In case you missed it this week — and how could you have missed it — there was a very important anniversary; the fifth anniversary of the time President Barack Obama briefed the press wearing a tan (or taupe) suit. Liberals like to note how conservatives made a very big deal out of the tan suit, much like conservatives lost their minds when, say, someone released a video of a young(er) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing (actually, it was pretty cute), or when a tabloid posted pictures of Malia Obama enjoying a bottle of wine with some friends. (“Leave the kids out of it” was what we heard, but whatever.)
The idea, of course, was that Obama wearing a tan suit was the biggest scandal of his scandal-free administration. CNN even offered an expert analysis:
Lessons from Obama's tan suit 5th anniversary | Analysis https://t.co/hQuAbRAgFl pic.twitter.com/iTehZTEMYr
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 28, 2019
Analysis of why you know the anniversary of him wearing a certain suit
— Anthony Bialy (@AnthonyBialy) August 30, 2019
Yeah, who keeps that on their calendar?
Um ok.
— James (@irritated_chap) August 28, 2019
This is called gaslighting
— Niles Hardy (@NilesHardy) August 28, 2019
Yep. Why else would so many leftists and lefty news organizations run stories on the anniversary of a suit?
"A nightmare" "Shocking to a lot of people" "A sign to enemies he's a wimp": @ChrislHayes remembers the days when presidential scandals involved conservatives freaking out about Obama's tan suit. https://t.co/7uPo9JIqGo
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 29, 2019
Here’s the always partisan and always humorless NowThis News with its compilation of horrified conservatives:
It's been 5 years since Republicans lost their minds over Obama's tan suit pic.twitter.com/dhI2DXXy2p
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 28, 2019
Here’s blue-check Adam Best (who?) insinuating that the only problem conservatives had with Obama was his skin color:
On the fifth anniversary of Obama’s tan suit “scandal,” here’s a bunch of Republicans in tan suits. I’m starting to think conservatives didn’t actually care about suit color and their real problem was the color of something else. Wonder what that could possibly be? Hmmm. pic.twitter.com/n4F5JW20ch
— Adam Best (@adamcbest) August 28, 2019
Remember when tan suits were what passed for controversy?!? pic.twitter.com/AAUNGbjUmX
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 28, 2019
What was scandalous was the content of the press conference, which was essentially Obama admitting he had no plan to deal with ISIS. Becket Adams has a great piece in the Washington Examiner Saturday nicely summing up the media’s obsession with the single scandal of the Obama administration.
The only real difference between American newsrooms claiming the Obama admin. was essentially "scandal-free" and actual North Korean agitprop is that the North Korean propagandist can say he has a gun to his head.
What is the American press’ excuse?https://t.co/wVsfj5Ju34
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) August 31, 2019
Newsrooms have since rewritten the history of that 2014 incident. Every year on the anniversary of Obama debuting his tan suit, a number of journalists and commentators claim it was the president’s critics who overreacted. They claim it was conservatives, not the newsrooms that gushed like teenage fans, who turned the suit into a full-blown event.
Today, members of the press have tweaked further their false version of events. They now use the anniversary of the tan suit to claim the Obama administration was essentially scandal-free. This is beyond ignorance or sycophancy. It is immoral and a damned lie.
A wistful Chris Hayes, for example, dedicated an entire segment on MSNBC this week to characterizing the suit as Obama’s “biggest scandal.” He was only half-joking.
Elsewhere at MSNBC, senior national correspondent Chris Jansing provided viewers with a five-year retrospective, claiming that the “suit has become a symbol for the lack of scandals during the Obama administration.”
MSNBC’s Ari Melber also signed off his show this week by recalling fondly the 2014 press briefing incident, saying that those were “the good old days.”
“On the anniversary of the day that Obama wore a tan suit — a choice he was heavily criticized for — people are realizing how little scandals there were when he was in office,” writes People magazine’s Joelle Goldstein.
At the Washington Post, reporter Antonia Noori Farzan writes, “Tan Suit Gate has taken on a different meaning, coming to symbolize the relative dearth of scandals during the Obama administration.”
“Remember what used to piss people off about a president? It was about what he wore, that was our big kerfuffle five years ago, oh how things have changed,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said this week of the tan suit episode.
He added, “Boy, what a difference five years makes.”
Cuomo’s colleague, CNN’s Don Lemon, agreed, saying, “Those are the days, right? That was a scandal.”
That and Fast and Furious and Benghazi and IRS targeting of conservative groups and spying on journalists and droning Americans and … the tan suit, of course.
The tan suit thing really pisses me off. Only one GOP or right-wing figure expressed any outrage about it. Pete King of New York. That is the list.
— AgainstTrumpDude (@TheAmishDude) August 31, 2019
Am I the only one that thinks the tan suit looked good?
He's totally corrupt in every way, but the tan suit looked good with his skin tone.
— VeritasVital (@VeritasVital) August 31, 2019
We can’t wait until the cable networks report on the sixth and even the tenth anniversary of Obama’s tan suit.
Related:
The Daily Show recalls 'the biggest scandal in presidential history,' conveniently leaves out some of Obama's greatest hits https://t.co/ycK3eMP4x4
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 28, 2019
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