Patterico's Pontifications

6/19/2008

Patterico Breaks Public Nudity Pledge

Filed under: 2008 Election,Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 10:49 pm



[IMPORTANT UPDATE: See the update below. I now have another way to weasel out of what I promised. Namely, they changed the story. Not that I wasn’t going to weasel anyway.]

I recently pledged:

If the L.A. Times tells readers that Obama actually made a clear pledge [to accept public financing], I will parade naked down Broadway at high noon the following day for an hour.

You have my solemn word on that. And I will aggressively pursue an agreement with myself to ensure that it actually happens.

The front page of the L.A. Times web site says:

In reversal, Obama says he will forgo public funds

He abandons an earlier pledge to participate in the system if his GOP challenger agreed to do the same.

Following the link takes you to a deck headline that includes this sentence: “The presumptive Democratic nominee calls the system ‘broken,’ reversing an earlier commitment.”

It takes until the end of the story to get the details of the pledge, but here they are:

In a questionnaire that Obama got from a Midwest network of good government groups in November, he was asked if he would forego private funding provided his opponents did the same.

Obama answered: “Yes.”

“I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests,” he wrote.

Wow. They did it.

Accordingly, I hereby announce that I will not be doing my naked parade.

I never promised to anyway. I promised to aggressively pursue an agreement with myself. It was a plan, not a pledge. And plans change.

It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public nudity. But that system as it exists today is broken. It is a broken system. We face old women and men who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system, and parading around their wrinkly carcasses in front of appalled onlookers. In light of this broken system, which is broken, my aggressive pursuit of an agreement with myself has resulted in failure.

Thank you.

UPDATE: I got an earlier version, which has now been rewritten. It’s substantially watered down now. The version in the print edition is much more the version I expected to see.

35 Responses to “Patterico Breaks Public Nudity Pledge”

  1. Well, I’m sure you have Phil’s support.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  2. “Accordingly, I hereby announce that I will not be doing my naked parade.”

    And thank you for making that public announcement on the blog. TMI. And I wonder if THAT will make the LA Times tomorrow. LOL!

    But, all joke’s aside, it is amazing how the media is making such a big tiff of Obama’s announcement not accepting public financing yet the media doesn’t make a fuss over Teflon John’s entourage of lobbyists financing his campaign. But, you know this is politics. This will be certainly an ugly and long campaign race until November.

    SP Biloxi (e7a592)

  3. SP Biloxi, rather pathetic attempt at a thread hijack.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  4. Biloxi – Those lobbyists you speak of are limited to the same individual contributions as the people contributing to Obama’s campaign. WTF are you talking about?

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  5. I support your decision, Patterico. This *Change We Can Believe In* should work for everyone, not just Obama.

    DRJ (1a5f9b)

  6. Dammit. I wanted to see the debate on free speech unrelated to your job that would certainly have followed the parade.

    Anwyn (a130c1)

  7. SP Biloxi, rather pathetic attempt at a thread hijack.

    Comment by SPQR — 6/19/2008 @ 11:14 pm

    No, I am not hijacking the thread.

    WTF are you talking about?

    Comment by daleyrocks — 6/19/2008 @ 11:20 pm

    If you check McCain’s campaign, he has more lobbyists on his bankroll than Obama. I’m not saying Obama doesn’t have lobbyists on his bankroll. I don’t see the media touching on that! Moving on…

    SP Biloxi (1d86b8)

  8. “If you check McCain’s campaign, he has more lobbyists on his bankroll than Obama.”

    SP Biloxi – You claimes the lobbyists were financing McCain’s campaign:

    “the media doesn’t make a fuss over Teflon John’s entourage of lobbyists financing his campaign.”

    Which demonstrates either you are a liar or you don’t know what you or talking about or possibly both. I think you are just regurgitating talking points you read somewhere without bothering to understand them.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  9. Numerically, one parade is but a sliver’s difference from no parade. I’m sure the LAT will understand.

    Ed (a9dfde)

  10. Perhaps you could parade with only a maximum of two layers of clothing no yourself?

    It’s very similar, and is a working solution for the broken “public nudity” system.

    Foxfier (15ac79)

  11. Obama is surrounded by lobbyists… they call themselves ‘former lobbyists’. It means they are unregistered, I guess.

    Can anyone seriously claim that Rezko did not act as a lobbyist, and directly financed Obama’s lifestyle? Sure, it was criminal stuff, but it’s lobbying.

    Mccain’s lobbyists follow the law, but Obama is the guy getting all the hard to track internet donations after a slew of Democratic fund bundling scandals, and also seems to be associated with a lot of criminals, though he may not have a choice being part of the Chicago ‘same old dirty politics’ machine.

    There is no middle ground on this issue: Obama cannot take the high ground on shady dealings.

    His refusal to keep his word is a huge problem that we’ve seen repeatedly (though this is perhaps the most extreme example of a broken campaign pledge I’ve ever seen). Obama seriously thinks he can get away with all kinds of stuff, which is the best reason to vote against him.

    Jem (4cdfb7)

  12. I quote the LA Times: “but what Prosecuter Frey did not inform his blog readers was the chance that he would claim innocence of the necessity to parade naked: That chance was 1 in 3.”

    Apogee (366e8b)

  13. You didn’t break your pledge. You reversed your commitment.

    Evil Pundit (38b435)

  14. Of course, you can still keep your pledge if you want to. Cars are in parades all the time. A one car parade. Just don’t stop at the drive-through for a snack on the way to Broadway. And parade reallly fast 🙂

    no one you know (1ebbb1)

  15. Patterico, you are just one of the same old politicians. Say anything and do anything to win. How could you? Is this the change we can believe in you promised? Now you throw parading nude on broadway at high noon under the bus. Whats next? I am disappointed in you. And to think i voted for you…..(WTF am I talking about?…)

    love2008 (0c8c2c)

  16. Friends and admirers of Lady Bird Johnson applauded today the recent announcement on the Patterio web site ….

    jim2 (a9ab88)

  17. WaPo’s Fact Checker only gave Obama three Pinocchios (meaning “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions”) out of a possible four (“whoppers”). Why this isn’t a “whopper,” I can’t fathom, but they point to the “fine print” (“aggressively pursue”) and the forty-minute perfunctory meeting between two lawyers for the respective campaigns as exculpatory.

    Elsewhere, the WaPo editorial board lectures Obama, after pointing out the obvious fact that he’s been running as a holier than thou (whoever the hell thou art, especially if thou art John McCain) candidate on funding issues:

    Fine. Politicians do what politicians need to do. But they ought to spare us the self-congratulatory back-patting while they’re doing it.

    Me, I’d score it Four Pinocchios with the donkey tail and ears — hee-haw!

    Beldar (0fc285)

  18. So, Patterico, if I understand you correctly, you’ll be nekkid at noon! I’ll be on Broadway, waving my flag as the one-man parade prances by. Change we can believe in, indeed!

    AMac (f4c615)

  19. you’re trying to milk a steer here.

    assistant devil's advocate (15c21c)

  20. Thank you.

    No, thank you. For breaking the pledge, that is.

    Xrlq (b71926)

  21. I hate to break up the party, but the version of the story that is now on the LA Times web site no longer includes the clear, unambiguous language about breaking the pledge. The subhead is gone, it waits until the 7th graf to say that McCain “accused” Obama of breaking the pledge, and the section at the end dealing with the questionnaire now hedges his “yes” with his desire to negotiate an agreement with this Republican opponent.

    If the original post was accurate, at some point after it hit the web site the story went through some very heavy editing that softens the point. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.

    PA fan (08ce8f)

  22. Pie throwing . . . streaking . . .

    In a way I am kinda jealous of Republicans this election season. Your campaign is essentially a big frat party dedicated to making fun of the Democrats.

    Phil (0ef625)

  23. No, thank you. For breaking the pledge, that is.

    Amen to that…

    Scott Jacobs (fa5e57)

  24. Your campaign is essentially a big frat party dedicated to making fun of the Democrats.

    Yeah, well, if your guy wasn’t a joke, it would be harder for us…

    Scott Jacobs (fa5e57)

  25. …dedicated to making fun of the Democrats.

    Who deserve thanks for making it so easy to do that.

    Old Coot (85f458)

  26. “[T]he record makes clear that Obama is doing a 180 on his previous position.” — Howard Kurtz, writing in the Washington Post today.

    Person No. 85 (a1522a)

  27. I’m thinking that circumstances warrant striking-out the current headline on this post, replacing it with the more journalistic Patterico Sets His Own Terms for the Parade.

    PCachu (e072b7)

  28. Maybe you can send Gisele Bundchen in your place. You can claim to have kept your pledge but simply employed an outside contractor, and we can all be happy (well, at least half of us can be).

    JVW (ce519b)

  29. You never did eat that hat either. That would be the hat you claimed you would eat if I provided evidence that Sutton lied in his “fact sheet”.

    j curtis (c84b9e)

  30. And being racists, Phil. Don’t forget that the Republicans get to act like racists.

    JD (75f5c3)

  31. We face old women and men who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system, and parading around their wrinkly carcasses in front of appalled onlookers.

    Ya know, I doubt the factual basis of your justification for not parading about in your skivvies, but I’ll let that one slide. Actually, you could have mentioned hordes of marauding unicorns as part of the reason to not prance about Broadway, and that would still be acceptable.

    bridget (add3eb)

  32. Don’t even think about prancing around on Broadway – you’ll inevitably wind up on some judge’s private files…and have to post about it. Which might be a tad embarrassing. But you’d sure get a lot of comments.

    Heh.

    Dana (eb599c)

  33. A naked walk on Broadway in 95 degree heat? Now, that’s what I call a “distraction”!

    Patricia (f56a97)

  34. This may be the first time I’ve been grateful for flip-flopping (Patterico’s, not Obama’s)

    LYT (b67340)

  35. Here’s the story Obama saved for a Friday release, presumably because it’s even worse news than his flip-flop on public financing:

    Fundraising continues to decline as Obama had his weakest fund-raising month this year.

    DRJ (6ae0d1)


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