WaPo - "Disconnected Obama" Meme An Example of the Lying Corporate Media

[TomCADem]

President Obama has taken far less vacation time than either Dubya or Reagan. This fact should put an end to the idea that President Obama is playing hooky and ignoring the demands of office. Yet, here is the Washington Post pushing this false meme with no mention of the fact that both Dubya and Reagan took far more vacation time than President Obama. Indeed, if you were to use vacation time as the measuring stick of greatness, than Carter who took only 79 vacation days would be seen as superior to Reagan who took a whopping 335 days of vacation. Nonetheless, WaPo happily pushes this propaganda without any context of facts that would allow its readers to make an informed judgment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/disconnected-obama-needs-to-change-conversation-to-help-party-in-midterms/2014/08/24/79883b48-2b9b-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html

For the record, here are the totals:

President Barack Obama as of Friday has spent all or part of 138 days on vacation, less time away from the White House than his predecessors. Here’s a look at how they compare. The totals exclude trips to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland mountains.

GEORGE W. BUSH: During eight years in the White House, spent all or part of 490 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
BILL CLINTON: During two terms in office, used all or part of 174 days for vacation. Of those, 100 days were summers either in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, or Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
RONALD REAGAN: During two terms, spent all or part of 349 days at his ranch in Santa Barbara, California.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/many-vacation-days-u-s-presidents-take/

[Cha]

1. Thank you, Tom, for calling this out!

[freshwest]

2. If he was any more connected, he'd have a direct psychic link to billions of people...

It's the media that is disconnected from the needs of people as they sell their corrupted memes and disparage anyone not paying them.

Sick of this bullshit. To hell with the lying media. Check this out right here:

TV News station edits video to "thuggify" a 4 year old African American boy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025435229

[merrily]

3. I believe Presidents and their families are entitled to vacation.

I don't want a President to be any more strung out than he or she is going to be anyway, just by nature of the job

Moreover, as people have had to point out, the President is never really on vacation, anyway. IMO, it's more for the children than anything.

If you believe the above--and I do--it really doesn't matter how many days of "vacation" the President takes, does it?



All that said, why is the comparison between 8 years and 5.5 years?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

6. My thoughts exactly

No President is ever really on vacation - it's a job that doesn't really stop. And a President can do anything away from the WH that he can do in the White House.

[Fred Sanders]

12. The commander in chief of America is never on vacation....a little black briefcase is always nearby.

[rpannier]

4. The disconnest appears to come mostlt from the idiots comments

I've never seen so many annoyingly stupid comments that are written by clueless people.
It's rather sad and pathetic

[pansypoo53219]

5. been there done that. don't you remember CLINTON FATIGUE???

i bet carter got it too. the media has switched sides. this is the SAME GODDAMNED SHIT! its corporate BULLSHIT! amerika is being massaged AGAIN to SAVE THE GOP. did they EVER SAY BUSH FATIGUE? NO! they created him. he wa stheir stupid monster that made them look EVER SO SMART. they are trying to dumb us down.
i got the poliics bug as a kid. i hated reagan. i never bought voodoo economics.

[Enthusiast]

7. Kicked and recommended!

The media is biased on every front. This is the opposition's greatest and only advantage. Without this built in advantage the GOP would be toast.

This is why all the Democratic leadership should roundly denounce this unfair media bias. They should also voice support for new robust Fairness Doctrine.

[rock]

8. Notice how the Smeedia* selects the meme it is to use against Obama

In particular let's look at "Obama plays golf when he should be attending to affairs of state"

1) it is an opinion and never a hard fact (compare: Obama hit Cheney on the head with a golf club).;
2) it concentrates on quality and not quantity (How many times did Obama play golf? even an idiot can count, so we leave that unstated);
3) it is not a statement that could stand up in court;
4) it lacks logical cohesiveness (compare: Obama takes a piss when he should be attending to affairs of state - what Obama is not allowed to take a piss?).

I think you can see how weak-kneed the whole meme is and how whiny the repiggies and the Smeedia are.

* Smeedia: media as competent as Captain Hook's first mate (Smee).

[Fred Sanders]

11. Obama takes two hours for lunch....he could be working....the mass media is as corrupt as it's

owners.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. Well, he's a black president, which means you have to apply the ethnic factor.

Get the lowest number of vacation days spent by a white president and divide by two, and you'll get the number of days that Obama should have spent on vacation in order to avoid criticism.

[Fred Sanders]

10. I have seen the enemy and the enemy is the Idiot Box.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. That's a somewhat misleading/dishonest/deceptive chart.

Obama's bar should have a dotted extension up to around 190-210, to extrapolate to how many days he'll end up taking at current rate.

In fairness, they do write in small print that his bar represents something different to the other three. But even so, it's really shoody data presentation.

The general political point is still mostly valid, however - that extended bar is still shorter than for the Republicans, albeit taller than Clinton's.