It's official: Readers pick Cokie Roberts' "foreign, exotic" Hawaii comments as Most Inane

MediaMatters

In the end, it wasn't close. By an overwhelming margin, criticism by Cokie Roberts, NPR contributing senior news analyst and ABC political commentator, of then-Sen. Barack Obama for choosing Hawaii, the state of his birth, to take his August family vacation was the most popular entry in Media Matters for America's poll for Most Inane Punditry of the 2008 presidential campaign. Readers chose Roberts' comments -- which included her characterizing Hawaii, where Obama vacations regularly, as "foreign, exotic" -- in greater numbers than her two closest competitors combined. Roberts stated: "I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place," adding, "He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time."

Roberts repeated her criticism of Obama's vacation destination during the August 11 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, asserting that Obama's choice of Hawaii for his vacation "makes him seem a little bit more exotic." She also characterized Hawaii as "a somewhat odd place to be doing it," despite acknowledging, "I know that he is from Hawaii, he grew up there, his grandmother lives there."

(More here.)