It’s too bad Shithead Hall of Fame® Inductee Jack Krier doesn’t post his opinion pieces on the Internets. I mean, his newspaper empire does have it’s own website, but you have to register an account to actually LOOK at anything. You’d think he’d be proud to blast his asininity laden brain farts all over the world, but like a clam with it’s precious pearl, he hides them away from most people.
But that doesn’t stop me from reading his “opinion” in his various newspapers and scurrying back to retell it all shitty Beowulf style to you, dear citizens! I’ve once again been torn from my hiatus to break down a Jack Krier brain fart about the recent State of the Union.
Now, I’ve not been one to shy away from the State of the Union in recent memory. I mostly enjoy watching said address then watching the GOP/right-wing trot out some new current hot thing they got working on. Said hot new thing then most likely embarrasses themselves with a bunch of baloney and staid talking points, and then we move on. Somehow, with the election of Obama, it appears a political Pandora’s box has been opened and all manner of people come up out the woodwork to give their “rebuttal” to the State of the Union address. Sadly, this year I missed the State of the Union. I’m sorry, I forgot it was on!
I’m fairly certain the “state” of the “union” is “strong” (whatever that means). I did hear Obama drop some shade on the congress and then he talked about free community college for all on the backs of the wealthy. Fox News hosts lost their mind, and for some reason 58 year-old Steve Doocey JUST recently paid off his student loan from a state school…weird right? That HAS to be a lie. Par for the course for the right-wing!
Not having watched the address, I can only guess as to the bulk of the contents. I also can’t burden myself to actually WATCH the address and perhaps form my own opinions. Honestly, it doesn’t matter, because the address Mr. Krier saw was THE MOST WORST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVERY SINGLE THING!
Unfortunately for Obama, this years address was the least watched in a while. Mr. Krier takes that to mean something it doesn’t. For some reason the Nielsen ratings are still taken seriously. Yet, they don’t account for the true viewership of said item. So yes, while viewership was down, I’m fairly certain it was just as watched as any other State of the Union in the recent past.
To begin Mr. Krier states that “Obama’s speech was filled with so many lies, half-truths and untruths that even the ultra hardcore liberal, Chris Matthews, and Andrea Mitchell, also a staunch liberal, readily criticized it.” What?! Christ Matthews, even though he lives on MSNBC (the supposed “Liberal equivalent to Fox News”) is nothing more than a populist blowhard. He’s the same guy that proclaimed, not that long ago, that George W. Bush should be put on Mt. Rushmore. I’m fairly certain I’ve never heard any self professed liberal say something like that! And Andrea Mitchell? Come on… On top of this Mr. Krier states that both Matthews and Mitchell “readily criticized” the speech, yet offers no examples to his readers, who most assuredly did NOT watch the State of the Union. Talk about so many lies, half-truths and untruths!
Not that much further in Mr. Krier displays his old man-ness but not understanding much of what Obama was talking about. But before that he shows us he doesn’t know how to do math very good either. As of 2013 the U.S. population was 316 million people, Mr. Krier crows that only 31 million people “watched” the State of the Union. Doing the math 285 million people didn’t watch it. I guess he’s rounding up when he says “300 or so million” How hard is this math Jack Krier?!
Moving along past Mr. Krier’s admonishment of Obama’s desire for “free stuff” like broadband internet access, cyber-security, and so on, we find that he thinks that higher taxes on the rich somehow mean people like him. Maybe so, seeing as he does own a sizable publishing arm in the Midwest. But that’s also the problem with a lot of the lower class of the GOP that get fooled by things like Fox News and talk radio in to thinking they’ll suffer because of rising taxes on the wealthy. The disconnect is often stymieing to me. I get the general idea that you don’t want to pay more taxes. But once again, taxes pay for all kinds of things, some of which you just aren’t going to like. For all this talk of American exceptionalism, the right-wing sure doesn’t want to pay to keep it that way. Hell, we’re not even really competing globally anymore in terms of broadband access and higher education.
It’s any wonder why Mr. Krier prattles on and on about the State of the Union when towards the end of his piece he states that “ […] the Democrats suffered a crushing defeat last November.” So why hem and haw about what Obama is offering in his address, if it’s all for naught because Republicans won control of congress on the lowest voter turnout since after World War II? I guess a victory is a victory right? It’s odd what right-wingers will declare as a mandate versus what isn’t a mandate. A thin George W. Bush “re”-election margin was enough to declare a mandate, Obama wins a majority of the popular vote both times, the GOP/right-wing is all “No mandate for you!” It’s odd, right?
Mr. Krier states that since Obama (and his favorite target “the mainstream media”) failed to read the November memo that “ […] the country soundly rejected all of the Obama policies.” that all his speech making is pointless. In the battle of political wills, it is Obama who must relent to the regressive wills of a Republican led congress. Who, for all it’s talk of getting America back on track, immediately started in on anti-abortion legislation. I shit you not! They couldn’t even be bothered about repealing Obamacare. First things first, let’s fight that anti-woman thing we’ve been accused of by doubling down on moral issues that most of America doesn’t care about and certainly didn’t put us back in power to do in the first place. Refutation my ass!
And now, we get to the real meat of my problem with this Jack Krier opinion piece. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he filled his “opinion” piece with a bunch of baloney. He impugns Obama further (if that’s even possible) by stating hat according to the Flesch-Kincaid his speech was written at a ninth grade level. What? Seriously? According to old man Jack this is for “the wealth of low-information voters”, which he means “the others” which he means minorities. Furthering in the stupidity, Mr. Krier states that George W. Bush’s address were the “highest rated speeches of the last five presidents.” Oddly enough he doesn’t provide any proof. Funny that. Which left it to me to dig around and see if this claim was even remotely true.
Sadly, Mr. Krier is wrong. Which shouldn’t be surprising for someone’s whose own Flesch-Kincaid score rests at about a 7. Which means Jack Krier writes for a seventh grade reading level. Does he also write for low-information voters? Just not minorities! Heaven forbid a “the other” get’s any ideas!
Sure W. had some high scoring years, 2006 in particular scored an 11th grade readability level, but he wasn’t the “highest rated speeches of the last five presidents” according to the Jack Krier Institute of Deep Inside the Dark Crevices of His Asshole of Higher Learning. That distinction belongs to the vaunted Saint Reagan! Who’s 11.7 is the much highest!
Regardless, I think the Flesch-Kincaid test is more a revelation to the fact that America is getting stupider the further she stumbles along the decades. Putting up a State of the Union address from George Washington yielded a 20.9 on the readability-o-meter. So this to could mean the readability test isn’t necessarily fool proof by any stretch of the imagination.
But why wouldn’t you want your speech to be understood by the masses? So what of the aim towards “low-information voters”? Does Mr. Krier think himself an intellect? His writing sure doesn’t allude to that whatsoever, and in the many years of reading his columns, the only smart thing he ever really does is plagiarize Thomas Sowell columns and steal blond jokes to re-purpose them as “democrats are dumb”.
For Old Man Jack Obama’s address is all for not, seeing as the president “ […] has the worst record in the past five years of getting things passed in Congress.” Where did Mr. Krier get this information, again…who knows?! He rambles out some more highly dubious information about how many Obama “calls to action” were actually followed through by congress. I’m wondering, if Jack Krier knows how our government works. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t, seeing as a lot of his TEA Party patriot comrades don’t have the vaguest idea ever. No, what’s more important is to keep parroting the “Imperial Obama” line over and over again as if it’s truer now than in any other point in history when it comes to executive orders. It’s amazing that with a “The Internets” chock full of information, and search engines that can get you to that information so quickly, we have such a lack of intelligence in our social discourse.
More pathetic is Mr. Krier’s hope that congress continues to stymie Obama’s “agenda”. Once again, a congress that did more nothing than the infamous “Do Nothing Congress” of the Truman presidency is exactly what this country needs right now.
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