A case in point. Back during Obama's 2008 campaign run, he said that he had visited 57 states. Without any concern for the context of the statement, the right-wingers seized on this and declared that the Harvard Law School graduate and professor of constitutional law at Chicago University was so stupid that he thinks the country has 57 states.
The right-wingers loved this notion so much that, abetted by their favorite talk show hosts, they indulged in the pleasure of repeating it over and over and over again for years and years. (I heard a caller bring it up as recently as a couple of months ago on Rush Limbag's show.)
But, just as the laughter one experiences after a good joke eventually subsides, the "Obama is stupid" notion -- though going strong for three years -- began to lose some of its gratification.
So, after wringing almost as much pleasure as they could out of the "Obama is stupid" notion (they are still doing it eight years later), the degenerative nature of Obama Derangement Syndrome eventually took its course and the right-wingers' reasoning went from ridiculous to flat-out nutbag loony.
A new notion began to emerge from the crazed minds of those suffering from ODS. And it went like this:
"OK, you Obama apologists, you say the gaffe was just a slip of the tongue? Well, it was a Freudian slip! He accidentally referred to the 57 Islamic states of the world!"
Let's let one of the battiest Members of Congress and man who belongs in a padded cell, Rep. Louie Gohmert, explain, as he did on the floor of the House of Representatives in 2011:
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this ridiculous notion was such a topic of conversation among the right-wingnuts, that it actually made it to the floor of the House, three fucking years later.
So, since then, the right-wing nuts have been going back and forth, according to their fancy, between the "Obama is stupid" and the "Obama is helping to usher in the reign of the Islamic Caliphate" notions.
The Daily Kos gave a much more plausible explanation for Obama's gaffe:
Obama said in this 2008 visit to Oregon that he had visited 57 states, "one left to go" and then noted that he couldn't go to Alaska and Hawaii because it was too far to justify. So, Obama was trying to visit all 48 continental states, and he was trying to say that he had been to 47 states. It's easy to say 57 instead of 47, "fifty" is similar to "forty" and when we talk about states, it is ingrained in us all to say "50 states" instinctively.
There is one thing I'd like to point out, though. If you refuse to believe that Obama's gaffe was a mere slip of the tongue, then anyone with only average reading/listening comprehension and second grade level arithmetic ability should be able to figure out that Obama thinks that there are 60 states, not 57.
Here: (according to Obama) the 57 continental states he visited, plus the one he hadn't yet, makes 58. Plus Alaska and Hawaii makes 60.
But, actually, thinking that there are 60 states, instead of 50, is really
a sign of ignorance and not a true indication of stupidity. On the other hand,
not being able to process and understand what Obama said well enough to make the
correct inference for how many states he thinks there are -- doesn't say much for
that person's processing capacity.
It's bad enough that ODS sufferers have to twist reason and logic to prove Obama is stupid, but when they inadvertently prove their own stupidity in the process, well, that's the kind of irony that gives someone like me the kind of pleasure that ODS sufferers were seeking in the first place.
In my next post (part two) we will compare the intelligence of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to that of President Obama.
