Gaffe: Obama Visits Gap, Amazed by Credit Card Machine: "Oh wow, so you can sign the machine?"

n Tuesday, President Obama took Air Force One to New York to stop at the Gap in order to flog his case against income inequality. And there, Americans learned he had no idea how to use a credit card machine.

According to the White House press pool, Obama visited Gap because the company recently announced that it would voluntarily increase wages for employees. After telling employees that “the ladies will be impressed by my sense of style,” Obama then picked up a couple of sweaters for his girls, Sasha and Malia.

Upon checking out, however, the problems began. Obama took out his credit card and began handing it to the cashier, who told him that he could swipe his credit card in the automated machine. “Oh, wow,” Obama said, “so you can sign the machine?” He then said he was kidding: “They had these around the last time I shopped.”

The moment was reminiscent of a campaign moment in 1992, when then-President George H.W. Bush signed an electronic pad while grocery shopping. “If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?” Bush asked. He was told that fake signatures could be detected. The New York Times reported in typically condescending style (headline: “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed”):

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

"This is for checking out?" asked Mr. Bush. "I just took a tour through the exhibits here," he told the grocers later. "Amazed by some of the technology."

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electornic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade.

And, of course, Mitt Romney was excoriated for being amazed by a Wawa touchscreen machine while ordering a meal during the 2012 campaign. He said during a speech:

"I was at Wawas...I went in to order a sandwich. You press a little touchtone keypad, alright? You just touch that and, you know, the sandwich comes up. You touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier. There’s your sandwich. It’s amazing!”

The media acted as though Romney had never seen a Wawa machine before. That story, too, was false.

http://www.mrc.org/articles/great-george-bush-sr-grocery-scanner-urban-legend-lives

The Great George Bush Sr. “Grocery Scanner” Urban Legend Lives On

Reporter Garry Shih in a story on bar codes writes: “They even played a role in the 1992 presidential race, when then-President George H. W. Bush, at a campaign stop, seemed surprised by what had already become a technological staple of everyday life.” Um, not exactly.

Published: 6/26/2009 1:23 PM ET

By Clay Waters

The urban legend of President George H.W. Bush staring in marvel at a grocery store scanner during his 1992 re-election campaign, which became a liberal media symbol of his inability to sympathize with the day-to-day lives of average Americans, still endures at the Times. The latest entry came on the front page of Friday Businesssection, ina story by Gerry Shih celebrating bar codes, “Game Changer In Retailing, Bar Code Is 35.”

The design was straightforward - 59 black and white bars. And the inventors’ objectives were simple enough, too - to speed up the grocery checkout line and give supermarkets a new tool to track their stock.

But the bar code has become much more than that since it was first used to read the price on a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum (67 cents) on the morning of June 26, 1974. Now they are used to board airplanes and track packages. Bar codes help people with diabetes calibrate glucose meters and researchers study the pollination habits of bees. They inspired a hand-held video game,BarcodeBattler, in 1991.

They even played a role in the 1992 presidential race, when then-PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush, at a campaign stop, seemed surprised by what had already become a technological staple of everyday life.

Sigh. Even the liberal-leaning myth-busters at Snopes.com debunkedthe incident as a gross exaggeration, writing:

Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times hadn’t even been present at the grocers’ convention. He based his article on a two-paragraph report filed by the lone pool newspaperman allowed to cover the event, Gregg McDonald of the Houston Chronicle, who merely wrote that Bush had a “look of wonder” on his face and didn’t find the event significant enough to mention in his own story.Moreover, Bush had good reason to express wonder: He wasn’t being shown then-standard scanner technology, but a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes.

Yet the Times continues repeating the bogus Bush story(which, as stated by Snopes, originated in a February 1992 Times story) as fact. The last instance before Friday was reporter Mark Leibovich in an August 2008 story mocking John McCain.

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