THE JOURNOLIST HAS A HICCUP: Jon Favreau, Shaun King, Linda Sarsour and other libs just committed the greatest self-own in the history of Twitter.
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PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau today:
Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favraeu on the left in 2008:
Perhaps Favraeu is once again trying to bring us all “peace in our time” in his own special way yet again.
STRAWMEN EXPLODE: Dear Jon Favreau – There’s No Such Thing As No-Government Conservatives.
Hell, I’d settle for government the size it was in 1987. 1969 is just a dream. . . .
A BINDER FULL OF SPEECHES: Jon Favreau takes credit for Obama’s inaugural speech.
ANN ALTHOUSE: Admit it! You’re jealous of Jon Favreau! “Or do you think Favreau also has some magical charisma that Obama saw and saw himself in?”
DEE DEE MYERS: Favreau’s Sexist Photo Is No Laughing Matter. “At what point does sexist behavior get taken seriously? At what point do people get punished in ways that suggest this kind of behavior, this kind of thinking, is unacceptable? At what point do we insist there will be consequences?” Based on experience, it’s at the point where the person is a Republican . . . .
But maybe Favreau is just preparing for a career in advertising.
SOME FEMINISTS aren’t giving a pass to Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.
UPDATE: Reader Brian Hancock writes: “Waiting for the bumper sticker: ‘Have you groped your cardboard Hillary today?'”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. “If this is supposed to be excused as a ‘youthful indiscretion’ because Favreau is ‘so young’ then I think Obama’s judgment in continuing to rely professionally on someone so ‘young’ and irresponsible and offensively sexist can reasonably be questioned.”
A LUKEWARM REVIEW FOR IRON MAN, from Kyle Smith: “The first hour of Jon Favreau’s new film is right up there with the best movies of the genre. Too bad the second half sounds like a Ralph Nader lecture on America’s responsibility for all the world’s wars.”
BLUEANON BLAME GAME! ‘Scapegoat’ George Clooney to ‘Step Back from Politics.’
“George Clooney feels he is being used as a ‘scapegoat’ in the furious blame game over who could have cost Kamala Harris the election – and will now take a step back from politics,” reports the Daily Mail.
Clooney “threw his support behind Harris after penning a blistering op-ed on why Joe Biden would cost the Democrats the win if he didn’t abandon his campaign,” the report continues, adding, “but it still wasn’t enough to prevent a historic victory for Donald Trump.”
“Clooney has since been criticized by Democrats for his influence during the election, with some claiming Harris’ loss was his fault.”
To be fair, it could have been far worse, according to former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau: Biden’s internal polling had Trump winning 400 electoral votes, ex-Obama official claims: ‘Catastrophic mistake.’
To be fair, Ed Morrissey files Favreau’s statement as “Too Fun to Check.” “[C]olor me very skeptical on this claim, at least until Favreau produces the data. Team Kamala has begun spinning like a top to blame Biden for the loss in order to preserve her potential as a candidate down the road, and this looks like a political myth in the making. ”
Meanwhile, Variety, when not being obsessed with getting Ezra Miller’s pronouns correct, is big mad at everyone in flyover country! Stop Blaming ‘Celebrity Endorsements’ for Kamala Harris’ Loss: We Need to Hear From Artists Now More Than Ever.
In the end, it’s not just about newbie registrations or political conversions — it’s about inspiration for the already committed, too, and salve. Those who already knew who they were going to vote for don’t cherish the memory of hearing Isbell sing “Hope the High Road,” Springsteen do “Land of Hope and Dreams” or Gaga perform “God Bless America” any less for the electoral loss. And in the wake of the national defeat, there’s a sense of feeling less alone and ready to move forward even in some of the tweets that have gone out. Watching Eilish dedicate “Your Power” to disheartened women the night after the election is re-heartening. Even having Bette Midler tweet out a lengthy, trenchant H.L. Mencken quote — basically, as gallows humor — can feel a little healing, even if it’s a big Hollywood celebrity and not your personal BFF sending it through.
Whether it has any effect or not, everyone has to answer the question for themslves, if not their children: “What did you do in the war, daddy?” Imagine feeling — as Bruce Springsteen did — that “Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime,” and then stifling that because of what the New York Post or the twits on Elon Musk’s platform might write.
I agree! In fact, going forward, the left should take inspiration from this 2016 Onion headline:
SANDY’S WAR: AOC Eviscerates America.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) used to believe that “anybody can grow up to be president” of the United States. Not anymore, she told GQ magazine, which features the hard-left Democrat on the cover of its October 2022 issue.
After serving in Congress for three and a half years, Ocasio-Cortez is increasingly skeptical that a woman will ever be elected president of the United States because the American people are a bunch of raving misogynists. “My experience here has given me a front-row seat to how deeply and unconsciously, as well as consciously, so many people in this country hate women. And they hate women of color,” she told celebrity journalist Wesley Lowery. “I admit to sometimes believing that I live in a country that would never let that happen.”
Lowery described how the congresswoman known as “AOC” started to cry while explaining her reluctance to tell little girls her honest opinion about whether America is too sexist to elect a female president. “I never want to tell a little girl what she can’t do,” she said. “And I don’t want to tell young people what is not possible.” Ocasio-Cortez went on to say she also dislikes questions “about the future” because she can’t say for certain whether she’ll even “be alive” a month from now.
“The American people are a bunch of raving misogynists.” To be fair, many of them are in the same party as AOC, such as Obama’s “peace in our time” speechwriter, Jon Favreau:
And this prominent Democratic Party supporter:
And this fellow, who’s currently (p)resident:
During the pre-Covid antebellum of 2019, much ink was spent on AOC’s crazed first draft of the Green Nude Eel with its references to “farting cows and airplanes,” and her quote that we only have 12 years left if we don’t ban pretty much everything. So why is AOC accelerating our demise by increasing the strain on GQ’s air conditioned server farms? Why data centers are the new frontier in the fight against climate change.
(Classical reference in headline.)
SO GLAD IT’S NOT A CESSPIT OF MISOGYNY LIKE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Like America: Half of Trump’s staff are women.
Flashback: Obama speechwriter photographed groping Hillary Clinton likeness.
Remember this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau?
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM, SEXISM, MISOGYNY, AND HATE? New Biden Arizona Hire Tweets Show Racist, Sexist, And Anti-Cop Tendencies.
Some examples:
Flashback: Obama speechwriter photographed groping Hillary Clinton likeness.
I mean, who could’ve seen that coming when it started out with things like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Who Is Writing Brad Pitt’s Awards Season Speeches?
Fenway Strategies is a speechwriting and communications firm founded by former Obama administration officials Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Although the firm’s most obvious connection is to the political arena, helping speakers prep TED talks or United Nations addresses, Fenway has branched out into Hollywood. And over the last few years the firm has helped ghostwrite awards acceptance speeches for a number of A-list clients; you definitely know them but their identities are protected by non-disclosure agreements.
To hear it from Fenway principal Sam Koppelman, a former speechwriter for Michael Bloomberg and digital strategist for Hillary Clinton who also co-authored the New York Times best seller Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump, the practice is so widespread among movie, music, and TV stars nowadays, he finds it more astonishing to discover a nominee has eschewed professional speechwriting help than when one seeks it out.
“Writing for actors is a speechwriter’s dream come true,” says Koppelman. “Because unlike politicians, who are not professionals at memorizing lines or delivering them in compelling and charismatic ways, actors actually know how to deliver the lines.”
Why, it’s like Hollywood is the Democrat base or something.
THE MANDALORIAN: Dear Disney, Ignore the SJWs, Star Wars Is Good Again.
If there’s one thing SJWs love to attack, it’s Disney and Disney related properties. This includes Star Wars, which, thanks to an infusion of social justice, has really sucked lately. Anyone who watches the new sequels starring Rey the Mary Sue and her merry band of social justice list checks knows they’re horribly written, off character entries that have done so badly and angered so many fans that they’re rumored to be taking the product out of executive producer Kathleen Kennedy’s hands and putting them into John Favreau’s.
And that’s the best news any Star Wars fan can ask for given the current predicament because Favreau has already proven he can make excellent Star Wars, seeing as how his show “The Mandalorian,” is so good that it actually has me excited about Star Wars again.
Melissa and I watched the first two episodes with our boys on Sunday night, and everybody agreed The Mandalorian was loads of fun. Maybe not great Star Wars, but very good Star Wars — and after the twin disasters of Solo and The Last Jedi, that’s enough to generate a new hope for the franchise.
But not for next month’s The Rise of Skywalker, which looks just awful.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC: Why is this Republican, who’s actually a Democrat, posing with a cardboard cut-out of me?
It’s not the mistake that’s irksome. Mistakes happen. It’s the endless g*ddamned whining all the time. She’s a political celebrity on par with Nancy Pelosi, certainly more recognizable than Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell, and instead of laughing off a light joke like this as one of the perks/pitfalls of celebrity she has to turn it into an assignment for gender studies class. It’s revealing too that she deleted the tweet and didn’t repost it with the correct party ID for Yarmuth. If it’s troubling for whatever weird reason to have Republican men posing with cut-outs of young women, why isn’t it troubling to have Democratic men posing with them?
Is AOC having trouble identifying sexist men in her own party? Plenty of righties would be happy to share a few names with her.
It gets better, as Ryan Saavedra of the Daily Wire tweets: “Even more embarrassing for Ocasio-Cortez, she is a co-sponsor of legislation reintroduced by John Yarmuth earlier this month:”
Fortunately though, the House of Stephanopoulos has her back: At last: ABC News reports that Republicans Pounce on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ deleted tweet.
Of course, as Greg Pollowitz tweets, Ocasio-Cortez “is right. Dems have a creepy obsession with cardboard cutouts of other Dems.”
CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR: The Amazing Story of How Trolling by Obama Gave Us Trump.
Read the whole thing, including this:
I don’t see how being held up to public ridicule by Obama can possibly be discounted as something that convinced Trump to run for president. In fact, it is very much in sync with what we know about Trump.
Now, did he expect to win when he launched his campaign? I don’t think so. There was an interview by an early member of Team Trump that gave the distinct impression that he wanted a credible showing as a springboard to more reality television.
Who else didn’t think he’d win against Hillary, and was using his longshot election bid as a springboard to gain additional notoriety? Oh yeah, this once-unknown politician:
Soon-to-be-candidate Obama, then an Illinois senator, was thinking about turning down an invitation to speak at a big health care conference sponsored by the progressive group Families USA [in January 2007], when two aides, Robert Gibbs and Jon Favreau, hit on an idea that would make him appear more prepared and committed than he actually was at the moment.
Why not just announce his intention to pass universal health care by the end of his first term?…
“We needed something to say,” recalled one of the advisers involved in the discussion. “I can’t tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good. So they just kind of hatched it on their own. It just happened. It wasn’t like a deep strategic conversation.”…
The candidate jumped at it. He probably wasn’t going to get elected anyway, the team concluded. Why not go big?
Why not indeed? The result was a hollowing out of the Democrats’ backbench due to Obamacare’s deep unpopularity, giving the Democrats very few options for 2016, except for a remarkably flawed retread.
FLASHBACK: Obama speechwriter photographed groping Hillary Clinton likeness.
I mean, who could’ve seen that coming when it started out with things like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
Imagine the difference in treatment if these had been Trump staffers. “Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
INTERESTING CHOICE OF DOMAIN NAME: The Hill‘s Joe Concha reporting that:
A new media company aimed at millennials and featuring multiple former members of the Obama administration — including Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Ben Rhodes, along with former New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler — is expanding.
Check out the domain name they chose in second graf. I guess “JuiceBoxMafia.com” was already taken. Heh.
WEIRD HOW THE PRESS DIDN’T REALLY COVER THIS: Obama’s White House Boys’ Club: New Obama White House Memoir Reveals Staff Drinking, ‘D*ck Jokes,’ and Womanizing.
I mean, who could’ve seem that coming when it started out with things like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
Imagine the difference in treatment if these had been Trump staffers. “Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
ABYSSINIA, RAHM: Mayor Emanuel didn’t seek comparison to Mussolini in NYT op-ed, the Chicago Tribune notes:
Either someone at The New York Times doesn’t like Mayor Rahm Emanuel very much, or the Gray Lady needs to brush up on her history.*
How else to account for the unfortunate evocation of murderous Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the headline NYT editors put on Emanuel’s op-ed column about his work to improve the CTA in Monday’s Times?
“Rahm Emanuel: In Chicago, the Trains Actually Run on Time,” blared the Times’ online headline for a column in which Emanuel favorably contrasted his policy of putting maintenance and reliability ahead of expansion of the city’s rail system.
Was it over when Chicago bombed Ethiopia?!
* Since they’re almost entirely Democrats with bylines at the Times, let’s go with the latter — layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors — who have no knowledge of history. Shades of Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau putting the unfortunate Neville again “Peace in our time” phrase into his boss’s second inauguration address to create a classic Kinsley gaffe.
I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE OBAMA BOYS CLUB WHITE HOUSE, but I’m supposed to be outraged at this: Men outnumber women more than 2-1 among top White House aides.
I guess it’ll be a hotbed of woman-grabbing misogyny like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
“Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
THANK GOODNESS WE’VE PUT THE OBAMA “BOYS CLUB” WHITE HOUSE BEHIND US: Trump expected to pick Cathy McMorris Rodgers to run Interior as he nears assembling the most woman-packed initial cabinet in history.
Under Trump, we’d never see anything as disgraceful as this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
“Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
THIS JON LOVETT TWEET IS WHY I ACTUALLY FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT TRUMP’S WIN:
McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed had a terrific piece, back in July, on the long, winding road that led to Donald J. Trump’s decision to earnestly seek the presidency in 2016. I blogged about it for this website. One of the most interesting parts about McKay’s article was how seminal a role Trump’s getting relentlessly mocked—at the height of the “Birtherism” faux controversy—by President Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner played in his ultimate decision to run.
Looking back on [the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner], [White House speechwriters Jon] Favreau and [Jon] Lovett told me they were torn about having added weight to the chip on Trump’s shoulder “I really don’t take any pleasure in Trump being the nominee, sincerely, even if it means they lose,” Lovett said. “If only we hadn’t made that joke, maybe we’d have peace in our time.”
Choose the form of your destructor, to coin a phrase. And speaking of phrases, peace in our time, you say? Favreau was the speechwriter who typed that Chamberlain-esque phrase into President Burgundy’s teleprompter for his second inauguration speech, while Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett were working hard to create a Munich-like appeasement with Iran.
Incidentally, that’s Favreau on the left in this photo from 2008:
But wait, it gets better:
But that does not make any less staggeringly amazing this Monday evening tweet from the aforementioned Lovett, who thus opined on the eve of Election Day:
Said it before, but it’s a shame Trump is so pathetic because the Hillary campaign was built and ready for a far better, tougher opponent.
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) November 8, 2016
Let’s do this together, folks: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Speaking of Iran, Claudia Rosett has some advice for When the Trump Team Comes Looking for the Secrets of Obama’s Iran File.
MIND YOUR BETTERS: Clinton campaign warns media to tread carefully.
While Clinton responded to a fit of coughing this week with humor, saying she was “allergic” to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, her aides and surrogates played the role of bad cop.
Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill took to task an NBC reporter who wrote about the coughing spell, posting on Twitter that the writer should “get a life.”
The five-paragraph story, by Andrew Rafferty, was titled “Hillary Clinton fights back coughing attack” and reported that the “frog in Clinton’s throat on Monday was one of the most aggressive she’s had during her 2016 run.”Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama, asked via Twitter if “anyone on NBC, or anywhere else,” was willing to defend the piece.
The pushback signaled that Clinton’s campaign intends to sharply counterattack news organizations that take questions about her health seriously.
C’mon, media — you going to take this lying down?