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Grasping at straws: Bittergate is flailing
dailykos.com — The Clinton campaign believes it has found a silver bullet -- served with a side of brie and chardonnay -- in Obama's recent comments. The problem is, no one seems to care.
okayokayokay- 82 diggs
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- alwor, on 04/12/2008, -4/+6Glad to hear there are some sense in people still...
- buhbyebot, on 04/13/2008, -1/+3heh.
- deadbaby, on 04/13/2008, -2/+15"Senator Obama, don't pity us and think that we're bitter and frustrated," he said in Winterville this morning"
Well I AM bitter and frustrated. I guess Clinton isn't the right candidate for me then huh? Thanks for clearing that up. - brokenspatula, on 04/13/2008, -4/+1obviously you care enough to write about it, although reading anything you write is a waste of time
- smacksaw, on 04/13/2008, -0/+10People were probably not that bitter until McCain and Clinton started making it an issue of propaganda instead of concrete ideas that lead to solutions for said bitterness.
- wrongonce, on 04/13/2008, -0/+14Anyone: "People of America have feelings and opinions."
Clinton: "How dare you accuse Americans of such things!" - DeathJux, on 04/13/2008, -2/+6What the ***** is this "Bittergate" nonsense? Why the ***** has "Watergate" turned into some sort of Political meme (at least on digg)??
- carpespasm, on 04/13/2008, -0/+3because everytime there's a presidentially involved scandal (man that word is being watered down) there's a tendancy to try to tie it to watergate. This is a bit of a stretch though.
- bicyclethief, on 04/13/2008, -0/+2The addition of -gate just means it's "officially" a scandal, like Watergate. But it never has anything to do with Watergate.
- HenvY, on 04/13/2008, -0/+4How long have you been following politics, 10 seconds? Pretty much EVERY political scandal since watergate in the US has had the 'gate' tagged onto it.
- macweirdo42, on 04/13/2008, -0/+2Do you watch TV? Read the newspaper? Do you interact with people at all? Because EVERY single political scandal since Watergate has used the "gate" meme, and this trend started long, long before the days of Digg. I agree that it's annoying as hell, but in this case, it isn't Digg's fault.
Funny observation - here on Digg, a meme outstays its welcome by a month or so, and pretty soon you have a a flock of comments like "old meme is old" and the like. Whereas in the real world, memes tend to outstay their welcome by several decades. Of course, this says more to the fact that the more traditional news mediums tend to be one-sided, and so we, the viewers, don't get a chance to say, "Argh, we've had it up to here with your 'witty' headlines that rely on tired puns."
- carpespasm, on 04/13/2008, -0/+3because everytime there's a presidentially involved scandal (man that word is being watered down) there's a tendancy to try to tie it to watergate. This is a bit of a stretch though.
- leontes, on 04/13/2008, -1/+2We as a internet really need to come up with a better way of dealing with supporting our candidates than the patterns we've displayed here on digg. Although jockeying for position using preemptive perceptive superiority is the usual for politics, as we've seen with ron paul now obama, it gets old and repetitive.
- lukas88, on 04/13/2008, -0/+1I am with you on that. People need to maintain objectivity even if they support a candidate. The problem arises when all of the sudden one candidate can do no wrong and the other can do no right.
Hillary is not especially evil, she is just doing what she thinks is most likely to help her win the race. She might have sunk to a low level in doing so, but she isn't the antichrist that many diggers make her out to be.
In contrast, Obama is not the messiah, and he is certainly not perfect. I think he is the better choice out of the two and he does give me hope about the direction of the country, but a healthy amount of skepticism is still prudent.
- lukas88, on 04/13/2008, -0/+1I am with you on that. People need to maintain objectivity even if they support a candidate. The problem arises when all of the sudden one candidate can do no wrong and the other can do no right.
- diggeradoo, on 04/13/2008, -0/+4Healthcare crisis, Mortgage crisis, bankruptcies, Iraq war siphoning away hundreds of billions of dollars, NAFTA, economy near recession ... sounds perfectly rosy to me. Why would anyone be bitter?
- NoDrama, on 04/13/2008, -0/+3Obama's lovin' the irony, I tell ya. Two aging millionaires with even richer spouses accuse him of being elitist and out of touch? I'm pretty sure they couldn't give him any better way to talk about hope. Sure, there are some folks who buy their arguments, but they're already decided voters - the folks who aren't sure ARE bitter and tired of the same old tactics, such as out of context attacks. http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/Oboo ...
- SzaszMan, on 04/13/2008, -0/+4This story has even less legs than the Reverend Wright kerfluffle. Multimillionaire Clinton (and perhaps McCain, with his multimillionaire heiress wife) will flog this thing as hard as they can, I'm sure. At worst, this will just delay Clinton's exit maybe a week or two more, tops... although I doubt it.
- stonebone4, on 04/13/2008, -0/+3I'm still a Ron Paul supporter, but I gotta go with Obama on this one - it's pretty f'ing stupid for someone to get up there and tell me that I'm not bitter or frustrated or fed up with the way this country is run, and then expect me to vote for them so they can give us four more years of the same garbage. Well said, Bam.
But I'm still writing in Ron Paul. - macweirdo42, on 04/13/2008, -0/+2I'm still utterly lost and confused about what the controversy actually is here. All I'm getting is that Obama had the audacity to speak the truth in a political setting, and I gotta admit, that disturbs the hell out of me.
It seems to me that the real elitists are the ones who can't identify with the bitterness. He's not talking down to religious people, or people who oppose illegal immigrants. He's simply stating the truth. Can anyone here honestly say that they're not bitter about the state of the country? Can anyone here honestly say that they DON'T have something that they cling to as a result?
Case in point - I'm a diehard atheist who thinks that religion is a sham. Now, many people on digg will say that that's a perfectly rational viewpoint. However, it doesn't excuse the fact that yes, I occasionally lash out irrationally against religion. No, I don't think religion is right, but to put down people who have a lifetime of beliefs, who are fundamentally good people who truly believe they are doing the right thing, to suggest that religion is the root of all evil... That's irrational, and believe me, it's a direct result of bitterness.
Look, nobody likes being honest with themselves in terms of their faults... And for that, I can see why some might be upset about what he said. But that doesn't make what he said any less fundamentally true. - soulcatcher78, on 04/13/2008, -0/+2I think he's the only one who's noticed that some of us ARE bitter. No wonder I'm voting for Obama.
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