It wasn't too hard to see this coming. - Donald Trump knocked one teleprompter over and later dismantled the other after they apparently broke at a rally tonight in Charlotte, North Carolina. So why was the "irony radar" of these well-paid and well-coiffed "journalists" seemingly broken? This was an entirely predictable event, since surrogates always play the expectations game right before a big debate. By pumping up Obama's debating skills as high as they could get away with, Republicans were, in essence, admitting that the whole TelePrompTer slam was, at heart, not only wrong but downright silly. It would have been nice if any of the Sunday show moderators (who always style themselves "journalists," often with very little to back this assertation up) had pounced this weekend on the Republicans' doublethink. The most amusing irony appears when some hapless Republican cracks an Obama TelePrompTer joke while themselves reading from the device which they are mocking. Somehow America is expected to believe that TelePrompTers are laughable and proof of ignorance only when used by Democrats (and by one Democrat in particular). What gives the lie to this hogwash is that not only Mitt Romney, but also virtually every Republican who spoke at the party's recent national convention used this supposed tool of the Devil. The punchline of the joke remains the same: Obama is so pathetic that he needs a TelePrompTer, but Ryan is so gosh-darned manly that he is able to speak without one. Paul Ryan's own hypocrisy is easy to see, since he regularly cracks TelePrompTer jokes out on the campaign trail. This is Mitt's first time on this kind of a stage."īut by doing so, Ryan exposes not only his own doublethink on the issue, but the Republican Party's larger idiocy in perpetuating this "empty chair" caricature of President Obama's speaking abilities. The man's been on the national stage for many years. Here is Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, playing this game on Fox News Sunday yesterday: "Look, President Obama is a very - he's a very gifted speaker.
![obama with no teleprompter obama with no teleprompter](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-to69fbAnblQ/UbL2aMR4UEI/AAAAAAAAFj4/Rtr0l1uwDY8/s1600/Barack+Obama-Needs+Teleprompter+to+Pick+His+Nose.jpg)
This sets the bar very high for the opponent, and sets it as low as possible for your guy or gal. The name of this game is "Lower The Media's Expectations." Surrogates flood the airwaves right before a big debate talking up their opponent's debating abilities. It's all part of a game, of course, which both sides play. This was coming from Republicans, mind you. Obama was masterful, Obama was best talking off-the-cuff, Obama was one of the greatest political speakers of our time. Watching the Sunday political chatfests on television meant listening to Republican after Republican extol to the skies President Obama's ability as a standalone debater. Republicans had all kinds of fun building their caricature of President Obama as somehow lost without his TelePrompTer crutch, for years. They've been around and been used for decades (although, as we've noted before, the media still has a major problem with the odd capitalization in the brand name, much the same way they got confused over "Etch A Sketch" and "Chick-fil-A" of late. TelePrompTers are hardly "new-fangled" devices, to put it another way. The whole slur made about as much sense in the modern world as denouncing a politician for speaking into a microphone.
![obama with no teleprompter obama with no teleprompter](http://lh3.ggpht.com/-MZW0JXo6c-Y/UCu-OusNAlI/AAAAAAAAldo/ag1XyVOFpGY/Obama-Teleprompter-600x401_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg)
Politicians have been using these devices since the time they were invented - yes, even Republican politicians such as (say it softly) Ronald Wilson Reagan.
![obama with no teleprompter obama with no teleprompter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hs5woj5Ae48/maxresdefault.jpg)
This was all ridiculous nonsense, of course, but that didn't stop the Republican Party from having a field day with it. Obama was nothing more than a puppet, Republicans sneered, tied by the strings of his TelePrompTer, and unable to form a coherent thought or sentence on his own. This caricature began approximately the day Obama took office, and has been used scathingly by Republicans over the past four years.