Whats in a chair; or, not in a chair, as the case may be.

So, this whole Clint Eastwood talking at a chair thing has gone big.  The single biggest retweet from the Republican National Convention was from Barrack Obama responding to Clint Eastwood

This seat's taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012

 

Its everywhere.

So much so that Doug Henwood cry's "enough already!!"

Ok, how many jokes can you make about an empty chair?

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) September 2, 2012

 

Corey Robin agrees

@doughenwood Apparently, very very many. It's almost as tedious as the event itself. Can't you make it stop?

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) September 2, 2012

 

@davidkaib @doughenwood I wonder if people realize how silly they sound. The whole thing is worthy of nothing more than...nothing.

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) September 2, 2012

But the chair bit isn't going to go away and here's why.  

Jamelle Bouie put it quite succinctly on Twitter, “This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.”  

But I'd extend that to this being the perfect representation of the past four years--Republicans I know and deal with day in and day out yelling about an imaginary Barack Obama who doesn't actually exist. 

I had to campaign for State Senate in 2010 with imaginary Barack Obama everywhere I went.  It was absurd, the amount of time wasted at events, in conversations, untangling reality from utter nonsense.   

Rather than talk about the Eisenhower "pragmatist" currently occupying the White House many of us on the ground have had to deal with concerns, and honest to God, fears, about the radical left wing socialist trying to undermine the American way of life.

Imaginary Barack Obama resonates with people, and he resonates with people who have been actively involved in politics on the ground across this country, for a very good reason--we've had to put up with him for a long time.

It just took Clint Eastwood, standing up on stage at the RNC, giving a shoddy rendition of some old vaudeville routine, to bring him to life for the rest of you.

I, for one, am glad imaginary Obama finally has a seat at the table in our collective discourse--cause he's been here all along.

Yes, Corey, its nothing more than nothing; and its taken up a massive amount of my time and energy over the past 4 years.

Now then, now that we've talked about nothing in this post lets end it by talking about things like raising the minimum wage, expansion of paid sick days for all Americans, and how Democrats are the party of austerity now a days.