Senator, You're No Jack Kennedy

Jonah Goldberg recently opined that watching CNN makes you stupid, and if you are already stupid it makes you stupider. He wasn't referring to the endless replays of Paris Hilton's latest gin-fueled Mercedes Benz crash, he was referring to those who fancy themselves politically informed because they watch election coverage on CNN. I refer to these unfortunate armchair pontificators as pseudo-intellectuals, people who like to think they are a cut above their friends and colleagues because they watch AC360. To their peers, they may seem like polymaths of wisdom, dispensing an Obama view here and a Hillary comment there. But if these same deluded sages were suddenly dropped into a cocktail party of Washington insiders, their blathering wisdom would provoke stares as if they had just landed from Planet Retard. The latest case in point, those who compare Barack Obama to the late President John F Kennedy...but we'll come back to that in a minute.

Pundits, those guys and gals on cable news with pearly white teeth and very important hair are not the geniuses you may think they are. Punditry is simply regurgitating the latest - and often ludicrous - talking points in the media until their iron-clad assertions melt like an ice sculpture in July. They then move with ninja-like stealth to fill your heads with a brand new idea floating around the news room water cooler, completely forgetting that the last 3 things they had been peddling about had turned out to be dead wrong. It's like they're a bunch of bulemics with amnesia at a party who keep ordering buckets of KFC until someone gets a feeling they're tired of chicken and starts ordering party pizzas from Domino's.

You probably know these people. Some may work with you. You may overhear them in coffee shops. They may be your friends or family. Maybe you are one yourself! But don't fret! I bring you salvation!

No, I'm not going to dip your head in a pond off some back road in Arkansas, I'm going to smack you upside the head and hope you go forth and CNN no more.

So, is the Senator from Illinois the next JFK? To quote Lloyd Benson from the 1988 Vice Presidential debate, 'Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy', and just because that drunken groper Ted Kennedy says you are doesn't make it so. If Angelina Jolie said I looked like Brad Pitt, you may think the source is beyond reproach, but I look about as much like Brad Pitt as Cindy Crawford looks like Rosie O'Donnell.

Certainly, there are superficial similarities - Obama seems like a pretty cool fella, and JFK appeared to be a pretty cool fella; JFK had a natural talent to inspire, Obama possesses the same gift. That's where the similarities end. Finis. End of story. Roll credits. (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention they're both black...oh wait, they're not.)

Barack Obama is the most liberal of liberals. He's anti-war, wants to raise taxes, cut military spending, and envisions a government that takes care of all your needs from cradle to grave. If you doubt this, the National Journal ranked him as having the most left-wing voting record of any member of the Senate.

JFK was a war hawk, and won the election largely because he ran to the right of Richard Nixon. He wanted to cut taxes, he brought the United States into the Vietnam War, he wanted to increase troop levels there, and - if you're under the delusion that he was a great equal rights crusader - he had his brother Bobby, then the attorney general, bug the offices of Martin Luther King Jr. Just before he was shot, he was bragging to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce about how he had increased special force troop levels by 600%.

Obama often brags that he was opposed to the war before it even started. Obama claims he is a fresh face from outside the beltway establishment. JFK was part of a deeply entrenched, corrupt old boys club that bought and many claim rigged the election. If Obama is outside the establishment, JFK was the establishment.

Barack wants to sit down and chat with the worst dictators in the world with overtures of olive leaf diplomacy. JFK tried to have Fidel Castro assassinated by the CIA.

Scratching your head? Wondering how the media could have missed all this? Let me be gentle - punditry is just left over, re-heated spam, served up daily by uninspired chefs. It's soft and mushy, but easy to digest. So the next time Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann serve up their latest spam casserole, just remember there are better things on the menu.

Cordially

Joe