Sports reporters endure a litany of canned quotes from modern athletes:
“We’re just taking it one game at a time.”
“It’s a team sport,”
“There’s no ‘I’ in team.”
A similar script kicks in when actors are asked their thoughts on President Barack Obama’s first two-plus years in office. Check out “Tower Heist” star Ben Stiller regurgitating the playbook to CNN’s Piers Morgan this week:
“We’re in a tough place … it’s a very complicated situation. I, as an actor and someone who’s not an expert and don’t pretend to know any answers, but I feel like we’ve inherited a bad situation over the last eight years and Obama’s in a very tough position.”
Translation: It’s not Obama’s fault that the economy is a disaster. But Stiller isn’t finished yet, since the second half of the Defend Obama game plan is to hit him from the Left.
“I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen more bold decisions from him and a willingness, I think, to maybe stick to more of what he had, in his campaign, had said in terms of what he was willing to do,” he said. “In ways it’s been frustrating to see that we haven’t gotten further than we would hoped over the last few years.