Just A Joke

[filkertom]

About shooting a presidential candidate. In case any of you still thought Huckabee was, y'know, a nice folksy guy or something. At least his NRA audience didn't laugh. Jayzus, please let Huckabee be on the ticket with McSame.

ETA: Hm. Huckabee gets back a few points for having the good sense to apologize. More, to do so by actually apologizing for the remarks being offensive, rather than the all-too-common ploy of apologizing if some people found them offensive. But, as someone in the comments on that thread points out early on, the idea of saying "I was wrong to say it in the first place" seems to have escaped him.

Comments

[aulayan.livejournal.com]

I...

Ugh. Huckabee always gave this "likable" feel. Okay sure,wanting to amend the constitution the way he wanted pissed me off, some of his views pissed me off, but well those are mostly simple differences.

But this? Joshua Ben-Joseph, how can he even presume to think it was a proper joke?

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"how can he even presume to think it was a proper joke?"

If one of the common citizens told such a "joke" in public, they'd soon be repeating it to a particularly tough audience of guys with sunglasses and earpieces.

"At least his NRA audience didn't laugh"

I'm sure they thought it was absolutely hilarious that they're tarred by association with this jerk.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

No, only if they told the joke about a Republican. It's okay to talk about killing Democrats.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

After nearly 20 years of audiences laughing at "kill the liberals" jokes by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, I'm sure he thought this was little different.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

"I'm not sure Senator Obama or Senator Clinton really get it," Huckabee said.

No, Mike. You're the one who doesn't really get it.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

McSame will win, and die, and we'll be stuck with ol' Nehemiah Scudder.

I never thought Bush could win a second term...

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

From the article:

The NRA are not the enemy. If you treat them as such, you are playing into the hands of those who have kept the country divided for cynical political purposes.

Wow. While Kos and I are of rather different political views on many subjects, I can respect him for that statement.

I'm not surprised a bit that the joke fell flat. That sort of thing is not countenanced among the firearms aficionados I associate with.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

"Hey, Huckabee, they oughta call you Egalitarian Society"

"Egalitarian Society? Why you call me Egalitarian Society?"

"'Cause you ain't got NO CLASS."

Womm-Womm-Womm-WOMMMMMM

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

ba-dm-tsh! :)

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Huckabee has this weird history of threatening people, it's like he's the Uwe Boll of politics or something.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Now I'm picturing presidential candidates challenging pundits to boxing matches.

"Fisticuffs at dawn, sirrah!"

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Now I'm picturing presidential candidates challenging pundits to boxing matches

Making that a bit more specific...I am now visualizing Senator Clinton dropping Ann Coulter with a right cross.

I'm not particularly a Clinton fan, nor a boxing fan, and it's not even like I think that getting decked would do Ms. Coulter any real good...

...but it's hard to suppress a bit of guilty pleasure at the thought.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

This mental image makes me smile.

You win a cookie! :-)

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

As the challenged party, I suggest brickbats at three quarters of a mile.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Um, do you have corroboration, or sources, for any of this? (Commentator comments, report on Secret Service policy change, etc.?)

Obama's a target in the same sense that any major political figure is. He's arguably more of one because he's black and in the United States and the current favorite (statistically speaking) for President...but the fact of him being a target is not something he can do much about, and I doubt very, very much that he's actually _trying_ to get assassinated.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The Secret Service thing was widely reported (well, at least on the blogosphere, but it did hit mainstream -- for instance, here (http://www.star-telegram.com/667/story/486413.html), here (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/21/report_security_relaxed_at_obama_speech/8649/), and here (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Sports/2008/02/22/secret_service_says_obama_rally_was_secure/8554/)). As to the rest, I trend in your direction. I don't think he wants to be a martyr, and I don't think he's any more a target of assassination than any other candidate. But I've been known to be wrong before. Hope I'm not on this one.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links.

I checked around a bit and haven't seen any reports that the Secret Service has done this more than once, though (in February), so I don't know what, if anything, we can infer from that event. *shrug*

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The second most important thing to infer is that, for whatever reason they did it, they've stopped. The first can't necessarily be inferred, and that's why it happened at all.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[gridlockjoe.livejournal.com]

Ah, Mike Huckabee... who thinks Canada has a national igloo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCyy7q_ylc)...