Americans were witness last year to President Obama’s cult-like status among his acolytes. News stories of women fainting during his speeches, the sale of religious icons in the likeness of Mr. Obama, and the YouTube videos of children singing hymns (some with distinct religious imagery) to The One and of older youngsters doing marching/drill team routines with distinct military cadences in support to him were all-too-frequent occurrences. The observers seamlessly became one with the observed, as “journalists” who prided themselves (undeservedly, it turned out) on “speaking truth to power” turned into giddy school girls experiencing their first celebrity crushes.
Nor was this mania restricted to the U.S., as candidate Obama’s European tour showed. Indeed, those foreigners who see in the President a kindred spirit in their shared views of the United States are probably more infatuated with a persona whose concrete policy manifestations they need not endure as do Americans. And none are as likely to go 110% as the Germans, with their stereotypical thoroughness and their near-fanatical enthusiasm for those things American that they like.
So, it comes as no surprise that the Germans are staging “Hope,” a musical honoring Obama. Usually, personal musical tributes celebrate accomplishments, real (the opera “Nixon in China” comes to mind) or mythical (Wagner’s works, for example). But the American writer/composer and his German collaborators did not want to wait for something as pedestrian as a real accomplishment. With the Nobel Peace Prize committee setting a high bar of sycophancy and mindless adulation with its award based on a nomination at most ten days into Mr. Obama’s presidency, the musical’s creators had a tough act to follow. Worse, this is not the first Obama musical. That “honor” belongs to an English production, “Obama On My Mind.” As Mark Steyn notes in a nod to the musical Oklahoma, “Oooooo-bama, where the thrills come tingling down your leg.”
A good gauge of the political tenor of the piece is the description of Sarah Palin’s part: “Sarah Palin also has her own solo, surrounded by a troop of scantily clad dancers.” Doesn’t that just capture the essence of Sarah Palin’s values and policy positions and her appeal to the Republican base?
Don’t worry if you cannot get to Frankfurt to see this artistic masterpiece. There is talk of a future U.S. tour for “Hope.” The cynic suspects that this tour will happen sometime in 2012. By that time three years of the Obama administration will be in the books and, judging by the events of the first year, for many of us, that musical may be the only aspect of “Hope” left.
On a curiously coincidental matter of socialist realist “art,” there is news from Caracas, Venezuela, that Obama’s book club pal Hugo Chavez has “asked” Venezuelans to follow the example of his good friend and abrazo partner Fidel Castro’s Cuban workers’ paradise and make “socialist” soap operas. He has offered the assistance of the government’s own propaganda film-making center. No word whether Michael Moore is creative adviser.
I’m sure hordes of Venezuelans are eagerly awaiting programs about heroic socialist workers happily toiling with ideological commitment and without pay, braving capitalist-created storms, capitalist tarantulas, capitalist drug dealers, capitalist prostitutes, capitalist bosses who insist on paying you only for what you’ve earned, capitalist subversives spreading anti-revolutionary ideas such as freedom and personal initiative, all to bring in that record-breaking sugar crop to fund the export of Chavez’s and el lider’s glorious revolution to Latin America through the narco-terrorist FARC. But, since there is a distinct likelihood that government-approved socialist soap operas will lack the popular appeal of decadent capitalist-themed soap operas, Oogo has also offered government funding for the endeavor. Sounds like PBS, NPR, liberal talk radio and liberal cable TV shows. In funding and lack of market success, not just leftist ideology. Indeed, it describes the liberal vision of health care and all other human enterprise. Since that vision can’t compete on its own merits, it requires government funding. Only as an “option,” of course.
Those of us not taken in by the Obama phenomenon have long marvelled at the worship and adulation heaped upon this basically unremarkable man and at the sycophancy displayed journalists, artists, and others who like to see themselves as courageous skeptics and dissenters who dare to “speak truth to power.” So it comes as no surprise to us to have yet another fatuous statement about the brilliance and glory of the current occupant of the White House delivered courtesy of one of these members of the artistic “avant garde.”
This time, the deification of the President takes the form of adoring him as the “the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar” most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.” Caesar’s account of Gaul is, indeed, a classic, and one with which many a Latin student over the years reluctantly has become familiar. It has an elegance and simplicity (for Latin) that makes it more readable than many other works. The jury is out, however, on whether Obama’s telepromptered speeches will be read in two thousand years. The same goes for his two books, including his break-out work, Dreams From My Father. If he actually wrote that book, with its rhetorical stylings in which some have detected the ghost of Bill Ayers, without a helping hand.
As to the substance of the “most powerful writer” remark, there might be some who would differ. The number of writers who have lived since Caesar whose prose style and literary content are more powerful than Obama’s is so numerous one has no time to list them. Given the obvious hyperbolic nonsense of Rocco’s bloviation from that perspective, it is claimed that he meant the remark as “politically powerful.” After all, the argument is, if the President is the most powerful man in the most powerful nation since ancient Rome, and if he is a writer, ergo, by the distributive property, he is the most powerful writer since Caesar.
Actually, with that interpretation, the remark is no less fatuous, though the fatuousness shifts from an artistic judgment to just plain imbecility. Let us assume that Obama in fact is the most powerful man in the U.S., a matter that is in quite some dispute as a practical matter. (I would suggest that I am far more powerful in determining issues that deal with my family’s everyday lives than is Obama or any other president.) Let us also assume that the U.S. is the most powerful nation since ancient Rome, a matter that has to be looked at in relation to other countries at that specific time in order for the evaluation to have any meaning whatever. (Just to keep it simple, let us also ignore the administration’s efforts to make the U.S. less powerful.)
By that reckoning, the U.S. was even more powerful in relation to the rest of the world after World War II. (No, the USSR at that time was not in the U.S.’s league, either in conventional or in nuclear weapons.) John F. Kennedy wrote a book, too. At least, let us assume, as we did with Mr. Obama, that Kennedy actually wrote Profiles In Courage. Richard Nixon wrote eight volumes. Do we also apply the same test to foreign princes and politicians who governed the world’s strong countries in the past?
There are more problems with this brown-nosing, aside from the fact that is smacks of further cult-of-personality worship reminiscent of Kim Jong-Il’s North Korean functionaries. The cheerleader is Rocco Landesman, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts. He recently succeeded Yosi Sergant who left after it was disclosed that he was trying to push artists into using their work to support President Obama’s domestic agenda. Though he had to resign, Sergant hardly need have worried. As I have posted before, artists have only been too willing to do the administration’s bidding. Landesman and Sergant are yet two more reasons why there should be no NEA. Government-funded art merely becomes Soviet-style appropriation of art for political purposes, just as government-funded science becomes appropriation of science for political purposes. Example: global climate change politics.
Then there is the open comparison of Obama to Caesar, a historical blunder of the first magnitude. There are those on the right who are paranoid that Obama will abolish elections, or at least term limits, to install himself as a quasi-dictator a la Hugo Chavez. Add to this the bread-and-circuses mentality of the Left in charge of the Congress, the massive intrusion of the federal government into more and more private decisions, and the debasement of the dollar. Of course, there is also the proliferation of unaccountable administration officials openly denominated “czars.” Justifiably or not, for many on the Right, this becomes a vision of the Roman Republic in its waning days.
The Founders of the American Republic admired the ancient Roman Republic, its civic virtue, its political institutions, and its commercial success and military honor. At least, they admired an idealized version of that republic. Early American writings make that admiration of Rome, its institutions, and citizens very clear. At the same time, the Americans feared the rise of an American Caesar and set up a selection process for the President that sought to avoid the rise of such a figure. Taking the vote for President from the people and reposing it in the hands of electors selected through a process determined by the state legislatures was intended to produce the nomination of several candidates from those most qualified under norms of republican virtue. It was a process designed to have the best in each state nominate the best in the several states. By the terms of the Constitution, election of the President from those nominated would, more likely than not, be in the House of Representatives. That was another step to produce a deliberated choice, rather than one selected directly by the people who would be prone to emotional appeals to vote for some popular tribune skilled in the low arts of popular politics.
When Andrew Jackson was elected as the first general since George Washington, his candidacy was greeted with dismay by those who adhered to the old republican ideology of the founding generation. Thomas Jefferson was horrified by Jackson. Henry Clay derisively referred to Jackson as just a “military chieftain.” But Jackson, aided by the emerging modern political party system, won by appealing exactly to those low political arts the Founders despised. “King Andrew I” was the American Caesar who was a danger to the Republic.
From a social and political standpoint, Landesman’s adulation of Obama is both risible in its fawning and, in following a path well-trod by Obama supporters, vaguely sinister. As the article points out, comparing Obama to Caesar when other Presidents were available as more sympathetic companions, is revealing about the administration on many levels. None of them good.
There are those who say that the President does not deserve the ridicule that he has received over the Nobel Peace Prize because he did not seek the award. Assuming the last part is true, and there is some suggestion it is not, the President still could have declined the prize as undeserved. When Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese minister Le Duc Tho were co-recipients for “Peace With Honor” in Vietnam, Le had the decency to decline the prize. Kissinger not so much. It is just not Obama’s personality to decline something like that. But Thomas Friedman of The New York Times has another idea. In a powerful column, Friedman provides another alternative for Obama. Go to Oslo, decline the award for himself, but accept it on behalf of the American military as the ultimate peacekeepers. As Friedman points out, that approach would destroy the Nobel committee’s conceit that they can use their award for blatantly political attempts to influence American policy in a EUnuch direction of pacifistic transnationalism that is subject to UN control.
While I can see the President making some mildly laudatory remarks about the U.S., and even about the military specifically, in what will be a closely watched speech, I do not see him making the kind of ringing endorsement of American military power that Friedman advocates. That just isn’t who he is.
“Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
“Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.”
As Kimball correctly concludes, this is another EUnuch strike against American power and prestige as personalized in what to them is the symbol of the ancien regime, George W. Bush.
Andy McCarthy at National Review Online concludes that the award was given to the President because the international Left considers Obama to be their best shot of knocking America off its pedestal: “The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America’s interests in the world. That is why Obama could win it based on only ten days in office — merely by capturing the White House and the levers of power, he stands to do more for the Left’s ‘knock America off its pedestal’ program than any figure in history.”
John Podhoretz agrees and sees the inevitable logic in the move. Liberals, too, are mocking this award, in this case The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen. Yural Levin at National Review Online sees this as a further confirmation of Obama’s self-importance and reinforcement of his narcissism, a characteristic that is becoming incerasingly problematic for him with the American people. Former Senator John Danforth calls it the apotheosis of Barack Obama and sarcastically refers to the President as the “orator of all orators.”
In reflecting on the award, it is important to keep in mind this:
More mirth at the expense of The One getting his Nobel Peace Prize. These comments are courtesy of Mark Steyn.
Reacting to the remarks by the Democratic National Committee’s Director of Communications that Republicans have joined terrorists by daring to criticize the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s choice of recipient. As Jonah Goldberg points out, once again it’s the Democrats who consider even well-deserved criticism of Obama on even a minor matter to be unpatriotic.
Suggesting that Obama also be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his “groundbreaking work demonstrating that ‘profit’ is part of ‘overhead.’” There is a link in Steyn’s post that includes an embedded video of the President’s greatest hits of economic nonsense. Unfortunately, the buffering is annoying, but the subjects are hilarious. It includes the President’s famous “profit/earnings ratio” formula.
In response to a reader’s suggestion that the award might constitute an award analogous to a Lifetime Achievement award for those who get passed over for OSCARs, characterizing the Prize as a “Pre-Lifetime Achievement” award.
Bonus: Carbolic Smokeball is first out of the box with news about the President’s use of his new stature as Nobel Peace Prize winner: Apologize to the Moon for the spacecraft that was crashed into it in a search for ice.
James Delingpole in the UK Telegraph attributes Obama’s win to one of three factors. My money is on the quality of the competition: Robert Mugabe, Osama bin Laden, Ahmed Jibril, and the late Pol Pot.
The eyebrow-raising decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize calls for not just the well-deserved ridicule it has received, but also for a discussion about what the decision says about the various participants. This article gives an insight into the Committee’s thinking and into the international elite’s preconceptions about Obama and about any American President who, like George W. Bush, would seek to press for American interests over what John Kerry referred to as the “global test.”
This should provide the Right’s commentariat with fodder for vitriol and humor for quite some time. Obama as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? Does the Left have absolutely no sense of proportion? Is there nothing about their messiah that does not cause them to cringe? The Norwegian committee that makes this choice had rather lost its credibility in the past, when it chose Jimmy Carter (who has never met a leftist thug he doesn’t like) in 2002 and Al Gore (whose vocal flatulence has caused more global warming even than his mansion and his SUVs) in 2007. Both of those awards were rightly seen as political jabs at George W. Bush. But now, this committee of primarily socialist lickspittles has completely turned the award into a politicized farce. One has to remember that, to qualify for the award, Obama had to be nominated by February 1, less than two weeks after the inauguration.
The article points out that the Left objected to the 1973 Peace Prize being given to Henry Kissinger. I sympathize with the Left’s objection to that award. But the article fails to point out that the Left did not object to the prize being given to Le Duc Tho, the minister of the expansionist North Vietnamese Communist regime. Mr. Le, however, had the decency to decline the award and thereby saved the Left further need to publicize their double standard. Notice that, with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt, every American who has received the reward has done things to embarrass the U.S. or otherwise to participate in its humiliation abroad. Obama’s foreign policy and his World Apology Tour 2009 are cases on point. This theater of the absurd makes one consider favorably, however briefly, even the Ron Paul “Fortress America” isolationism to let the rest of the world devour each other.
Obama has accomplished nothing remotely worthy of any award. The committee claims it is trying affirmatively to encourage behavior. This is, then, an affirmative action award, given under the usual criteria that characterize such policies. The result of this will simply be further to convince Obama that his mere presence will achieve his goals. That is a dangerous view for Americans, as it will further make dissent seen as, at best, disrespectful to The One and, at worst, un-patriotic and intolerable. But it also carries political risk for Obama, who will come to be seen more and more for what he is, a transnationalist and not an “American” President. It builds on the developing image of Obama as narcissistic, beholden to foreigners, and weak.
On a related matter, George W. Bush did far more to promote peace and freedom than Obama has, especially for Muslims. So it is not surprising that Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs gives an interview on radical Muslim TV in Britain, extolling the virtues of Shari’a law in providing “gender justice” for women. Other than her reasonable and apt observation that promiscuity and the breakdown of traditional values is what Muslims like least about the West, her remarks and her silence to the comments of others (such as repeated attacks on secular “man-made law” and the West’s “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism”) are indefensible.
A few weeks ago, there arose a considerable hubbub over the President’s plan to address the nation’s schoolchildren. I believe that the reaction in some conservative quarters was overblown, as he is the President, and there is nothing wrong with having him deliver a rather stolid message of perseverance to the children. I also believe it to be fine for children to send pictures or letters to the President. It is a proper teaching device to instill respect for the office and the person of the President in those children.
That would extend, of course, to letting students know that just because the ACLU litigates to let them wear Bush=Hitler t-shirts or similar anti-Bush insults to school does not mean that this is appropriate behavior. Nor is it for a teacher to do so. Presumably teaching students respect for the President does not depend on whether it is a Democrat or a Republican in the White House. On the other hand, the different treatment given (by the same school district) to anti-Obama and anti-Bush expression does not give one much confidence in that regard.
But what bothered some people at the time was the likely reaction of the schools, who, given the predominant political views among the teachers and administrators, might use the opportunity to proselytize in favor of Obama and his policies. While a single speech would not cause me worry about some sort of “cult of personality,” repeated addresses or the schools’ inappropriate reactions would be more troublesome.
Those concerns are not entirely overblown. The political reaction caused the Department of Education to modify its proposed lesson plans for the occasion. Moreover, the concern about teachers has solid basis in fact. There is, of course, this video of little children paying homage to the person of Obama and to his policies in a quasi-religious manner reminiscent of Kim Jong-Il. Now, I am not saying Obama is Kim Jong-Il; I am saying the teachers are playing the role that such functionaries play in totalitarian regimes. Then, there is this campaign classic. The latter is less of a concern to me because they were private families training their kids to be O-bots; the former is a public school with kids who are collateral damage in this effort. For another example of school indoctrination, there is this quiz on the Obama health care speech given to a high school anatomy (!) class.
Here are some other videos with similar tone. As a German, I find I find this paean to ObamaCare particularly disturbing. Then there is this gem. As a reminder of just how far gone the adult Obama supporters can be, there is the video from the campaign where Obama gets applause for—blowing his nose.
Years ago, the late George Carlin created a comedy routine in which he satirized the Seven Dirty Words that could not be uttered in broadcasting. The routine drew its humor from Carlin’s exaggerations and clinical explanations that made the words sound harmless, if, in the case of a couple, somewhat crass. Carlin was not the only one who used the psychology of repeating words to “desensitize” the listener to their shock value.
I was reminded of that when I heard America’s worst former President, Jimmy Carter, expound on his scientific conclusion that the overwhelming portion of people who oppose President Obama’s policies do so out of racism. Clueless as Carter has proved himself time and again, he is somewhat of an expert on racism. His own. I attribute his accusations to what psychologists, Freudians as well as Jungians, have referred to as projection, a psychological defense mechanism through which we avoid dealing with our own problems and biases by projecting them onto others.
Carter has a substantial and documented history of blaming the ills of the Middle East, and beyond, on specifically Israel and, albeit more ambiguously, on Jews. For Carter, as well as many other leftists, the code word for the latter often is “Neocons.” His scribblings have produced endorsements from some unsavory characters, such as Osama bin Laden. They have produced several challenges from Professor Alan Dershowitz for Carter to debate the latest anti-Israel book, challenges that Carter has wisely declined to accept. Then there is Carter’s infamous race-baiting 1970 campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia against Governor Carl Sanders, the details of which turn one’s stomach.
So, I recognize that, due to his expertise as a racist, Carter’s opinion deserves some consideration. However, ultimately his judgment in this matter is the product of the “clueless” hemisphere of his brain, not the “racist” one. And that goes for the rest of the Democratic politicians and commentators, and the liberal media and useful idiots who have trumpeted this theme along with their accusations that opponents of ObamaCare are un-American, unpatriotic, Nazis, brownshirts, domestic terrorists, and so on and on.
To return to the racism theme. Does it not strike any of these people as strange that Americans who oppose ObamaCare also opposed HillaryCare, the slightly less massive transformation of the American health care system promoted by the Clinton administration in 1993? I remember well the press’s “analysis” of the 1994 mid-term elections as the return of the “angry” conservative males. As far as I can tell, the Clintons are Whites, though I remember that many liberals in the 1990s proclaimed Billy Jeff as the first Black President. That honorific is heard no more. Instead, the Clintons themselves were targeted by the O-bots as “racists” during the 2008 primaries. So, if people who now oppose ObamaCare also opposed the health care socialization proposed by the now-revealed racists who are Bill and Hillary, wouldn’t that make such opponents anti-racists? Boy, this racism metaphysics is almost Hegelian in its density.
Moreover, how can Americans who oppose ObamaCare to the tune of 56%, according to a reliable poll (and more if only those who take a position are considered) be racists, when 53% of Americans voted for Obama? I don’t recall a large campaign effort directed at mobilizing “Racists for Obama.”
Returning to the Carlin routine. The word racist has lost much of its force by overuse. indeed, a reader may get a sense of that just by reading this post, which has made liberal use of the word. Democratic efforts at race-baiting reek of political desperation. I always know who has won an argument when an opponent resorts to ad hominem, particularly comparison to racists or Hitler. The last one only works if you have some very careful analysis of policy and rhetoric that is beyond the ken of the vast majority of, say, anti-war demonstrators who routinely compared President Bush’s policies to protect national security to Hitler’s policies. Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is such a careful and scholarly work that draws very nuanced comparisons and distinctions. But bumper stickers on Priuses and Subarus, and outbursts by MSNBC talking heads are not.
So, go ahead, liberals, and call opponents of Obama’s policies racist. It only provides evidence of your intellectual bankruptcy. As far as I am concerned, the word is flatus vocis, verbal flatulence. And it makes the less ideologically opposed to Obama mad and loses you even more supporters.
On a related topic, Nancy Pelosi bemoans the use of harsh and over-the-top language. Democrats have, after eight years of lunatic ranting about George Bush (examples of which I have posted before and which include contributions by Pelosi), Bush assassination chic, Bush Derangement Syndrome, and vicious political attack ads on Bush, Cheney, and Republicans, rediscovered the virtues of civility. But civility apparently means not opposing Obama policies, since to do so is racist. Oh, and Madame Speaker equates opposition rhetoric with the assassination of Harvey Milk. Not harsh and over the top, that comparison, is it?
Jonah Goldberg at NRO sees Carter’s and the Left’s racism fits through the same prism.
There has apparently been a drought in presidential humor. Obama jokes on the evening talk shows are few and far between. Those that are made, are tame and often not directed at Obama himself. Yet jokes about private citizens Cheney, Palin, and, to a lesser extent, Bush and the Clintons, still abound.
Time Magazine has analyzed the problem and come up with an answer. According to the sage writers at this august publication, the problem is not the cowardice and lack of imagination of the horde of infatuated comedians and pundits with their snivelling obsequiousness. It is the lack of a target: “For eight years [political comedians] had enjoyed a comedic gift from the gods in George W. Bush, whose bumbling presidency provided even richer material than the cartoonish excesses of the Clinton years. But Obama, with his obvious smarts, low-key style and (most important) ability to catch the prevailing tone of irony and laugh at himself, has left the comics with little to hang their punch lines on.” Huh? Obama, who has been described as testy and mean to those who dare question him has the, presumably unheard-of, disarming quality “to laugh at himself”?
Time points to the lost golden age of political comedy, the George W. Bush years, when ”political comedy came back in style, not just for late-night hosts like David Letterman and Jon Stewart — who are far more willing than Carson was to let their (usually left-of-center) political views show through — but also for the foot soldiers of the comedy clubs, where even guys who made their living from penis jokes were getting laughs from W.”
Ahh yes, even those bards of poetic comedy, the (liberal) penis jokesters could get laughs from an appreciative audience at the expense of the low-hanging fruit of W. The audience could laugh knowingly at the shared insight between them and the speaker about the, by turns, incompetence, stupidity, and cunning malevolence of the President. A statistically significant number of them had “Somewhere in Texas, a Village Is Missing Its Idiot” bumperstickers on their Priuses and Subarus, right near the “BusHitler” and “Coexist” stickers. The comedian probably was a drop-out from the local community college theater-arts program, and the audience had their sociology degrees from Antioch College or, worse, had a doctorate of education from anywhere. In other words, they possessed the kind of intellectual fool’s-gold plating that allowed them to fantasize undeservedly that they could pass judgment on the intelligence of a Yale College and Harvard Business School graduate.
Alas, to read Time’s account, the comedic plenty of the Bush years was just a bubble. The value of the comedian’s main asset, the political joke, was inflated by excessively easy access to material, and, as Time’s reference to the penis comics (the subprime borrowers of comedic material) makes clear, increased demand for such jokes led to jokes with lower and lower quality. The bubble burst with the election of Obama, and a panic has ensued. Obama jokes are a precious asset as rare as a new line of credit secured by a residence. To the extent that Obama jokes exist, Time reports with evident satisfaction and in fine detail, they are jokes—still at the expense of Republicans, especially Bush! Others take issue with Obama for not being leftist enough.
The reality of the problem is quite different, and Time’s obvious failure to do more than touch on it in a few lines is proof. The problem isn’t the lack of comedic material in Obama; it’s the lack of talent of the comedians. Seeing one’s own absurdity is very difficult. That requires figuratively stepping outside oneself in a manner that is almost impossible psychologically. It is the psychological analogy to tickling oneself, a physical phenomenon said to be impossible.
One may be able to achieve some basic recognition of one’s peculiarities and character quirks, but it likely is a blurry vision, akin to trying to see something too close. True perspective requires a distance one does not have from oneself, but others do. It takes the outside observer to see the absurdity in each of us that leads to sharp satire. It is that distance that produces the proper balance between exaggeration and truth that is the mark of the skilled satirist.
Obama is a walking, talking caricature by now. The comedians and bloggers on the right have been having a field day with this guy and his followers for many months. May I just suggest two sites, Iowahawk and Scrappleface, that have mined Obama for many entertaining columns. Michael Ramirez has skewered Obama in his cartoons. Rush Limbaugh has musical parodies of Obama and his coterie of advisers and followers. I have read English columnists parody Obama. JibJab had a wonderful parody of Obama well over a year ago. Obama’s mannerisms, his speech patterns, his self-importance and arrogance, his strange “factual” declarations and misunderstanding of concepts (”profit-earning ratios,” anyone?), his medical mis-prescriptions, his apology tours, his failure to find the right doors at the White House and various other faux-pas of the type that the comedians and the press lampooned mercilessly when they happened to W, and on and on.
The problem is not a lack of material. Obama is a veritable lode of comedic gold. And his followers certainly sweeten the deal. The real problem is that the comedians, like the press, are too invested in Obama. Time very briefly alludes to that problem but doesn’t develop it. Just as Obama does not have the perspective to see his absurdity, neither do the (left-leaning) comedians. One cannot expect O-bots to exercise the requisite critical faculties regarding The One. They lack those faculties due to their self-identification with their putative object of ridicule.
Further proof that the problem is ideological, not comedic, is the comedians’ seeming ability to dredge up humor, usually of rather crude and distorted kind, about Sarah Palin (and her children), a former vice-presidential candidate and now private citizen, and about Dick Cheney, a former vice-president. Yet the current vice-president, a man who pitches gaffes more consistently than a major league all-star pitcher delivers strikes, a man whom comedians should make an honorary member of whatever union they have, is rarely skewered. They don’t even have to make anything up about this guy. Just recite his “greatest hits.”
In addition, comedians don’t know how to handle Obama’s race, proof that we have not matured to the point where a Black (or, more accurately, a mixed-race) man is accorded the same right as a White man to fall on his face, as well as to succeed. Comedians who so vainly and vaingloriously claimed that they love to “speak truth to power” have fallen silent and have proven just what gasbags they are. Their sycophantic approach to Obama that is unwittingly revealed in the Time article should lay that canard to rest once and for all.
Unlike some on the right, I am not going to keep my kids out of school just because the President is making a speech. That grossly overstates the significance of Obama and my ability to counter any nonsense he might spout or to support any pearls of wisdom. I will find out what the school is going to do, if I do anything. The Dep’t of Education’s guidelines for class discussion and assignments were a bit dodgy, in that the form of the questions seemed to direct middle and high school pupils to a personal connection with Obama. But come on, he is the President right now, and the proposed questions are rather harmless, on the whole. Nothing I can’t easily deal with at home, if necessary. Besides, the questions have been changed.
Remember that other Presidents, even Ronald Reagan, have made speeches that were directed at school children (though there was no similar attempt to have all of them listen as he made the speech and then discuss it afterwards as an official lesson plan). I don’t have any problems with the President passing his time telling students to stay in school. Better that than that he impoverish the students by trying to get government health insurance, cap-and-tax, industry bail-outs, or “stimulus” give-aways passed that will lower parents’ and children’s standards of living. Sometimes it seems that whatever move Obama makes, the conservative herd mentality sets in, and away they go, thundering after some dead end “problem.” It’s like the basketball player who uses a headfake to get his overeager opponent to overcommit. Conservatives have far bigger fish to fry. Keep the eyes on the ball, and don’t get stuck on stupid.
That said, the problems some conservatives have is not with the particular occasion, but with the general conflation among many Americans of the person of Obama with the United States and, indeed, the world. One recalls the repeated declarations by Democrats that persons who criticize Obama’s policies are racist and hate Obama, or are unpatriotic, un-American, or treasonous. One recalls also the pledge of service to President Obama (not to the U.S.) made by a collection of entertainers and other celebutards. And the musical odes to Obama sung by the Obama Youth in Venice, California, during the campaign. (Note Mark Steyn’s descriptions of the Saddam Hussein personality cult he witnessed in early post-invasion Iraqi schools in 2003.) And the other Obama youths in camo clothing hailing Obama. And the “iconic” posters of Obama in his Lenin-like strong man pose. And the decals of Obama like a religious saint I still see pasted on cars plenty of times driving L.A.’s freeways. And the constant appearances of Obama on TV, where he is beginning to come across like Big Brother-cum-nanny.
Some parents begin to see an omnipresence to Obama in their lives that has a faint touch of the personality worship associated with typical authoritarian thugs. And they know that Obama’s close friend and political associate Bill Ayers has written about the need to indoctrinate the young in militant “progressive” ideology. Ayers himself is simply following the advice of would-be totalitarians who want to “re-make” mankind and radically restructure society. As Socrates advised those who would radically remake society, capture the children. The adults are too set in their ways.
So it is not the incident of today’s speech, but a constant drip-drip-drip of Obama the person in our lives. His followers (sometimes acidly termed O-bots) often seem irrationally attached to his person, a fact that the Obama campaign initially encouraged last year until it began to be seen by too many as, well, creepy. Even Paul Krugman of The New York Times became aware of the incipient cult of personality issue during last year’s campaign. Obama seemed like a secular messiah, The One, to his adoring disciples. It probably would be best for Obama to avoid any further such nationwide speeches to children during the rest of the school year, lest suspicions about his goals begin to sound less outlandish to the ears of most Americans.
Scrappleface has a leaked copy of the speech. If accurate, the government schools’ teachers’ union seat warmers may regret their decisions to have children waste time that could have been spent learning to read, write, or do numbers. Anything that might have helped close the educational performance gap between the American public schools and those of Equatorial Guinea.
I mentioned this during the campaign. Odd how in 2004 Bush and Cheney’s military records became a central focus of Democrats who thought that, for once, they had a “war hero” on their ticket. Bush’s “mere” Air National Guard service and Cheney’s draft deferments became for the Democrats the single-best measure of character. Until Kerry was exposed by the Swifties for the blow-hard opportunist that he is. Edwards’ lack of military service was conveniently buried. Of course, when Bill Clinton, who had avoided even National Guard service by prevarications to the draft board (what, Bill Clinton prevaricate?), was running against two decorated war heroes in 1992 (George H.W. Bush) and 1996 (Robert Dole), even to mention military service was regarded by Democrats as the depth of perfidy and lack of character. Democrats “explained” the difference by claiming that, in ‘92 and ‘96, there was no war (Bosnia notwithstanding). Once a war starts, the candidates’ military records become crucial (even for the incumbent who had been guiding the war effort already).
In 2008, with another Republican decorated war hero running for Commander-in-Chief against Democrats with non-existent military background, the Democrats and the media reverted to 1990s form. Odd, that, since the same war conditions on which they had relied in 2004 to trumpet Kerry’s allegedly superior military brilliance was still ongoing. Any mention of Obama’s (and Hillary’s, Edwards’s, and, later, Biden’s) lack of military experience was unfair and probably racist. Indeed, Leftie Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa (whose own attacks on the military record of W had come to naught in 2004 when it was discovered he had vastly exaggerated his Vietnam “war” experiences), opined that it was better to have someone like Obama than McCain, who would be too set in a military way of thinking. The media’s obsession in 2004 with Cheney’s five draft deferments gave way to utter silence about foreign relations and national security “specialist” Joe Biden’s—five draft deferments. Hillary was ridiculed by the press for her explanation that she visited a recruitment office once in her 30s and thought of joining, but was dissuaded by the recruiter. Right. But the reason the press pilloried her was because by then they had all gone in the tank for The One.
Now it turns out that the Community organizer-in-Chief has no use for people with a military background (except as Defense Secretary and as head of veteran’s affairs). Obama’s high level appointees come predominantly from law schools, not the military. Given the administration’s approach to fighting “lawfare,” as the transnational legal elites nesting in our law schools favor, this is not a surprise. But it is not good news for Americans; of course, our enemies may feel relief, which will raise America’s standing abroad. After all, isn’t the President’s job under the Constitution is to make sure that the world feel good about the U.S., even if that may reduce the quality of life—or life itself—for Americans? That’s got to be somewhere in the penumbras of Article II and discoverable by a judge with the proper empathy for those who have long suffered from American power and over-consumption.
Via Hot Air. As if having The One in the White House is not enough, we now increasingly have the press act as if both Mr. and Mrs. Messiah live there. Oprah already pronounced Michelle Obama the greatest First Lady ever, after barely 100 days, to match the Lincolnesque stature the press and the rest of the O-bots bequeathed on The One even before his inauguration. Then there is the academic who published an article in Salonglorifying Michelle Obama’s booty as a liberating force of historic proportions (my characterization).
The sick sycophancy of the press plumbs new depths, as Sally Quinn at the Washington Post declares Michelle Obama’s arms to be “transformational.” She begins thus:
“‘May I change the subject,’ said a prominent Washington theologian at a recent dinner. The conversation had been high-minded — religion, philosophy, the nature of evil. ‘I’d like to talk about Michelle Obama’s arms,’ he said.
“He is a big fan of those arms. We then began a discussion about the significance of the first lady’s arms. Actually, it turned out to be equally serious. Michelle Obama’s arms, we determined, were transformational.”
Would such obsequious and addled blather even be conceivable for any Republican presidential wife or, for that matter, any Democratic presidential wife other than Hillary Clinton. And we have to endure these delerious effusions from the pseudo-intelligentsia for at least four more years. AARGH.
I am loath to post about Obama’s history of teleprompter “incidents,” but his reliance on teleprompters has become the stuff of humor, at least on the Right. There is even a website set up as belonging to Barack’s teleprompter.
Anyone can have accidents, and we are often the victims of technological glitches. I have used a teleprompter of sorts, and it can be tricky on occasion to set the right pace. I also think that there are more important “glitches” with the Obama administration.
But once they pile up, it is difficult to ignore POTUS’s (President of the U.S.) misadventures with TOTUS (Teleprompter of the U.S.). This is all the more so, since the media regularly ignore missteps by Obama that would have produced headline-type coverage from the papers to the electronic media to the smug pundits to the stand-up comics had they happened to Bush, Reagan, Quayle, Palin, etc.
To balance the media’s hosannas over The One’s first 100 days (you know, the days that he began to remake the world, before he took a day of rest), the folks at National Review give their more balanced critiques.
Newt Gingrich lauds President Obama’s success in being so successful in his first 100 days of doing such bad things to expand the power of the federal government. Example: “President Obama has transformed the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into giant engines of unsupervised spending. Together, they’ve spent the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007, without having to disclose where the money went.”
Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald (the paper not owned by the N.Y. Times) has a round-up of reactions. Particularly good are Don Surber’s collection of “100 Days, 100 Mistakes” and the similarly named version by The New York Post. Surber’s, especially, are wonderful reminders of the mistakes, hilarious and otherwise, that this greatest intellect and President has made. Slate continues to run a “Bushism of the Day” post. I read articles about how difficult Obama is as a target for jokes by comics. The man is a walking parody at least as much as W. The press finds no humor there because they don’t want to ridicule “their” guy, in whose success they are so invested. Remember Chris Matthews? If W or Dan Quayle or Gerald Ford had committed these various inanities and bumblings, there would have been coverage and comic material galore.
For some scary numbers on the first 100 days, see this AP link, of all things.
Americans are treated to a constant lover’s concerto about Obama’s tremendous approval ratings. Overall, he’s doing fine for this stage of the term, though not as well as some. But this is interesting parsing of the polling data, using “strong” approval and disapproval numbers. For those most committed, the opinions on The One are close, within the margin of error.
Thank you! I roll my eyes when I hear people say, “Oooh, Obama is so smart. He was a constitutional law professor.” Well, ahh, I’m not disagreeing about the “smart” comment. Regarding Obama. Or constitutional law professors. But, actually, he taught courses on equal protection and civil rights. Those courses are, to be sure, broadly speaking about constitutional law matters. But he didn’t teach the real stuff, the issues about the structure of separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government, or about national-state structural issues. Equal protection is one of the constitutional condiments; it’s not the main course.
Well, now, here’s this:
Helen Thomas: Why is the president blocking habeas corpus from prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law. And these prisoners have been there . . .
Robert Gibbs: You’re incorrect that he taught on constitutional law.
I just ran across a strange website, the “I Thank Obama” website. The website invites visitors to add their thoughts about why we should be thankful for the presidency of Barack Obama. Some observations. About one-third of the commenters were O-bots. Many of them were still in full Messiah-worship mode. Most of his fans, though, were simply people like the proverbial Obama supporters caricatured by the Right. They want Obama to pay for their house, car, food, TV, etc. Like some folks after the Civil War who expected Father Abraham to come down personally with whatever was needed for them to live while they sat on their rocking chairs on their forty acres, these people want Mr. Obama to come down and bring them all the material things that they think he has promised them. While most still sounded hopeful, some were definitely getting a bit antsy, as their promised goodies had not yet arrived. I call these the “cargo-cult” Obama supporters.
About two-thirds of the comments were hardly “thanks.” They came from the Right. Many were quite funny; others more mundanely annoyed. Still others, though fortunately only a few, were racially charged insults and bravado. One is forced to admit that our side, too, has its unsavory element. Such race-baiters need to be slapped down, and hard. We don’t need those distractions from the real eye-opening danger posed by the delusions of the Obama supporters. It simply allows the Obama supporters the easy way out to avoid responsibility—or even debate.
Some Democrats claim that, while Obama’s supporters in and out of the media may have gone overboard with the “heal and save” deification during the campaign, they have sobered up. Instead, those Democrats say, it is only in the stuck-in-first-gear brains of Republicans that the notion of Obama as the Democrats’ secular messiah continues. Right.
Professor Victor Davis Hanson writes a wonderful parody. He imagines what would have happened had the Bush administration, upon taking office, acted as the Obama administration has, from its policy ineptness, to its nominees’ ethical problems, to its pursuit of “enemies” in the opposing party, to the Blitzkrieg for its ideological agenda, to the President’s personal prickliness and shunting of responsibility. How would the media have reacted by now? Though the answer is obvious, the article underscores the problem and skewers the usual suspects.
The man who created the ubiquitous image of Obama with the “Hope” caption has been arrested. The wonderfully-named Shepard Fairey was arrested for graffiti while visiting Boston. I prefer to look at this Fairey tale as just his effort to spread his “art.” After all, if the city can hire him at taxpayer expense to put a 20 by 50 foot painting on the side of city hall, why can’t he “give back” to the community by doing the same kind of thing on a smaller scale for free?
As related in Plato’s Republic, Socrates was very suspicious of dramatists and fiction writers. As an aside, to go by Aristophanes’s Clouds, the playwrights knew how to retaliate against philosophers. Socrates was suspicious, and wanted most fiction writers banned from the ideal city (or worse), because they were purveyors of fictional images that were far removed from the truth of things. Thus, their works were likely to distort the good and lead people astray through deceptive images and words. One would expect Socrates to have a low opinion of actors, the ultimate purveyors of false images, as well. And for good reason. As I have opined before, it is an indictment of our society that we give so much stature to such a trade that has been viewed with disdain through most of human history.
I am reminded of this when I see this video of entertainment “celebrities” pledging their support to the new president.
As befits a community organizer-in-chief, the message here is that we all need to get with the program. Chris Matthews has already abandoned whatever remains of journalistic integrity by telling Joe Scarborough that he (Matthews) sees it as his job to support Obama and make the latter’s presidency a success. Not exactly his position during the last eight years. This is a way for the Left to demonstrate a faux-patriotism that is as deep and meaningful as these entertainers’ romantic affairs and “intellectual” ruminations. It will be gone soon after the swallows return to Capistrano and the next big thing for Hollywood celebrities to connect with, arises.
Particularly off-putting is the ending. “I pledge to be a servant to our President”??? It sounds, for lack of a better term, un-American and unworthy of a free citizen of a republic. Why not just “I, an unworthy worm, pledge to be a servant of the Great Lord Obama, whose name shall forever live in glory,” and be done with it? Or perhaps the SS oath, “I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as the German Führer, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and the superiors determined by you obedience unto death. So help me God.” If the Republicans put out such drivel for Bush, the screaming about incipient fascism would have been loud and long. Mark Steyn posts his opinion of the whiff of monarchical submission that rises from this pledge. Andrew Breitbart rolls out the heavy artillery and unloads the well-deserved ridicule on these Hollywood posers in a bracing article that will definitely get the pulse going. Finally, Iowahawk has seen what appears to be another version that he interprets in his unique way.
I posted on a similar topic before, when it happened in Gaza. This time it is protesters in Iran burning flags with Obama’s picture on them. Not that this is a surprise to conservatives. It happened to Bush, too. And it happened to Clinton before him, much to the liberals’ dismay then. Conservatives were not deceived by the liberal talking points that the whole world just hated Bush. The truth always has been that some elements, particularly in certain countries, hate the United States. The rest of the world may have a vague anti-American attitude, but that transcends the particular occupant of the White House.
What I find more fascinating is that the sources I found that covered the story were both from the U.K., The London Times, and Reuters UK. While American blogs covered this (with links to those British sources), the traditional U.S. media did not, at least not at that time. One is led to wonder why American media might shy away from a story critical of Obama’s image abroad.
The humorous and satisfying aspect of this story is the comments. Liberal commenters, particularly at the Huffington Post, are insulted that this is happening. They blame it on the suddenly evil Iranian government; on the ideological craziness of the protesters; on the American media for photoshopping the image to make Iran look bad for insulting Obama (!); on Iranian diplomatic stupidity for insulting Obama; and so on. All of those things that liberals enjoyed when they were happening to Bush, where it was Bush’s fault, and the result of America’s missteps, but never the fault of the government-stooge protesters, suddenly were the fault of those same protesters and governments. This is the type of thing that will be fun during the next four to eight years, watching the Left get annoyed at the things that they enjoyed when they happened to Bush. Note that I am not saying that I am happy that this is happening to Obama, or that I am sympathetic to anti-American protesters.
Though they may mock him, many conservatives are cautiously optimistic and relieved about Obama’s selections so far, except his selection of leftist Susan Rice to be Ambassador to the U.N. Those sentiments extend also to Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State; after all, Susan Rice could have been selected to that position. I am still withholding judgment about what these appointments say about the ideological direction of the Obama administration. We will need to wait and see what happens after a couple of years in office or even until the second term. Then we will know who his fall-back players are. I suspect that Obama’s own ideological leanings will come through forcefully at that point.
In the meantime, the New York Times takes these selections to a predictable level of Obama worship. Powerline takes on the Times article’s historical tone-deafness in contrasting the likely ”spirited debate” and “grand personalities” of the Obama administration with the collection of lickspittles and yes-men (and women) that allegedly constituted the Bush administration. Not content with its mischaracterization of the Bush administration, the Times predictably reaches back to the Kennedy administration for parallels to Obama’s picks. This is part of the liberal media’s campaign to morph the liberal Obama into the (foreign and defense policy-wise) conservative Kennedy who ran to the right of Nixon on those issues, and to create a new Camelot. Powerline takes apart the Times’ mischaracterization on that point, as well.
The punditry’s latest chapter of Obamaniah makes him out to be another Lincoln, at least. I heard this even before the election, then Newsweek had its piece, and the press’ mythologizing centrifuge is now in full spin mode. Jonah Goldberg thinks the comparisons are a bit premature, as the lad has not done anything yet, much less led the country through a civil war. As Goldberg notes,
“In an attempt to dial down expectations for his administration, President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.
No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.
It’s a step down from divine redeemer, but you have to start somewhere.”
For Goldberg, though, as it should be for all of us, the fact that Obama need not be Lincoln or FDR is a blessing, since it means there is no massive bloodletting in a civil war or a world war, and there is no economic depression. I agree with Goldberg, let’s hope that Obama can be successful being Calvin Coolidge (a very good and underappreciated President).
