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• Tuesday, April 15, 2008 07:12 PM

  this is probably pointless to analyze but...

  Here is Obama's remark (as I found it online) "She's talking like she's Annie Oakley! Hillary Clinton's out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday, she's packin' a six shooter!"

  I thought it was pretty funny--I admit I thought it was in poor taste, just because the Annie Oakley caricature is at least somewhat sexist, and Clinton could not have responded with an analogous historical African American without looking very bad.

  But never in my wildest dreams did I think you could mangle this sequence of intentionally silly, disconnected images into an argument about what kind of weapon you'd use to shoot ducks. As far as I know, Walsh is the first to try. Me, I'd have gone for the sexist angle. And by the way, I do respect Walsh's good-natured reporting of Obama's rebuttal last week, but it looks like we're back to this sort of thing.

  Oakley, as you may know (or looked up as I did) was not a duck hunter but a sharpshooter who traveled with Buffalo Bill. "Whether it be a pistol, rifle, or shotgun, the legendary markswoman Annie Oakley was masterful with them all." or so says my search result, so we're partially covered here already.

  Obama suggested (comically) that (a) Clinton thinks she's Annie Oakley (b) She wants us to think she is a devoted duck hunter and (c) she's "packing heat" (not necessarily on the duck blind but maybe the campaign trail) or wants us to think so. The six shooter calls to mind the Old West, rather than ducks, but that makes it funnier than a reference to whatever the 21st century duck hunter prefers.

  I mean, I don't even think comments like this help Obama, because it's just too over the top. The seeming spontaneity was probably the biggest selling point. If he had focus-grouped the thing with hunters, who knows what sort of unfunny pseudo-joke we'd be hearing.

  In short, I have no axe to grind with Walsh, and I respect that she likes Hillary, but man, stop grasping at straws.

  —PaulBC Read PaulBC's other letters
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