Brain Dead in O-I-H-O
Having had to deal with the Thomas Eagleton veep freakout last week and his own Kerry in the bunnysuit moment yesterday, it’s time for Mr. Obama to commit 2012′s equivalent of the Dan Quayle “Potatoe” gaffe today:
Naturally, the Washington Post rushed to defend their candidate’s gaffe, as Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner notes:
An embarrassing photo of President Obama trying to spell Ohio with a group of students was snagged by Buzzfeed this afternoon, as Zeke Miller posted two different photos of the incident on their website.
Many Romney supporters quickly tweeted the photo, joking that the President didn’t know how to spell Ohio.
The Washington Post quickly posted a defense of the president claiming that the erroneous photo had been photoshopped. They also believed that they had caught Mitt Romney Ohio spokesman Christopher Maloney for erroneously tweeting the photo.
It got worse from there, before the Post finally backed off the ledge. As John Podhoretz tweets, “The correction at the bottom is a primer in media bias.”
Whatever happens in November, I wonder if we’ll be seeing an article from the Post’s current ombudsman admitting how deeply in the tank they were this second time around, as then-0mbudsperson Deborah Howell admitted in November of 2008:
I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.
And who can blame them, considering how poisonous the culture in the “news” room must have been back then?
Update: From Twitchy, “Bias: WaPo ‘real reporters’ falsely claim Obama ‘O-I-H-O’ pic was photoshopped.”
Is anybody else wondering if three is a picture of them spelling out YCMA?
I make fun of some transposed letters and what happens? Whoomp! Th\r/e\e it is…
Well, not that Mr. Worlds Smartest Pants Crease isn’t a Jimmy Carter-level dufus, but the goof in the photo isn’t a mispelling goof, it’s a writing-backwards-in-a-mirror goof. Anyone who’s ever held up signs spelling out a cheer at a ballgame can see what they did wrong.
Obama and the boys are spelling out O-H-I-O properly — from their perspective. (The short guy with the grey shirt and pot gut to the far right of the photo is the starting letter O.)
From the audience’s perspective though, they’ve spelled out O-I-H-O. From the audience’s view the guy on the far left of the photo is the starting letter O.
That’s Obama’s problem in a nutshell. Everything’s from his perspective. It’s all about him. (And obviously, for all his boated sports enthusiasm, he’s apparently never cheered anybody else on.)
Yeah, I have to agree. In the direction they’re facing, they’re spelling it right.
They’re only doing it wrong from the perspective of having their picture taken.
It’s funny, but I’m cutting O some slack on this one.
“They’re only doing it wrong from the perspective of having their picture taken.”
Yes, Mr. Obama often finds perspective to be challenging.
I’m sorry. The president’s watch is on his left hand. THE ONLY WAY your idea makes sense is if they’re spelling it for people BEHIND them. I know Obama is supposed to be the most transparent president ever, but I call that explanation a big fail.
Honestly, they way the guys to either side of Obama are pointing their hands, I thought they were trying to do some sort of phonetic spelling of ‘Ojai”, that upper-income enclave in the mountains north of Ventura where the president no doubt gets some of his California campaign cash.
Sigh. It’s always hard for people raised abroad to spell Ohio. I KNOW. I was an exchange student there in 79-80. For a while you don’t hear the aspired h and so you just throw it in anywhere. I started pronouncing it — for a while I told I everyone I was going to be in Oio (people assumed I meant Hawaii half the time)– long before that h became fixed in its right place in writing. I bet my mom has letters from me from Oiho.
Just saying.
80-81. Unlike most women, I tend to lie to make myself older, somehow. For a while at 35 I went around telling everyone I was 48. It just came out of my mouth before I checked. Maybe it’s a foresighted attempt at snagging a place as “World’s oldest” if I live to be 90. I’ll tell everyone I’m 118. Might work.
Nah, everybody knows that Oiho-e is the 58th state. You just having been paying attention.
0bama wears his watch on his left arm so.. He spells ‘Ohio’ wrong. Just like his ’57 States’. Anyone else wondering where this guy came from?
maybe “OIHO” is state #53?
On the other hand, Obama spelling the state’s name this way would completely botch up the lyrics to The Pretenders’ “My City Was Gone”. So maybe this is some zen-like attack on Rush Limbaugh by the president.
Come on folks, Don’t you know that the language is evolving.