It’s scandal time in Washington again. There are a plethora of scandals, a veritable tsunami of scandals, so many scandals that it will be the end of the Obama administration at long last.
Except that the dial on his personal approval ratings-ometer hasn’t moved a single percentage point. It keeps pointing to the same 53% as always, like it was stuck there or something. That’s because the only people get outraged over these scandals are the same people who are enraged that Obama uses a teleprompter and who thought he was born in Kenya or someplace.
And also because all of the scandals together don’t amount to diddly-squat.
We can scratch umbrellagate off the list of things that matter. There was this photo of a Marine holding an umbrella for President Obama and the right-wing, write-stupid-comments-on-the-internet-and-send-them-to-your-equally-clueless-friends brigade flipped out. A quick search, of course, revealed that every president since people have started taking photos of presidents has had his photo taken with a Marine holding an umbrella over his head, it’s just part of normal protocol and a presidential tradition that probably dates back to the president following William Henry Harrison, the only U.S. president to receive a Darwin Award.
Then there’s Ben Ghazi. Basically, the U.S. embassy in Libya was attacked and 4 Americans, including the ambassador, were killed. The Republicans are mad about Obama not saying “terrorism” more often in regard to this, even though he actually did. Anyway, it happened, like, months ago.
Then there is the IRS scandal, in which the IRS investigated a lot of Tea Party Groups. It makes sense to me. A political group entirely made up of people who are passionate about not paying any taxes might tend to set off an alarm to the trained ear. Anyway, Obama said he didn’t know anything about it
Then there’s the AP scandal, in with the Justice Department subpoenaed AP’s phone records. Legally, you know, and I’m sure they had their reasons. A big company like AP can take it.
