{"id":16553,"date":"2008-08-11T14:35:23","date_gmt":"2008-08-11T18:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16519.html"},"modified":"2008-08-11T14:35:23","modified_gmt":"2008-08-11T18:35:23","slug":"i-know-hawaii-is-a-state-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-know-hawaii-is-a-state-but\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I know Hawaii is a state, but…’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Hess, a presidential historian with the Brookings Institution, noted the other day, “Anybody who picks on [Barack Obama] for going to Hawaii is really looking for something to pick on.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Hess, meet ABC News’ Cokie Roberts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“I know Hawaii is a state, but …” Roberts said, before recommending Myrtle Beach, S.C., as a preferable vacation locale.<\/p>\n

Lest anyone think Roberts accidentally shared a foolish, stray thought with a national television audience, she repeated the criticism on NPR<\/a> this morning, saying Obama’s decision to vacation with his family is “a little rough,” and Hawaii is a “somewhat odd place.” She added that the locale “makes him seem a little bit more exotic than perhaps he would want to come across as at this stage in the presidential campaign.”<\/p>\n

It’s hard to overstate how unusually dumb this is.
\n
\nAs Kevin noted<\/a> over the weekend, “Just for the record, folks, Hawaii is about the least<\/i> elitist vacation spot on the planet. It ranks right in between Disneyland and the Grand Canyon on the elitism meter, and probably a couple of notches below a visit to Yosemite. If you’re this hard up for column material, it’s time to find a different job.”<\/p>\n

Following up on an item<\/a> from yesterday <\/p>\n

antibiotika-online.com<\/a><\/div>\n

, this seems to matter because Obama’s vacation is drawing all kinds of criticism from the media. TNR’s Michael Crowley noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I know he grew up [in Hawaii] and all. But if Obama’s being smeared as a highfalutin celebrity who is somehow “other” and distant from the American heartland, is Hawaii really the ideal vacation destination? It sounds trivial but such things can resonate…. John Kerry’s staff asked him not to windsurf in the summer of 2004 and he didn’t listen. The results are famous. <\/p>\n

I might have counseled a nice cottage beside some Illinois lake with a wholesome name….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, the Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown had a 1,200-word piece<\/a> yesterday on the perils of Obama spending eight days in the state of his birth.<\/p>\n

After Kerry retreated to Nantucket during the Republican convention, footage of him windsurfing there later surfaced in an attack ad deeming him the candidate who votes “whichever way the wind blows.” <\/p>\n

“For somebody who has been called ‘elitist,’ going to Hawaii is not exactly going against type,” [Douglas Schoen, a pollster for Clinton’s reelection campaign] said. “I would rather have him going to national parks.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, Obama was born in Hawaii. He spent much of his childhood in the state, and graduated high school there. His grandmother, who helped raise Obama, still lives there and he’s anxious to spend some time with her.<\/p>\n

It’s not “odd.” It’s not “exotic.” It’s entirely normal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I think I’ll just let Oliver Willis drive the point home<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That same Hawaiian government – a government elected by the AMERICANS who live in THE STATE of Hawaii – has some statistics on the amount of people who travel to the state. So far this year Hawaii has had 2.596 million domestic visitors. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that that number is far smaller than the amount of people who visited the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine (how many of you have a “family compound”?), or the amount of people who vacationed at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas (I don’t know about you, but the Willis family does not have a ranch, not even in southern Maryland or in the rural areas of Jamaica), and 2.5 million is way way more than the amount of visitors to Camp McCain, where a professional staff saw to the needs of the assembled journalists (themselves often on the receiving end of an elite lifestyle far beyond the average middle class American).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Hess, a presidential historian with the Brookings Institution, noted the other day, “Anybody who picks on [Barack Obama] for going to Hawaii is really looking for something to pick on.” Dr. Hess, meet ABC News’ Cokie Roberts. “I know Hawaii is a state, but …” Roberts said, before recommending Myrtle Beach, S.C., as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}