2.04.2013

A photo shot or a skeet shot.


Barack Obama, Straight Shooter? - A dubious publicity photo and journalism's Jed Clampetts.
Excerpt:


The photo, purportedly shot last Aug. 4 (which happens to be the president's birthday), shows Obama holding a shotgun. The barrel is smoking, indicating that the gun has just been fired. What's odd about it is that the president is aiming straight ahead, as if he were firing a rifle at a stationary target. But in skeet shooting, the target, a disk known as a clay pigeon, is moving. It is launched from one of two "houses" and travels in a parabolic trajectory across the field. In order to hit it, one has to move the gun so as to follow the path of the clay. It's not impossible that one would fire at shoulder level, as Obama is doing in the photo, but it's unlikely. We therefore surmise that the picture is the product of a photo shoot, not a skeet shoot.

... In an episode of the 1960s sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies," the title characters go skeet shooting at the invitation of a wealthy, sophisticated banker. Hilarity ensues when Jed Clampett insists on shooting with a rifle instead of a shotgun, and then makes the shot anyway. "To do it with a rifle is absolutely remarkable," says the man from the gun club. Clampett's young cousin Jethro then takes a crack at it and hits four targets in rapid succession. "Fantastic feat!" marvels the gun-club guy. (To which Jed replies, looking at Jethro's feet: "Yeah, they is big all right.") The conceit of "The Beverly Hillbillies" was that the Clampetts were rubes, ignorant even of such obvious matters as the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. Today's journalists are a lot like the Clampetts, albeit without the impeccable aim.
Comment: PR stunt!

1 comment:

  1. To watch a fine skeet shooter in action no-one needs to look further
    than late, great trick shooter Herb Parsons.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu9-D9KqR4k
    My cousin Steven Green went to a "Parsons" Show where a .25 cent coin was tossed and hit mid-air by the high speed rifle bullet.
    The bent coin remains in his possession 60+ years later.
    Hollywood used "Parsons" in the movies / most notably / Winchester '73 starring James Stewart. Herb Parsons did the "trick" ( behind the scenes ) shooting role for Jimmy Stewart.
    The POTUS here is a giant fake .. only the White House could generate such slop. ( HINT: is the death grip on the shotgun ! )

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