I'll have the waffles and a side order of stupid, please... Barack Obama eats breakfast--madness ensues...

Short recap of the oft-repeated tale:

Barack Obama went to a diner. He kissed babies, shook hands and ordered breakfast. He started eating. A reporter asked him a question. He said "Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

This is not news. It is not interesting. It is a politician eating breakfast. One can't peer deep into his soul based on his response. One can't reasonably extrapolate anything about his overall willingness to engage the press based on his desire to eat his fucking waffle at that given moment. One can't maintain, with a straight face, that the question was so challenging that Obama had no choice but to hide behind his waffle.

It is not evidence of a trend. It is not proof of a character flaw. Not all breakfasts are moments of great significance.

The dude was eating and didn't really want to answer a question. The end.

You would think that in a relatively educated and literate nation such as our own, that a guy eating a waffle on a campaign stop wouldn't engender a great deal of interest.

You would think that we'd be smart enough to realize that any one of a million different things is probably more important than a dude eating a motherfucking waffle.

We are not.

We, or at least some of us, really do appear to be that stupid. Folks are analyzing Barack Obama's waffle incident. They are talking about the ramifications of Wafflegate. Some are interpreting it as evidence of bigger things. They are casting it as a piece in a puzzle they've already solved.

Rooty tooty, fresh and fruity. Barack Obama's desire to eat a little waffle is news.

One of the most common strategies for issue-fying the waffle is to point out that Obama is ducking questions not only at breakfast, but all the time. After all, he hasn't made himself available to press for 10 whole days. Wafflegate is proof that he's hiding, people argue.

Of course, he's also spent the last 10 days working his ass of all over Pennsylvania, which cuts into available chit-chat time.

Oh, and there's also the oft-forgotten fact that he HAS made himself available to the media. In fact, he's given DOZENS of interviews in the past ten days. He's been sitting down with local PA papers and media outlets instead of jabbering with the national press. Why? My guess is that the Obama campaign thinks they'll get better Pennsylvania mileage out of Pennsylvania media than by screwing around with the nationals. They might be wrong about that, but it's a mighty stretch to claim he's completely inaccessible.

Let's look at this way. Angelina Jolie's breasts are inaccessible to me. So are her buttocks. She won't give me access. If I ran into her at IHOP and asked her to allow me to caress her breasts and buttocks, she might politely rebuke me, asking why she can't just eat her waffle. On the other hand, if I were Brad Pitt and the two of us were home alone, I'd stand a good chance of spending the night going to town on Angelina. My point: access is all about who you are and where you are.

Anyone who is currently pretending the waffle incident matters should immediately screw his or her fucking head on straight, apologize to every single person they've insulted by pretending this story is meaningful and then place their hand in a hot waffle iron for 30 seconds.

That includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Jeralyn at TalkLeft calls it a "waffle controversy" and claims that the breakfast tale is a big deal because Obama doesn't give reporters a lot of access. That might be because they're a bunch of assholes who won't let a guy eat a waffle, huh?

Delilah Boyd wonders what kind of candidate would "pitch a hissy fit" over a question right before a primary? I wonder what kind of blogger would pitch a hissy fit over the guy wanting to eat his waffle and who'd give him a "waffler of the year award".

Don Singleton hints that Obama might have wanted to eat his breakfast because the question was just too tough. Maybe it wasn't hunger, but an inability to answer. Considering the question was about Jimmy Carter's sit-down with Hamas and the fact that Obama has remarked on the matter and is fully aware of it, that seems unlikely. Nice try, Don. Go eat your waffle.

Liberal Rapture calls Obama a man-child and argues that one must make a choice between waffles and running for office. Here's an idea... Maybe a guy could eat a waffle, wipe the syrup from the corner of his mouth and then go back to campaigning. Just an idea, "numb nuts".

The Confluence asks, "Did the “bitter” gun-toting Archie Bunkers hear him whining like that?" No, they didn't. They were too busy eating their waffles, a courtesy usually extended to all at a diner.





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