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Dear Readers: As we are fully in a WAR with the elites and statists, it is good to highlight the proper use of the Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” as it is used by citizen activists. Today’s rule is #6. Many of our best citizen pundits have been having fun using the new media, and the use of it to create graphic images and mocking tweets has really borne fruit. That because it is so much fun, people are willing to take the time to do it an do it well.
A great example of this is in display on Instapundit: MORE FUN WITH RUTHERFORD B. HAYES:
The basis for this fun, new imagery involving President Hayes is that Obama threw him under this bus in a speech yesterday.
Obama’s words were these: “Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. … There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.”
The reality, which could have been ascertained by a quick fact check, is:
According to Ari Hoogenboom, who wrote the definite biography, “Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President,” Hayes entertained Thomas A. Edison at the White House. Edison demonstrated the phonograph for the president. “He was hardly hostile to new inventions,” Hoogenboom said.
Hayes, in fact, was such a technology buff that he installed the first telephone in the White House. A list of telephone subscribers published in the article “The Telephones Comes to Washington,” by Richard T. Loomis, shows that the White House was given the number “1.”
The White House phone initially was connected to the Treasury Department. Hoogenboom, in his book, writes that Hayes’s wife Lucy requested that a quartet sing on October 26, 1877, to inaugurate the service, but the concert abruptly ended because the powerful bass voice of one singer smashed “to atoms” the “sounding board of the telephone.”
The tweets have also been highly amusing:
This is so fun we can, and will, keep this up until November 6th. ROMMEL, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD. I read your book!
And for even more fun, at least for my fellow history geeks, check out Word Warrior’s military blog series on the era surrounding King Arthur’s England (he is on Part 2 today, so start now, so you don’t lag too far behind!)
[…] A GOOD TACTIC is one your people enjoy. […]
“This is so fun we can, and will, keep this up until November 6th. ROMMEL, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD. I read your book!”
That, in itself is a magnificent use of a quote. And it’s precisely the technique to unhinge the left (use Alinsky against them, make them live up to their own rules). Like listening to Slim Whitman in “When Mars Attacks,” it’ll make their heads explode!
Obama you mellifluous b*st*rd, I read Bill Ayers book!
The teleprompter is a great invention but only a FRAUD would want to use one.
Slander of a dead president? Assuming arguendo the tale is true – which it apparently is not – the point presumably is that we need visionary presidents who can recognize and finance with treasury dollars and debt valuable new technology. We do not. Politicians are by definition poor venture capitalists – it is not their money at risk after all. Also, the apparently untrue tale demonstrates the opposite: despite a contemporary president’s supposed failure to recognize its value the telephone and tech spawned by it are today ubiquitous.
[…] Applying ALINSKY RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” « Temple of Mut. Share this:TwitterRedditFacebookEmailPrintDiggStumbleUponLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← RutherfordGate: Historian Responds to President Obama’s Hayes Sl ur — Daily Intel […]
You know he was even wrong about Columbus. Ever since the Greeks, people knew the earth was round. They even calculated the rough size of it. Columbus figured it was much smaller and sailing to the East Indies across the Atlantic would be possible. Columbus was off by the size of the Pacific Ocean. People didn’t diss Columbus because they thought the world was flat, they dissed him because he couldn’t do the math.
This incident sums up for me exactly why Obama needs to go.
He’s proven that he is a radical in that he has no respect for the office he holds, or its institutions, by not even being willing to check his facts. He is perfectly content to diminish his predecessors, and thereby indirectly the nation, in order to advance his partisan agenda.
Yes to the main post, but a special thanks for the link to The Deadlist Blogger and the Age of Arthur!
[…] As has surprised no one paying attention, yet again the President screwed up some historical facts. […]
Thanks for the SLOBs link, Leslie!
With all of Obama’s gaffes while trying to talk smart, this Trace Adkins song pops to mind.
See that boy standing there by the dance floor
He’s lookin’ like the Marlboro Man
Starched shirt, starched jeans, big trophy buckle
And an empty Copenhagen can
He’s talkin’ cowboy this and cowboy that
Well I’ll bet one thing’s for sure
The only stampede that he’s ever seen
Is the clearance at the western store
All hat and no cattle, that boy just ain’t real
All boots and no saddle, don’t know how to make a cowgirl feel
Think I’m gonna tell him to pack up his act
And go back where he came from
‘Cause all hat and no cattle ain’t gonna get it done
He’s just a smooth-talkin’, long-tall slow-walkin’
Srugstore-made-up dude
So honey don’t you fall for that fake Texas drawl
He ain’t right for you
What you need’s a man that ain’t just a hat stand
When you get him home
Well, I don’t look like much, but I can sure saddle up
And ride with you all night long
All nat and no cattle, that boy just ain’t real
All boots and no saddle, don’t know how to make a cowgirl feel
Think I’m gonna tell him to pack up his act
And go back where he came from
‘Cause all hat and no cattle ain’t gonna get it done
All hat and no cattle ain’t gonna get it done
Whenever I read about one of these incredibly stupid and/or obvious gaffes by BHO or Biden, I picture a poorly paid group of researchers/fact checkers who are having the time of their lives in some little windowless room in the basement of the West Wing.
Every time I read something like this, I feel the loss of Andrew Breitbart again… but each time it feels a little less like pain, and a little more like hope. He taught us well, didn’t he?
Fly the banner high, Mutodjmet!
[…] you want to, go the next step and apply Alinsky Rule 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy” and contact the Ms. Stuessy about the quality of her reporting and the fact her proudest […]
I love the Hayes graphic! Congrats on the Instalanche!