Barack Obama’s childhood dining on canine fare is the proverbial man bites dog story that has been all the rage this week. It spawned hilarious photoshops and its own twitter hashtag, #ObamaDogRecipes. It’s also one of the easiest stories to check out. PolitiFact could do one or both of two things to fact check it: They could ask Obama whether he ever ate a dog or not, or they could just read and quote from one of the two books he supposedly wrote about his fascinating self.
Actually, they could just listen to his audio book.
PolitiFact chooses to quote from the book, but does not accompany its post with the Truth-O-Meter. PolitiFact copped out and posted it in the “In Context” series.
The president ate dog when he lived in Indonesia, or at least there’s a passage in his book that says he did. It turns out, eating dog is not a common custom in Indonesia. You have to go out of your way to fetch a Scooby snack. A genuinely inquisitive media might whistle up a question or two to bring this question to heel.
This whole dog-eared story is a can of worms for Obama now. For PolitiFact, Barack Bites Dog represents a nasty dilemma: Rule “True” and confirm that POTUS ate Chow Chow Mein, rule “False” and suggest that he either embellished or didn’t even write his own book. Rule somewhere in between and you just muddy up the water bowl. So PolitiFact put its tail between its legs and didn’t chew on the Truth-O-Meter at all.
Brings a whole new meaning to “Puppy Chow”. *cringe*
Politi”fact”
“Scooby snack.” Hilarious!
This whole thing is just a dog-whistle for the Right.
Let us pray:
The Lord is my German Shepherd…
@4, CR:
No, the *pope* is my German Shepherd!
David Goldman discussed the other day here on PJM, and the first commenter suggested that the White House staff had not read the book. In the second comment I said I had heard that William Ayers ghot-wrote it. (David did not disagree.)Is it possible O never read the book either? That would be a hoot.
It is prudent of PolitiFact to not tick off the guy who wrote the Obama-dog anecdote, Bill Ayers. PolitiFact would not want to get on some domestic terrorist’s bad side…
When I was in China – four times over the last five years, there were Dog Restaurants. Yes, it’s a recognized cuisine (honest, based in China’s southern provinces). One of my students was taken to eat there and reported that the taste was like dry dark meat chicken. Logical enough, I guess…
One day when we were walking down the main part of I saw a sign in a restaurant that I thought I deciphered. My wife was interested but our host moved us down the street to a “Cultural Revolution” restaurant: waiters and waitresses dressed as Red Guards, doing the Loyalty Dance between courses. Very High Camp and hilarious…food excellent: the cuisine was Mongol. Beef stew to die for.
However, the sign in the first restaurant was later translated to me: “Today’s Special: Black Puppies in Hot Sauce.”. Hence our host did not take us in…
BTW, food was excellent and cheap all four times…with eight separate cuisines, we made pigs of ourselves.
If I had a dog he would look like the one Obama ate
Dog chow – a fine (native) American tradition. Lewis and Clark loved dog.
Now doggone it, I have no dog in this fight as to whether Obowser actually ate Lassie or Benji, I say we have gravier bones to chew on, such as the national deficit/debt, Obamacare, and Fast and Furious federal gunrunning into Mexico, and saying the dog ate his homework is NOT an acceptable response from the Dear Leader!
So let’s hound this sonofabitch on those issues instead of his confusion as to whether or not ‘puppy chow’ means what he thinks it does, and whether it should normally be a menu option at your local restaurant!
Let’s tree this bastard on the facts, and really bird dog the important issues facing us today!
By the way, anyone seen Bo lately???
Q: Why was Obama so furious at Micheal Vick for killing dogs?
A: He wasted all the food.
Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
A: Bo the water dog’s carcass after a White House State Dinner.
Q: What did Obama say after eating a sled dog?
A: “It tastes like mush.”
Q: How did Obama get the dog to roll over?
A: He turned on the rotisserie.
Is PolitiFact calling the President a liar? It certainly appears so. By refusing to accept the President’s own testimony, they’ve suggested by omission that the President is not credible in recalling his own personal history.
This Sherlock Holmes quote from “Silver Blaze” seams appropriate in regard to PolitFact’s continued silence on the truthfulness of Obama’s dog eating habits.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
Hey you know how a kid will do or say something funny and you laugh and then they just keep repeating over and over until you want to throw yourself in front of a bus? That’s how this “Obama ate Dog” story feels.
We get it. You’re having a laugh. And you’re responding to the stupid Romney stories about the dog on the roof.
But seriously, this is getting really tiresome. There are some commentators on my twitter feed that I’ve been passing over for the past few days because they are all Obama-ate-dog all the time. Regardless of the humor of it, it has been worn out. Please find something else to talk about.
And this is from somebody who has no love for Obama and is happy to find yet another thing to laugh at him and his tired policies or whatever. This is from somebody who really wants to see everybody laughing all the way to the voting booth. But it’s tired. It’s old and frankly starting to get a little embarrassing.
beb:
Well, go pout in the corner then. The rest of us are having a SNL moment that lasts and lasts and lasts.
adair@politifact.com. Politifact editor