Reason magazine sent me an e-mail asking for comments on their new essay by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch about Obama’s first 100 days. OK, Reason, you want to know what I think? I’m personally offended by the essay.
The essay begins: “So here we are, 100 days into the great eight-year triumph of Hope over Change, a new Era of Really Good Feelings in which only one thing has become increasingly, even irrefutably, clear: President Barack Obama is about as visionary as the guy who invented Dippin’ Dots, Ice Cream of the Future. Far from sketching out a truly forward-looking set of policies for the 21st century, as his supporters had hoped, Obama is instead serving up cryogenically tasteless and headache-inducing morsels from years gone by.”
Well, I happen to like Dippin’ Dots!
Other than the outrageous slur on Dippin’ Dots consumers–in effect, a form of hate speech against lovers of highly processed food–the rest of the essay is very good. The theme is that much of the Obama 100 agenda consists of reprising various failed policy initiatives from the Jimmy Carter era. Which just makes the Dippin’ Dots attack all the more inappropriate, since Dippin’ Dots were invented in 1988, during President Reagan’s last term.