Netlore Archive: Circulating online, an op-ed piece falsely attributed to Hugh Downs predicts Barack Obama will lose the 2008 presidential election because he is a 'flake.'
Description: Email flier
Circulating since: August 2008
Status: Not written by Hugh Downs
Email example contributed by David C., Sep. 8, 2008:
FW: HUGH DOWNS - OBAMA WILL LOSE
I think everyone really knows all of this, but give Hugh ten minutes and read.
It's time to throw my hat in the ring as regards predicting the election results. So here it is: Barack Obama will be defeated. Seriously and convincingly defeated. Not due to racism, not due to the forces of reaction, not even due to Karl Rove sending out mind rays over the national cable system. He will lose for one reason above all, one that has been overlooked in any analysis that I've yet seen. Barack Obama will lose because he is a flake.
I'm using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a 'fool with energy', as the Russian proverb puts it. ('A fool is a terrible thing to have around, but a fool with energy is a nightmare'.)
Barack Obama is a flake, and the American people have begun to see it. The chief characteristic of a flake is that he makes choices that are impossible to either understand or explain. These are not the errors of the poor dope who can't grasp the essentials of a situation, or the neurotic who ruins things out of compulsion, or the man suffering chronic bad luck.
The flake has a genius for discovering solutions at perfect right angles to the ordinary world. It's as if he's the product of a totally different evolutionary chain, in a universe where the laws are slightly but distinctly at variance to ours. When given a choice between left and right, the flake goes up -- if not through the 8th dimension. And although there's plenty of rationalization, there's never a logical reason for any of it. After awhile, people stop asking.
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Analysis: Though famed broadcaster Hugh Downs leans toward libertarianism in politics and for that reason probably opposes the candidacy of liberal Democrat Barack Obama for president, he did not write the above op-ed piece making the case that Obama will lose because he is a "flake."
It was actually penned by conservative writer J.R. Dunn and published under the title "The Odd Choices in Barack Obama's Career" on the American Thinker website, August 20, 2008.
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Sources and further reading:
The Odd Choices in Barack Obama's Career
By J.R. Dunn on American Thinker, 20 August 2008
Last updated: 09/10/08
