Oh Come On Dot Org

Apparently, "Petraeus" sounds enough like "betray us" to make some intern at Moveon.org think it would be a great idea to make up a new and disparaging nickname for the good General. Come on people. Who green-lighted this? Are you TRYING to torch your credibility? Let me introduce you to a little bit of important PR calculus: if you're going to engage in character assassination, you have to do so in so clever a manner that even your target can't deny the humor without being pegged as a stuffed shirt. Homophones aren't going to cut the mustard.

So embarrassing.

General Petraeus is a pawn, okay? He is trying to put a good face on things because his job is to win the war in Iraq. Not to decide whether we should be fighting it. Not to declare the policy failed. Just to win. If his boss gave him the latitude to decide those other things, he would be a less sympathetic character, but in the current situation, THAT'S NOT HIS JOB. Do you suppose he got where he is by giving up? This guy is doing his level best to spin gold from hay, and while that may make him a little delusional, it doesn't make him malignant. The president may have been acting like this is all Petraeus' baby, but seriously. This is George Bush we're talking about. Not exactly what we would call a reliable source.

So please, Moveon.org, next time you find yourself in the kind of paroxysm of group-think that led to that headline, remind yourself that that's how teenagers and coke-addled studio executives think, not effective political actors. The rest of the copy in the ad wasn't terrible, but who do you think read past the headline? Anyone who isn't already in the choir? Not so much.

Bush league, folks.

A Not-So-Well-Regulated Militia

Apparently, a group in Fairfax County held an event that they called the "Bloomberg Gun Giveaway" the other day, in which they raffled off a pair of expensive weapons to raise money for the gun stores that are being sued by New York's mayor for the illegal sales of handguns that were used in crimes in NYC. Now, I don't really like New Yorkers, especially outside of New York City (they tend to spend a lot of time bitching about how the hardware store in THEIR neighborhood stays open till 4am, and what the hell is wrong with this town that there isn't such a store HERE), but if a gun store in VA is illegally selling weapons that are subsequently used to commit crimes in NY, and VA doesn't appear too concerned, isn't Bloomberg's concern justified? Because, you know, guns are great and all, but this is a country that places a certain amount of emphasis on the rule of law, generally. So if someone is habitually breaking the law, and doing so in a way that brings a lot of negative attention to gun enthusiasts (by killing and robbing people with illegally purchased guns), wouldn't you think those gun enthusiasts would be the first to advocate for the shuttering of the offending store?

Or is that too reasonable? Totally. Let's all react like 12-year-olds who got their videogames turned off and have a "gun giveaway."