Yes, he left the old familiar glass-paneled prompters that helped him recall childhood memories he said he would “never forget,” that helped him talk down to attendants at dirt-floored midwestern appearances, and that allowed him to thank himself for a St. Patrick’s Day invitation. But it wasn’t because he didn’t need them, or because he could be trusted to speak on his own to a room full of reporters and a few thousand people watching on television around the country. Rather, it was because he was upgraded to a full-size plasma screen at the back of the room from which to read his remarks.
Here’s a still from Fox News of Obama reading his speech from the new, Giant TelePrompTer:
Look, you can give him (or his handlers) credit for realizing what a story the glass plates the supposedly-articulate president had become utterly dependent on to make anything remotely resembling a coherent public address. However, you can’t give them credit, as so many are trying to do this morning, for ditching the scripting altogether, any more than you can give a kid credit for no longer cheating on a test because he scrubbed the answers off of his forearm and instead brought them to class on a piece of poster board.
