Word of the week: “Inartful”

Inartful: Word used by Barack Obama to describe statements made by himself, his campaign, or his surrogates that, when scrutinized, he would rather quickly be swept under the rug.  Examples:

1.  Last week, in advance of the SCOTUS ruling in favor of the Second Amendment, the Obama campaign responded by saying:

With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.’s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an “inartful” statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional.

“That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.

2. Today, in an attempt to describe campaign surrogate Wesley Clark’s dis of John McCain’s military service, Obama stated:

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — “Inartful” was the word Obama used Tuesday to characterize remarks Gen. Wes Clark made over the weekend and subsequently about McCain’s military service.

Better still, he did it while implying at the same time that it was a – wait for it – distraction (yet another word with an expanded definition this year) for him to ask Clark to apologize:

“I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?” he said. “I think that, you know, right now we’re here to talk about how we can make sure that kids in Zanesville and across Ohio get the kind of support that they need and communities that are impoverished can start to rebuild. I’m happy to have all sorts of conversations about how we deal with Iraq and what happens with Iran, but the fact that somebody on a cable show or on a news show like Gen. Clark said something that was inartful about Sen. McCain I don’t think is probably the thing that is keeping Ohioans up at night.”

Video:

And there you have it: An artful attempt by the distracted Barack Obama to get his fawning media back in line by trying to force them to focus on issues which paint Barry Oh! in only the most flattering of lights.  The mediots better watch it, because if they don’t fall back in step they, too, might get falsely branded as “racists” for merely asking tough questions of El Senador Fantástico.

Oh, and BTW, yesterday’s supposed “rebuke” of Clark’s comments?  Obama admitted today that the speech he gave was written “a couple of months ago” and had nothing to do with Clark’s remarks (this was also reported in the MSNBC link above).