OK, Now He's Just Messing With People

The not putting his hand on his heart thing during the national anthem? Coincidence, I’m sure.

Bill Ayers? Hey, just a guy in the neighborhood.

His former pastor, the man whom inspired the title of one his books, and performed the Obamas’ marriage ceremony? “I did not have any religious mentoring from that man, Rev. Wright.” *

The habit of flipping the bird while giving speeches? Hey, alien hand syndrome is one of America’s least understood health aliments.

NASA’s outreach to the Black Panthers, the Justice Department’s letting Muslim astronauts off the hook — or is it the other way around? Who can tell.

And now this:

As Doug Powers writes:

Yesterday, President Obama was photographed outside the Mount Desert Island Ice Cream shop in Bay Harbor, Maine.

Notice anything familiar about their logo?It’s pretty much the same thing as the “black power” logo, except with a spoon.

Here’s a review of the shop from 2008:

A sign outside Mount Desert Island Ice Cream in downtown Bar Harbor features a familiar emblem in an unfamiliar way. The logo of the black power movement — a raised fist — clenches a spoon.

Shop owner Linda Parker thinks the tongue-in-cheek sign adds some spice to typically bovine advertisements.

“Everyone has seen enough cows in the hillside,” she says.

Well, the sign is an attention-grabber, and it grabbed Obama’s attention, that’s for sure.

Since nothing happens in this administration that isn’t planned out in advance, it’s almost as if this is an “in your face” about Obama’s Attorney General’s dropping the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. Or is it just a coincidence and he just wanted some ice cream and the closest shop just happened to be one with a black power logo? Could be.

If Tom Wolfe wrote the above scene into one of his novels, or Saturday Night Live did a sketch with Fred Armisen going into a shop with that above storefront, they’d never hear the end of the sheer implausibility of it all. As Malcolm Muggeridge first noted, there is no way a satirist can improve upon real life for its pure absurdity. But then, Muggeridge only knew the Soviets — they at least could keep the optics and messaging relatively under control.

* Hat tip to an Althouse commenter for the Rev. Wright as Monica Lewinsky gag.