Borowitz: “Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election”

 

Even as the Institute of Expertology has embarked on a preliminary study of Senator Barack Obama’s positions on such subjects as Iraq War troop withdrawals, public campaign financing, and the merits of the NAFTA agreement, Andy Borowitz has been analyzing the reaction the presumptive Democratic Party nominee’s recent remarks on these topics has produced in a specific group of experts: liberal bloggers.  In pursuit of our continuing nonpartisan goal of contributing to uninhibited academic discourse, we are proud to reproduce Mr Borowitz’s report here:

 

Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election;
Nominee Called Traitor to Democrats’ Losing Tradition

The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.

Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.

“Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes,” wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. “He must be stopped.”

But those comments were not nearly as strident as those of Tracy Klugian, whose blog LoseOn.org has backed unsuccessful Democratic candidates since 2000.

“Increasingly, Barack Obama’s message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful,” he wrote. “Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal.”

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said that he was “sympathetic” to the concerns of bloggers who worry that their nominee seems stubbornly bent on winning the election, but he warned them that the DNC’s “hands are tied.”

“If Sen. Obama is really determined to win, I don’t think any of us can talk him out of it,” Mr. Dean said.

Liberal bloggers said that they would be watching Sen. Obama’s vice-presidential selection process “very closely” for signs that he is plotting to win the election.

“Barack Obama still has a chance to pick someone disastrous as a sign that he wants to lose this thing,” Ms. Foyler wrote. “If not, he should brace himself for some really mean blog posts.”

 

If you enjoyed Andy’s essay, check out his earlier article about how Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites are conspiring to confuse John McCain. You can find it by clicking here.  Or, better still, visit Andy’s website, and subscribe to his brilliant Internet column, The Borowitz Report .  It’s free!

Navasky & Cerf’s Radio Special on “Mission Accomplished!” Can Now Be Heard, On-Demand, on WBAI’s Website

If you missed the live broadcast of Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf’s one-hour WBAI radio special devoted to their bestselling book, Mission Accomplished (or How We Won the War in Iraq), that doesn’t mean you’ll never have a chance to enjoy the plethora of deeply depressing (but gruesomely funny) misstatements, failed predictions, and outright lies about Iraq presented on the show.  All you need to do to get WBAI to stream the program directly to your computer is click here.

Navasky & Cerf to Host One-Hour “Mission Accomplished!” Special on WBAI

Institute of Expertology co-founders Victor S. Navasky and Christopher Cerf are scheduled to host a special one-hour program based on their new book, Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq), tomorrow, July 6th, on New York City’s Pacifica radio station, WBAI.  The program will be broadcast from 11 am to noon, and, if you’re in the New York area, you can tune in to it at 99.5 on your FM dial.  If you’re not in the Big Apple, don’t fret — the program will also be streamed live over the Internet. To listen in on the Web, just click here.

Listen to Robert F. Kennedy’s Interview with “Mission Accomplished!” Authors Christopher Cerf & Victor Navasky on Air America’s “Ring of Fire”

 

The Institute of Expertology is proud to provide you with an opportunity to hear Robert F. Kennedy’s June 23rd interview of Institute co-founders Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky.  The interview — which features many of the funniest (or, depending on your outlook, most depressing) quotes from Cerf and Navasky’s bestselling book, Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq) — was originally broadcast on “Ring of Fire,” the program Kennedy co-hosts with Mike Papantonio every weekend on Air America. To listen, click here.

Are Sunnis and Shiites Conspiring to Confuse McCain?

Andy Borowitz may be the funniest Internet columnist going. Irreverance is certainly far from the normal business of a serious academic institution such as the Institute of Expertology.  Nonetheless, Mr. Borowitz’s June 17 column seemed so in tune with the Institute’s recent study of Senator John McCain’s Iraq War expertise that we felt compelled to reproduce it below….

 

McCain: Sunnis, Shiites “Trying to Confuse Me” 

Will Stay in Iraq Until He Can Tell Them Apart, Mac Says 

In a major speech on the war in Iraq today, presumptive GOP nominee John McCain said that the Iraqis have split into two factions, Shiites and Sunnis, with a sinister goal in mind. 

“My friends, the Iraqis have divided themselves into these two groups for one reason and one reason only,” Sen. McCain told an audience in a retirement village in Scottsdale, Arizona. “They are trying to confuse me.” 

Sen. McCain said that although the two groups of Iraqis are “well-nigh impossible” to tell apart, he vowed to commit U.S. troops to Iraq “for as long as it takes for me to figure out just what the difference between Sunnis and Shiites is.” 

“If it takes 100 years, 1,000 years, or a billion zillion years, we will stay there until I can tell Sunnis and Shiites apart,” the Arizona senator said. 

Sen. McCain reserved his harshest words for the Shiites, who he said were trying to confuse him by sometimes referring to themselves as “Shiites” and other times as “Shia.” 

“What’s that all about, anyway?” he asked. “Stop clowning around and call yourself one thing.” 

Sen. McCain seemed alarmed when a reporter asked him whether he believed that the Kurds, the third major group in Iraq, were trying to confuse him as well. 

“The Kurds?” he said. “Who the heck are they?” 

Elsewhere, a carjacker in Los Angeles stole a tank of gas but left the Mercedes. 

 

If you enjoyed the above, subscribe to Andy’s brilliant column here.  It’s free!

 

 

Victor Navasky Discusses Expertology and Iraq Misstatements on “Anti-War Radio”

Scott Horton interviewed Institute of Expertology co-founder Victor Navasky last week on his radio program, “Antiwar Radio.” You can read about and/or listen to it by visiting Scott Horton’s “Antiwar Radio” Website.  Or you can listen to the interview — enhanced with video segments and images provided by Scott Horton himself –by clicking on the links below:

    PART ONE:

    PART TWO:

    PART THREE:

    PART FOUR:

 

Thanks, Brooke Allen!

Brooke Allen is the author of Twentieth-Century Attitudes: Literary Powers in Uncertain Times, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, so she certainly qualifies as a meta-expert, and the Institute of Expertology would have been proud to welcome her to full membership even if she hadn’t just written a glowing review of our recent publication, Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq. But, it turns out, she has written such a review and it appears in the May 26, 2008 edition of B&N Review. We encourage you to read it (below), and to join us in as we proudly welcome Ms. Allen to our organization.

 

Reader’s Diary, by Brooke Allen

What were we thinking? Five years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a hung-over America surveys the damage and wonders just how it got into this mess, while the very same politicians, journalists, and “experts” who sold us the war are now busy disclaiming all responsibility. In their marvelously (if grimly) amusing new book, Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks), Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky have collected a chapbook of priceless quotations from the warmongers — including “the highest government officials, diplomats, Cabinet officers, four-star generals, big-foot pundits, prize-winning Middle East scholars, top think-tank strategists, the leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency, and such” — that predicted instant victory, a new world order, and liberty and oil for all.

This book has now superseded that old standby The World’s Stupidest Criminals as my favorite bathroom reading. Here, for example, is Laura Ingraham on UN arms inspector Hans Blix: “He couldn’t find a stretch-mark on Rosie O’Donnell.” And Alan Foley of the CIA: “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.” Charles Krauthammer’s 2003 claim that “the only people who think this wasn’t a victory are Upper West Side liberals, and a few people here in Washington” was echoed by General Tommy Franks — who of all people should have known better — a year later, when he said that “history will record” Operation Iraqi Freedom as “unequalled in excellence by anything in the annals of war.” John Yoo, Condi Rice, Christopher Hitchens, Alberto Gonzales, and of course Dubya himself (“No president has done more for human rights than I have”): all the biggies are here, trapped now in their own sticky web.

 

Institute’s New Treatise on McCain’s Iraq Expertise Available on Tomdispatch.com

The Institute of Expertology is proud to announce that Tom Engelhardt has made a new article by Institute co-founders Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf the main feature on his blog, Tomdispatch.com, for May 29, 2008.  The article, entitled “McCain (Mis)Speaks: How the Senator Won the War of Words in Iraq (again and again and again…),” features the findings of a new Institute study designed to put (as Engelhardt phrases it) “Senator McCain’s particular brand of expertise in context.”  You can read it by clicking here.

 

“Mission Accomplished!” is “shrewd, lucid, and tragically funny” – Huffington Post

Many thanks to The Huffington Post for last week’s stunning blurb about the Institute’s current compendium of authoritative misinformation concerning America’s military adventure in Iraq.  Here’s a reprint:

“Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won The War In Iraq,” Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf’s shrewd, lucid and tragically funny compendium of ‘experts’ offering their (erroneous, comically misguided, and even outright false) thoughts on the Iraq war, has been a great hit since its release in late March. Still hovering near the top 100 on Amazon, it is destined to become one of the essential collections for those trying to remember how the Iraq fiasco came to be. Read an excerpt here. or buy the book here. 

Download the “Vodcast” of Cerf & Navasky’s Moyers Appearance

The Institute of Expertology is proud to announce that Institute executives Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky’s appearance on Bill Moyers’ Journal is now available as a video podcat (“vodcast”).  You can download it to your own computer by clicking here.

Many thanks from all of us at the Institute of Expertology to everyone at Bill Moyers’ Journal for making this vodcast available (and for having Victor and Chris on the show!).