• Published:June 13th, 2008
• Comments:No Comment
• Category:Blog Comments, Politics

The Swamp is the Chicago Tribune’s politics blog, and like most blogs of its type, it runs a little bit of commentary, a little bit of snark, and a little bit of stuff that probably wouldn’t make the paper even on a slow Sunday.

Case in point: to accompany an otherwise-standard election fund-raising story, they ran a mundane, even banal photo of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle on Chicago’s South Side. And sure, nobody looks good in a bicycle helmet, as Obama conceded at a Thursday night fundraiser:

“I had an internal debate,” Obama admitted, when a supporter thanked him for wearing a helmet. “Because I knew that the AP was going to take a picture, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet.

“But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking,” he said to applause.

Well, shucks. Hard to argue with that, politically calculated (”For the Children!”) or not. The photo business just barely adds interest to another campaign newsblip. Surely no one can make a mountain out of this molehill.

Haha, what a tool!!!!!
Ooh, I did it for the kids, always about the kids. C’mon, you are a part of the problem why these kids are such wimps today. When I was a kid, I never wore one, fell plenty of times but got right back up every time. Learned a lot of valuable lessons that way.

For example, “how to act like a douche in a public forum,” right, Ed? But at least you’re not reading a sinister political agenda into coverage of a bike helmet, like our cousin Vinny:

Still no article on McCains nationally televised Town
Hall meeting last night. Nah the swamp is not biased towards or Obama
otr anything like that. The swamp is clearly pushing an agenda. I dont
want to have to but I think I am going to have to put the swamp in the
idoits category along with Olberman, Limbaugh, Hannity, Mathews, Air
America, and Anne Coulter.

I will say this for Vinny: his idoits category is refreshingly non-partisan. His comment is even somewhat germane to the topic, and while it will get no points for spelling or grammatical elegance, it does at least have the virtue of seeming, well, sane.

Let us turn now to the comment of stan woodbridge, which is not germane, grammatically correct, nor… well. You’ll see:

Still no article on the hate America global warming
loons scaremongering and flooding of the Midwest? Flooding the
Republican heartland is no way to get our attention. We get it you hate
America, now leave this great country.

So if I parse this correctly, stan believes that “global warming loons,” by which I infer he means advocates of the climate change theory, are somehow causing the floods in the Midwest to scare Republicans into believing in climate change. Because they hate America.

Someone clearly forgot to wear his bicycle helmet one too many times.