Newsweek Goes There
I thought these desperation tactics would have waited until later in the campaign.
Instead, Newsweek chose this week to unveil a new line of attack on Mitt Romney. The cover features a picture of Romney with the caption: “Romney: The Wimp Factor.”
Romney shrugged it off:
Mitt Romney says that if he worried about what reporters thought of him, he wouldn’t get much sleep.
He says he’s sleeping just fine.
The U.S. presidential candidate tells CBS’ ”Face the Nation” that he isn’t sweating the upcoming Newsweek magazine cover that leads with “Romney: The Wimp Factor.”
He says the media tried a similar criticism of President George H.W. Bush. Romney says Bush “was a pretty great president” who was not a wimp.
A 1987 Newsweek profile featured a profile of then-Vice President Bush with the title — “Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.’”
Asked whether he had ever been called wimp, Romney says the Newsweek cover is a first.
Wimp? Is that anything like “faggot”? Pretty close. I am waiting for all the gay rights groups to come down on Newsweek’s partisan liberal editor Tina Brown and chastise her for slurring the LGBT community.
Oh, wait…nevermind.
Michael Tomasky, former editor of Guardian America and a host of far-left publications, was tasked by Ms. Brown with the juicy job of de-gonading Mitt Romney.
Tomasky gleefully recounts the Mitt-gaffes from London and then writes:
The episode highlights what’s really wrong with Romney. He’s kind of lame, and he’s really … annoying. He keeps saying these … things, these incredibly off-key things. Then he apologizes immediately—with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn’t: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps.
In 1987, this magazine created a famous hubbub by labeling George H.W. Bush a “wimp” on its cover. “The Wimp Factor.” Huge stir. And not entirely fair—the guy had been an aviator in the war, the big war, the good war, and he was even shot down out over the Pacific, cockpit drenched in smoke and fumes, at an age (20) when in most states he couldn’t even legally drink a beer. In hindsight, Poppy looks like Dirty Harry Callahan compared with Romney, who spent his war (Vietnam) in—ready?—Paris. Where he learned … French. Up to his eyeballs in deferments. Where Reagan saddled up a horse with the masculine name of El Alamein, Mitt saddles up something called Rafalca—except that he doesn’t even really do that, his wife does (dressage). And speaking of Ann—did you notice that she was the one driving the Jet Ski on their recent vacation, while Mitt rode on the back, hanging on, as Paul Begala put it to me last week, “like a helpless papoose”?
Sorry, I went down to the bookstore to find a copy of this “Newsweek” magazine and I couldn’t find it. I also couldn’t find Look, Saturday Evening Post, or Colliers. I couldn’t find the bookstore either since it went out of business last year. I’ll try looking at my Dentist office waiting room. Im sure Ill find a copy under old issues of “Highlights” or Sunset.
LOL….highlights…Goofus=Obama and Gallant=Romney
Wow, somebody besides me still remembers Goofus and Gallant! COOL
We need another strip like that today, to teach our modern-barbarian boys and young men courtesy and values in a humorous, non-authoritarian, non-”preachy” way.
These people get more and more desperate every week.
Wonder which will disappear first: the leftist meme that Romney is a wimp; or the “news” magazine called “Newsweek.”
“And what kind of presidential candidate whines about a few attacks and demands an apology when the going starts to get rough?’
Umm, Barack Obama?
I tihnk it says all when he thinks Obama can’t be accused of appeasement. Appeasement is the cornerstone of Obama’s foreign policy. He makes Neville Chaimberlain look like Winston Churchill. The Left lives in its own fantasy world.
I was going to say the Obamessiah makes Carter look like Reagan, but you made my point.
Or, Obama makes Buchanan (happy to watch the Union dissolve) look like Lincoln (who fought to save it).
The Washington ComPost which is the previous owner of Newsweek (it was sold for a dollar, and is now run by euro-socialist) made Romney out to be a bully in a 5000 word article posted on their front page. And now Newsweek is turning him into a wimp on their cover page with a smear article inside. You must admit that the left-wing media covers all the bases on candidates they do not like.
I was not aware that they did this to Bush Sr. a quarter of a century ago. Our media has been sickly bias for a long time.
It would be so much easier to present Obama as a wimp with his girly bike and goofy helmet photo, but do not expect anything like that from our disturbingly corrupt media.
George H.W. Bush was always charicatured in the WaPo as carrying a purse. If I’m not mistaken, the cartoonist was Tom Oliphant (himself the very picture of masculinity).
The problem with the left is they often mistake good manners for lack of toughness. The wimp meme didn’t last long in 1987-88. Besides a on air confrontation with Dan Rather there is a story that George H.W. Bush was once confronted with a belligerent and possible drunk reporter on his own campaign plane. When the jackass wouldn’t shut up and get out of the aisle Bush didn’t raise his voice. He just cleared the aisle by lifting the reporter up by the belt and depositing him in the nearest seat.
I guess this is supposed to help our metrosexual, mom-jeans wearing, pansy ass president. Yes? How many stories have there been about Michelle Obama being the one wearing the pants in that family?
All Liberal men are sissies. It’s part of the liberal identity. Real men don’t do liberalism.
Going a few rounds in debates has become the norm in elections.
Going a few rounds in the ring should be required to assess a candidates’ sissy status, doncha think?
Romney vs. Obama, 3 rounds, a week before the election?
I think it’s a great idea with the bonus being unintended consequences for ‘Newsweak’.
Not to mention Super Bowl sized TV ratings and record Vegas betting.
I’m down. MMA format though, we need it to sort out quickly!
(would O even last 3 rounds in full KRAV mode?)
I shocked that no one else has said it yet….
We want THUNDERDOME!!
It’s Obama. You mean Blunderdome
Nope, no kicking like girls. Don King promotions will make it good,,,, and take all the DNC money.
Reality Check: President Obama and Mitt Romney Don’t Have Opposing Views On Healthcare?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyIXuce36gM&feature=plcp
Put it to bed.
The time for that nonsense is OVER!
YOU LOST!
You sound like Obama…..
I am terrified they might be right. Mr Nice Guy. Never been in a street fight. Enters the ring with 16oz pillow gloves and and in the other corner a guy with brass knuck’s…..world championship fight. Just another McCain. Oh how I hope I’m wrong. We all remember what Leo had to say about where “nice guys” finish.
Being above the rabble does not mean he is a wimp. I thought that he polished off the primary quite nicely. He is pulling no punches with Obama.
A self-made millionaire and former governor who fathered five boys. Sounds pretty alpha to me.
And exactly what was Obama’s military experience again?
(BTW, to get the truth behind his Osama bagging creds, google Special Forces for America and read what a former SEAL Team 6 commander has to say.)
Anyone who wants to see what a wimp is need only look at the current inhabitant of our White House. He is a pathetic little man who has had everything handed to him, he readily accepts credit for others’ accomplishments while having none of his own, and he has others fight his battles for him.
I think B.O. is going to win again. Not that I like the idea but Mitt reminds me of all the “it’s your turn, you earn it” GOP candidates of the past. The last two Republican candidates I liked were Goldwater and Reagan. So you can imagine how I feel about Romney and McCain. The good side of B.O. winning is that he is going to deepen the model and with that he will finish Liberalism globally forever. After we all try the bitter fruit of total government control the backlash is going to make the American Revolution look like a walk in the park.
Keep in mind it’s not just Obama we need to get rid of. It’s the entire administration consisting of his crooks, commies, and associates. I don’t think people understand, or appreciate this enough and conservatives have not done enough to emphasize it.
Tomasky was political correspondent for New York magazine back during the 2000 election, and he made previous holders of that post, like Joe Klein, look like the epitome of impartiality by comparison.
Klein has since been far freer to show his angry liberalism, but Tomasky was one of the first wave of political writers who took the Guardian/Village Voice ethos of hyper-partisan advocacy journalism out of the places where people went in expecting advocacy journalism and into places where readers expected at least a modicum of thought about the other side’s ideas and a certain amount of restraint in allowing your inner demons to run wild. Whether it’s Newsweek, Time, the New York Times or any of the old-line TV networks, the decision to all but give the middle finger to half of their potential readership or viewership turned the natural loss of some circulation/ratings to the growing number of web-based cable-spawned news outlets into a Tsunamni of lost readers.
Tomasky can continue to be the hackiest spinner for the left in the pundit world and there will be a certain level of people who will eat it up. Just not enough to keep anything but a niche publication going.
Everything you wrote is true. But Tomasky and writers like him are merely cogs in the daily propaganda wars. The Democrats and the media throw a gazillion “narratives” or “frames” at the wall and go with the first one that sticks. That’s why they can argue one thing on Monday, and argue the complete opposite thing on Tuesday (e.g., castigating Bush for not having enough troops into Iraq, but opposing the “surge” as soon as he tried to rectify the problem, stating in no uncertain terms that the Obamacare mandate is not a tax, but then arguing before the Supreme Court that the mandate is, in fact, a tax, etc.).
The arguments of the day mean nothing to the Left. They’re temporal and fleeting. You just do whatever you have to do to make your conservative opponents look bad and make yourself look righteous. The ultimate purpose of the daily propaganda wars, though, is to distract people (especially your conservative foils) while the guys behind the scenes pull the rug out from under them. In that sense, the propaganda wars are like robberies when a team of theifs has one party distract the victim/victims while the others pull off the heist unnoticed.
The Left is pulling the rug out from under the country while trash talking apparatchiks like Tomasky, Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, etc. keep the marks occupied and distracted.
Time to break some kneecaps. It’s the Chicago way.
Tomasky’s over-reach seems inevitable given Romney’s unusually clean background. Contrast President Obama’s unsuccessfully ‘cleansed’ background and one may see the futility of Tomasky’s over-exertions.
Over-and-out.
Wait, is he a bully or a wimp. I’m so confused trying to keep up with this week’s meme.
Romney has been a dog torturer, a homophobic bully, a felon, and now a wimp. We’re working our way through the memes pretty quickly, but the nuclear bomb that is the “Big ‘M’” word — and the attendant magic underwear meme — still awaits.
Hah! Four years of President Mom Jeans, and this guy is calling ROMNEY a wimp?
This reeks of that wonderful faux-masculinity you get in men who think that snapping at an overworked barista makes them tough. Can Mr. Tomasky ride? Shoot? Do anything besides whine about other people allegedly whining? In short, does he still have his Man Card, and if he does why hasn’t it been revoked yet?
Why are we talking about wimps and weenies? I always thought that picking the President of the United States was a serious business. Should we not be talking about the state of the country, its economy and its way forward over the next four years in the short term and its policies in the long term. What is with these news magazines anyway? They should be telling us how the ideas of the two contenders differ so that we can make a reasoned judgement. Sheesh.
President Mom Jeans indeed. The obama crew and their press flunkies don’t get it, they don’t get to pick who’s a man and who’s a pansy in this culture. Our current president throws like a girl, gets regularly, openly booed at any sports venue and could not set up a pup tent if his life depended on it. Whearas Romney could reassemble a coleman lantern in the dark blind folded if he had to. Why the metrosexuals of the democratic press machine want to argue the point is another head scratcher.
You see O throw…talk about a girl….actually wait I have seen girls throw better than him….
And O only females have sprung from his loins…..wus…
Romney…look at all the studs he produced…..
Libtards pound sand you wussies…..
Yep, the infamous first pitch that hit the ground a long ways from home plate. That was a wussy pitch indeed.I had forgotten that. Thanks!
The writing is sophomoric, certainly nothing you couldn’t just as easily read on a B-list blog.
Yeah, but when he reads it on the teleprompter, some Liberal get shivers up their leg.
Obviously Tina Brown still hasn’t learned that you should never send a Tomasky to do a man’s job. She should just keep him on the Bloomberg butt-kissing beat, where he excels.
The Huffington Post is reporting on this story. The interesting thing to me is the comments, many of which are vitriolic toward Romney. Why all this hatred toward a decent man whose career includes many accomplishments but little evidence of corruption? Because Romney’s campaign has concentrated on Obama’s failures in office while Obama’s campaign has consisted largely of personal attacks on Romney.
A “Wimp?” Compared to the man who rode that little poofy bike with a goofy helmet for a photo op?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! *Chuckle**Gasp* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
I can’t breathe, I’m laughing so hard!!!
Yeah, and if you looked closely, the bike had a flat tire!
(I can breathe again)
Now there’s a metaphor for his entire Administration. What was the Jackson Brown song? “Running on Empty.”
Wait, I thought Romney was a ruthless cut-throat vulture/ vampire/ bully? Or a radical bloodthirsty right-winger? Or a mean cold-blooded calculating politician who’ll “say anything” to win the election, even taking poor Obama’s own words out of context (or, by quoting and showing the entire context, being racist somehow).
Let me know the next time Romney whines about Chris Matthews and MSNBC, the way Obama has whined about Rush Limbaugh and FOX.
Yeah right, only a wimp would object when the POTUS’s campaign officials accuse him of *felony*.
The fact that they’re so desperate is a good sign, even though it’s effing annoying to read this sort of BS. It shows that Obama’s vicious negative campaigning has hurt his nice guy image, that the whole anti-Bain barrage has been mostly ineffectual & even counterproductive. The Obama campaign can’t pretend (because the American people won’t buy) that they’re not running a viciously negative campaign, so instead they have to go with this: it’s not that we’re so negative, it’s that the other guy is too much of a wimp to take it.
Meanwhile, Romney is hitting hard– and actually landing blows. That’s why they’re so desperate to change the subject from Obama’s record and the economy and substantive issues and try to make this a prom queen election about “personality” and “likability” (subtext: race card).
May this over-the-top MSM bias and overplaying of the race card etc. backlash and bite them all in the ass. One small but significant part of the reasons I so relish the prospect of Obama’s defeat is that it would also be a giant FU from the American people to the Obama-groupie MSM.
It is not Romney who is hitting hard. It is the economy which just refuses to improve even the slightest that is hitting hard. I’m sure that is some sort of GOP House obstruction causing that though. Or maybe the tea party, or maybe racism, or probably women are so worried about the war being waged against them that they have stopped shopping for $1500 Louboutins.
Tomasky is swinging that purse with a lot of force.
Newsweek? Anybody still read that? It’s about the size of a pamphlet now and about as interesting as reading an ad for chia pets, although I think ads for chia pets are the only things IN Newsweek these days. I’m just surprised they don’t have ads for strippers in the back of Newsweek these days. Just ignore it. I think the 12 or 15 people who still read Newsweek aren’t going to vote for Romney anyway, so no loss there. Ignore them and move on.
Would a wimp give the speech Romney gave to the NAACP? I think not.
I think that speech– both giving the speech at all and giving the kind of speech he did and in the way he did to that audience– earned Romney a lot of credit for being the *opposite* of a wimp. (Imagine Obama giving a speech to, say, a Tea Party group.) And that’s the kind of thing this MSM Newsweek meme is trying to counteract.
I think newsweek needs to re-think who they call a “wimp”. All of you remember watching Obama throw the first pitch at the beginning of the game. OMG! I cried I was laughing so hard! I would love to play him in some backyard basketball (since that appears to be his game) after watching that athletic ability! Hahahaha
The desperate last days of hardcopy Newsweek (dang, why don’t just run ads for hookers and swinging singles?).
Fairly awkward for Tomasky to point out the wife driving the jet ski, isn’t that the mark of a man so comfortable in his own manliness that he isn’t threatened by a woman taking control? So, to his mind if Ann drives Romney is a wimp and if he drives he is a bully, nice metric you got going there.
That Tomasky delivers a mean handbagging.
Letting the women drive just makes things that much more exiting.
er, exciting
I dunno…. Exiting is what I am doing if my wife is driving. The woman scares me to death!
Check out the 1987 Newsweek cover!! GHWB and “Fighting the Wimp Factor”! They are so out of ideas.
I’d be worried about the hit piece if anybody still read Newsweek.
Newsweek? I always thought their name was “Newsweak”….. I wasn’t aware anyone still read them. Maybe people buy the occasional copy to reline their birdcage?
This is liberal hypocrisy on so many levels it’s stunning, but it’s interesting that they only seem to compare Romney with other Republicans like George HW Bush and Reagan instead of with Obama.
Have these “journalists” seen the photo of young Barry Soetero sitting on the couch at Occidental holding hands with his little choom gang friend? Now there’s a man’s man.
Hopefully the liberal hacks will run with this theme. President Urkel can out-wimp anyone.
Romney is a wimp?
If you needed someone to back you up in a fight, you can bet a stand up guy like Romney would stay with you, even if he got his butt kicked.
The Won would run off crying for his mommy.
Nuff said.
Public Service Message:
Candidates must not refer to Opponents as Dirty Birds
. . . . on behalf of The Audubon Society, PETA, National Humane Society, ASPCA
.
Newsweek? Nobody cared what they wrote, before the entire company sold for a buck. Not the magazine, the entire company.
They have no business mocking anyone.
Personally I think there might be something to the fact that Romney may be insecure. I mean didn’t he write two books about himself to prove to everyone he is a black man?
The idiot who bought Newsweak for $1 was robbed.
In 1966, when Romney (then a missionary – such a wimpy thing just ask any God-hating liberal) was in Nantes, France, he rescued two women by confronting members of the local rugby team harrassing them. Yeah, real wimpy, I know.
He received two missionary deferments during the Vietnam War, and two student deferments, however, his draft number was so high, he was never at risk of being drafted.
Information on this part of Romney’s life can be found on wikipedia, hardly a bastion of conservative thought.
Any small bit of research into any part of Romney’s life might give Newsweak a clue, but chances are they don’t want one.
The idiot who bought Newsweak for $1 was robbed.
I’m convinced he was anticipating an Obama bailout, after which he would sell for a huge profit. What he couldn’t anticipate was dying before his grand plan could be realized. Further proof that God has a sense of humor.
I did not realize that Newsweek was still in business .Why?
– editorial by a wussy. Where’s Sully?
Does anybody find it a bit strange that somebody who fathered 3 sons, and won big in the cuthroat business of venture capital is supposed to be a wimp, while the Harvard lawyer, who never worked a day in his life, never produced a thing of value except hot air and racial/class greivance, never took responsibility for anything and is still petulantly blaming Bush, is supposed to be the cool guy. I mean how idiotic do these guys think we are. No wonder nobody in this country reads Newsweek anymore.
I agree with most of what you said, BUT please, can we stop with the “Romney’s not a wimp because he fathered sons” meme? This is the sort of argument a member of radical might make. Just stop.
radical Islam, I mean. Sheesh. Typing too fast.
Then he apologizes immediately—with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn’t: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps.
Is snoozeweak actually trying to compare Romney with the Obama apology tour of 2009? I haven’t seen that much bowing and scarping since the last time I watched the King and I.
Let’s see how he does throwing a baseball and riding a bike (I’m guessing it won’t be a girls bike).
N e w s t w e a k ?
O’bimsa eats dog! — Romney gives his a ride! — Now, that’s CLASS! LOL
Who cares what that liberal propaganda rag has to say.
News-Weak? Are they still around?
Am I the only one who finds offensive the idea that someone who serves in a non-frontline capacity in the Service is somehow a lesser man?
And while we are on the subject of military service, what branch did President Obama serve in again? Oh yeah, that’s right, none.