Gratuitousness revisited

Rick Moran at American Thinker notices a poll from the New York Times and says:

Is it possible that Obama's recent spate of flip flops has so damaged his reputation as a man of principle that the voters now see him as something less than a savior of America?

If this New York Times poll is to be believed, that is exactly the case. By a 51-43 margin, voters now believe Obama says what people want to hear rather than what he thinks.

Now stay with us, this is going to be a little circuitous, more than a little non sequitus [sic], and hopefully on the cutting edge of being very gratuitous.

Now, it is neither surprising, nor shocking, nor appalling, nor extraordinary that a politician puts his finger to the wind before opening his mouth. And it is not new to those paying attention that Obama is just such a politician, his lying about being above such cynical political acts notwithstanding.

And while we are grateful that an increased number of voters recognize this, let’s address this from the opposite angle. Why? For the gratuitousness!

If Obama says what he thinks people want to hear, do you think he wants people to say to him what they think he wants to hear?

Why ask that question, you ask?

Because there was one brave candidate in the primaries who boldly stood on the principle that he would not stand for people simply telling him what they thought he wanted to hear!

His name?

John Edwards

And, well, based on that stand we mocked him in such a way so as to catch the eye of James Taranto and his Best of the Web Today. (scroll to the last item)

What can we say? He brings out the gratuitousness in us. (Edwards, that is, not Taranto)

Sex sells

From NRO’s Media Blog, we find poor John Edwards still can't catch a break:

Last year's worst selling issue of Esquire: John Edwards on the cover.

The best selling: Angelina Jolie

I suppose this isn’t entirely surprising. Jolie was named FHM Magazine’s Sexiest Woman Alive in 2005 -- and the old adage is “sex sells”.

Further, this helps shed light on the attempt by Esquire editors to convince readers that Edwards was, in fact, not only a woman, but the Sexiest Woman Alive.

The editors have obviously been around the block a time or two.

Unfortunately it didn’t work, since the Edwards cover still underperformed all other issues for the year.

But give them an 'A' for effort.

Dock them for plausibility, though. We’d say a 'B-'

JUST ASKING: Why is the pic of the cover on the Huffington Post cropped so that it omits the “Sexiest Woman Alive” text?

Yes this is gratuitous (but that's never stopped me before!)

If I have one regret about waiting as long as I did before starting this blog, it is that by self-stifling my dissent and not speaking truth to power, I was giving up essential liberty for temporary security and deserved neither.

Oh, wait. That's not it.

My regret is that I didn't start this blog before John Edwards left the race. It coulda been fun!

I had some fun with Edwards at American Thinker.

But since I did the Michelle Obama book, I figured I would put up the one I did for Edwards when we found out about his work at Fortress, and his claim that he did it to learn about the relationship between making a fistful of dollars and poverty (I paraphrase, not an exact quote):

It Takes a Pillage
And Other Lessons Hedge Funds Teach Us

Yeah, it's old, it's gratuitous, but I'm not too concerned -- at the rate they're churning out pixels these days, I don't think we're going to run out any time soon