remember?

But I don’t put too much stock in my “benign motive” theory. I think what we’re seeing on Wiki, is exactly what we encountered over on FARK. The human ego getting in the way of admitting that maybe, just maybe, a mistake might have been made — even though the majority made it, the majority was enthused about making it, and the majority was loud when it made it. Humility gets the message pondered, but pride leaps in to stop it from being soaked up.

Not too troubling to see it going on in an online frat house like FARK. Over there, it’s expected. It’s a little bit disconcerting to see it happening in the online library, across the campus, that is Wikipedia.

I have been thinking — along with, I suspect, everyone who lives in this society, has a working brain, and tends to think about things — about this word Dr. Dawkins invented, “meme” (n.). I pretty much have to. This is The Year of the Meme.

The word meme originated in Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene. To emphasize commonality with genes, Dawkins coined the term “meme” by shortening “mimeme”, which derives from the Greek word mimema (something imitated). Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

And the Meme of the Year, what could rightfully be called The Meme That Changed History, is, of course…

Barack Obama is so awesome, There Is Just Something About Him.

We decided an election that way. It’s turning out to be such a dreadful mistake that I’d like to take these bets I made on Obama being a one-termer, and double the stakes. Of course I’ll win; those of us who needed to learn the lesson about Deciding By Meme, will learn it, and then a dozen years afterward they’ll forget it again.

That “Obama is awesome” is a meme at all, is a direct testament to its inherent dishonesty. A meme works like a rapid chain-reaction. That’s why the word wasn’t invented in the olden days, when footsore weary travelers would gather in ale pubs and share bits of news with the townsfolk about what was going on. The phenomenon needed rapid-working mass-communication. It needed convenient, spontaneous, instantaneous information-sharing among people who didn’t know each other and were meeting under such casual circumstances that they knew nothing about each other and had no inclination to learn.

In the days in which horses were used as a primary means of transportation, and the telegraph was used as a primary means of long-distance communication, candidates showed off how incredibly awesome they were by something called the “whistle stop.” If word got around about that at all, it got around not so much by chain reaction, but by…tendril. There was an impenetrable, insurmountable and opaque barrier between those who’d personally seen the guy speak, and those who were speaking as a second-person.

At least that’s what I’d like to think, anyhow. My grandparents and great-grandparents would have dropped that into the dinner-table conversation about how awesome the candidate was — “I was in Kansas City and he spoke from his boxcar,” or, “I heard from my cousin in Poughkeepsie, who saw him, but I wasn’t there personally.” They’d take the initiative to establish this critical distinction. Maybe they did that. I know that isn’t how it’s done now.

No, now we have radios, television, bulletin boards, blogs, Myspace/Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, et al. We’ve lost that crucial dividing line between people we’ve met, and people met by other people we’ve met. We “know” everybody. And it cuts both ways; people who’ve never met Sarah Palin “know” she’s a dumbass and get testy when you point out maybe they don’t really know that. They get even testier when you point out, hey, maybe they don’t know for sure there’s something wonderful in the ether that surrounds Saint Barry.

An important part of the reason this wonderfulness of Obama was spread by chain-reaction, rather than by the more honest snaking-tendril, was because of need.

So desperate were the democrats for someone who could “communicate the message,” after John Kerry’s defeat four years ago, that as they got the word out about Obama’s wonderfulness, it really didn’t matter worth a tinker’s damn whether they’d observed this wonderfulness first-hand or not. This was not reflective of, or causative of, the age in which we live. It was metaphorical of it. Ideas that may or may not make sense, but sound neato, echo and reverberate; ideas that make sense but aren’t that much fun, die on the vine. Obama, the man with all the ideas, seeking ideas on economics from a company that doesn’t make any money in the United States but is mega-awesome just like Him. Gee, way out here on the planet of “Does It Make Sense?” I was under the impression Obama’s strong suit was that He had the ideas we needed. This is a major turning point, a major upset, a major cause for re-thinking, if His idea is to go out and look for ideas.

Perhaps this is why the buyers’ remorse has taken hold…and is growing.

I’ve reminded you before of NYTimes’ columnist David Brooks’ boneheaded Ivy League ejaculations about the Obama administration.

Now, the once-enamored Kool-Aid drinker admits his cult leader is not the man he knew:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

What an unbelievable waste of time and real estate is David Brooks. It’s profane.

Which is why Robert Stacy McCain’s expletive-filled smackdown is the only appropriate and satisfying response.

Ah, but Brooks speaks for many. He was fooled into thinking Obama was an acceptable moderate: “…his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.” Bull doots. The election was decided by meme, and every one of these fools was deciding by meme. Anyone who filtered out the happy-happy-joy-joy nonsense, and concentrated only on the ideas presented, saw immediately that Obama was a hardcore liberal. It was obvious.

Washington’s full of liberals. They’re all campaigning to be something bigger tomorrow than they are today. So don’t blame Obama, and don’t blame the meme. Blame people for listening to them. Blame people for deciding things by meme. Nobody needs to be educated that this is the wrong way to go…do they? What if a warehouse retail store has crappy service but wonderful P.R.? What if a brand of charcoal has slick advertising but doesn’t light? Do people keep buying it? No they don’t.

What if a real estate agent dresses all snappy, but says things that don’t make any sense?

Then one day it comes time to decide something not-so-personal…to elect the President who will impact my life too — and oh goodness, all the necessity for engaging these sound decision-making processes, just goes out the window. All of a sudden, a guy who talks like Walter Cronkite but doesn’t look like Cronkite, why, that’s all it takes.

Thanks a heap, folks. Thanks loads.

Time to face up and admit things: Obama is mega-mega-awesome. He can sell the refrigerator to the polar bear. That, I’m afraid, was not what we needed, because we’re the polar bears. In fact, it’s a much worse situation than that. Obama is the guy who can sell a high-powered hairdryer to the snowman, and the country is the snowman.

Nobody reads this blog…and perhaps that is because when we have recurring blog titles, we increment them using roman numerals. Now, I don’t know how this particular one is going to work out over the long term, but over the short term I think it’s going to “recur” leaps-and-bounds over all the other recurring headlines we have around here.

“Rance” means rants. About our current government. Our current government headed by Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. The rance, they are just popping up like daisies.

Most aren’t worth linking or quoting. They just say the same crapola over and over again.

Some are worthy of linkage and quotage because of their currency.

Some are worthy because of their quality.

This one…falls into the third of those three. And it isn’t even a homegrown product. It is imported from Canada, which is America’s Hat. Yup, it’s not all nanny-state nonsense, hockey and crappy beer. Someone up there gets it. In fact, it pains me to say this, but I wish…oh…thirty percent of the yankees had the common sense the Good Lord gave this eloquent canuck.

Prime material. Prime. I wish I could write like this. Every single word seems to have been plucked from the thesaurus after a long, perhaps-tortured, but still-rational and productive discourse, perhaps involving a vast audience of great minds debating all night, Athenian-style. This is less an anti-Obama “Rance!” entry than a study in just-plain-remarkable writing.

A young student friend e-mailed me on Tuesday night.

“Have locked myself in my room because the place is full of little idiots — who cannot spell Barack Obama’s name and could not name one of his foreign or domestic policies — running around screaming obscenities about George Bush, conservatives and how Sarah Palin is a bitch. I love democracy!”

Even so, the people spoke. A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshipers everywhere.

A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.

A victory for Hollywood, the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros and Sarandon.

Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meagre political fashion.

Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement. Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative.

Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition.

WEAK TOWARD ENEMIES

A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers’ unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity.

A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs.

Also a defeat for one of the weakest presidential candidates in living memory.

Why would anyone vote for a man who seemed incapable of outlining his policies and instead repeatedly emphasized a noble but, if we are candid, largely irrelevant war record?

He was joined by a woman who was defended so vehemently by her supporters when it was cuttingly evident that she is years away from being, and perhaps never will be, a serious candidate for senior national office.

Most of all it was a terrible defeat for democracy and the United States. A politician of nothing defeated a nothing politician and a credulous electorate screamed in adoration. I fear we will all suffer very much indeed.

Speaking of ancient-Greek discourses about the use of individual words…fifty-fifty odds on someone commenting on the “racist” characteristics of the word canuck. Don’t bother, folks. I looked it up. It’s only 2009, and we aren’t yet so politically correct that I can’t pay a stinking compliment to a canuck on the pages of a private freakin’ blog. Get a life.