Too good to check: Obama’s “dog” line actually a quote from … Jimi Hendrix?

I refuse to believe it. If it’s true, then I’m forced to move yesterday’s outburst from the “thin-skinned jackassery” column into the “kind of awesome” column.

Can’t be right. Can’t be.

Has President Obama been listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix lately? With just under two months to go before Election Day, Obama kicked off the fall campaign season Monday with an aggressive speech targeting Republicans. But it was an off-script moment in the speech that’s attracted the most attention, as Obama accused his GOP critics of talking about him “like a dog.”…

Though Obama didn’t acknowledge it, the line was a verbatim quote from “Stone Free,” the first song Hendrix wrote after moving to England in 1966. “They talk about me like a dog,” the song says. “Talkin about the clothes I wear. But they don’t realize they’re the ones who’s square.”

It’s unclear if Obama consciously or unconsciously cited the lyric. A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But regardless of its source, Obama’s off-script message syncs with his overall frustration with Republicans, whom he has lambasted repeatedly as the “party of no.”

The One does like to sneak pop-culture references into his political rhetoric from time to time, although given his track record of late, there’s a fair chance he thought he was quoting someone else. I can’t remember him ever mentioning Hendrix before — a quickie Google search reveals virtually nothing unrelated to yesterday’s speech — but it’s easy to see why he’d identify with him. Both are black American icons who rose to superstardom virtually overnight and in so doing took a predominantly white field by storm. (They’re even both left-handed!) The key difference? If Hendrix played guitar the way The One has governed his first 18 months, “Are You Experienced” would have been 40 minutes of nothing but screeching feedback.

If he lights the teleprompter on fire at Friday’s presser, then we’ll know for sure that this was a quote. Exit question: Maybe this is the way the GOP should approach him from now on? Next Boehner stump speech: “Mr. President, let’s stand up next to our mountain of debt — and chop it down with the edge of our hands.”

Blowback