Unexpectedly!

Bloomberg deploys the U-word:

I’m sure all of the journalists there (with the possible exception of Amity Shlaes) are laughing sycophantically at the president’s jokes; the Blogosphere is laughing at the joke president and his palace guard media in a much more knowing fashion, as the Say Anything blog noted in May:

This end of the blogosphere has enjoyed a delicious running joke for much of Barack Obama’s presidency…the strange appearance of the word “unexpectedly” in MSM coverage of the anemic economic recovery.  Of course, many of us knew that Dear Leader’s economic policies would either amount to nothing and/or inhibit economic growth even as they were being debated, so there was nothing unexpected about the result.  Still, the joke has only gotten funnier (sadder?) as time has worn on and it becomes clearer and clearer that the man-who-has-never-had-a-real-job-yet-occupies-the-White-House has no clue what he is doing when it comes to the economy. (For our purposes here, we ignore the not-so-outlandish notion that perhaps he knows exactly what he is doing, but that robust economic growth, if it is the result of typical laissez-faire American capitalism, is not his goal.)

Anyway, this joke – and the point it reveals – has finally made it somewhat mainstream via the good offices of Michael Barone, who makes it the central theme of this Washington Examiner column.

Ace wonders how the New Feudalism has added to the nation’s “unexpected” economic woes.

Update: Welcome Mark Steyn readers clicking in from the Corner.