Perry and barbecue: cutting through all of the smoke

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Rob Christensen and the lads and lassies in the N&O newsroom ought to take Fox News president Roger Ailes’s recent assessment of Texas governor Rick Perry to heart:

“If he tells people he’s gonna kick their ass, he might actually do it, which is useful for a president.”

Rob and his team should probably think long and hard about hitting Perry with the typical rough treatment they dish out to Republicans.   The folks at the N&O appear to be the ones who got the whole “Rick Perry hates North Carolina barbecue” hubbub going.

In a recent piece entitled “N.C. Barbecue worse than roadkill, Perry said”, Rob and the gang wrote:

If Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry ever campaigns in Eastern North Carolina, he may have some explaining to do.

According to “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue,” in 1992 when Perry was a promising Texas politician but not yet governor, he tried some Eastern North Carolina barbecue from King’s of Kinston, which was served at the Republican National Convention in Houston.

“I’ve had road kill that tasted better than that,” Perry was quoted as saying.

We guess Perry prefers Texas-style barbecue.

The book by John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008.

Where do I begin?  First, the headline is misleading.  Perry was in Texas as a candidate for office in Texas.  He sampled the food from one particular Kinston-based BBQ joint, and apparently didn’t like it.  Did he say ALL North Carolina barbecue is bad? No.

Let’s say I tell a large public gathering that The N&O is an unreadable Marxist-wannabe piece of fishwrap.  Does that mean I HATE ALL newspapers?  Or all newspapers in North Carolina, for that matter?  No. It means I strongly dislike The Raleigh News & Observer’s water-carrying for and sycophantic drooling over everything liberal.

(Also, I can’t believe that this item took TWO guys to write.  The N&O newsroom must be a union shop. ) 

This is clearly based on a leak from a leftist opposition research outfit seeking to stir up problems for Perry in North Carolina, where he is sure to be popular.  Now, anyone who bases their vote for president on barbecue needs to have their voter registration card permanently revoked.  (They are the kind of folks who gave us BarryO.  Look how well that turned out.)

This is yet another case study in how you can’t trust the headlines — or a lot of the content — delivered by the alleged mainstream media (MSM).

Stuff like this makes it clear why so many serious-minded people shun campaigning for public office.  It’s pure nonsense.

Let’s move on to more serious matters.  We’ve got A  LOT bigger problems to deal with.