What with exhaustion, overexposure, and the temptation to comment on just about anything in the news, presidential candidates and presidents alike naturally often slip up. Given their hectic speaking schedules, they frequently mispronounce words (“nucular,” “corpse-man”), engage in the trivial (inflating tires and tuning up cars in lieu of drilling for more oil), and simply get things wrong (57 states). “Bushism” was coined about 2001 to refer to all the various ways that George W. Bush mangled the English language. There are, of course, just as many “Obamaisms,” though they are rarely commensurately lampooned by the media.
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FDR unfairly and often demonized his political opponents. Truman could be coarsely blunt; Nixon far more so and in paranoid fashion. Jimmy Carter’s beatific façade seemed to hide all sorts of inner mean streaks. But what seems somewhat different from past presidential sermons, malapropisms, and flat-out wrong statements is the tendency of Barack Obama to lecture, talk down to, caricature, or even insult various people and groups — even as no other president in recent memory has reminded the nation so often of the need for civility, unity, and tolerance.
After only one year plus of campaigning and three years of governance, there is already a sizable corpus of Obama’s targets. The common theme is less ideology, politics, race, class, or gender than a sense that many groups and people simply don’t measure up to Obama’s high standards. Some are deemed lazy, stupid, greedy, fearful, or clinging; others are too affluent, of questionable ethics, and ill-informed and ill-intentioned — and thus are culpable for our current problems.
Where did the president pick up this habit of hypercriticism and easy caricature? Who knows? Michelle Obama showed similar tendencies during the campaign, when she labeled the U.S. a country that is “just downright mean,” until recently not worthy of pride, and variously talked about unnamed persons who perennially “raise the bar” on those struggling to get ahead.
Yet lecturing, demonizing, and caricaturing are not just symptoms of narcissism or being socially dense, but are also a revelation that Obama feels that he can say almost anything he wants, with the expectation — always borne out in the past — of few consequences. Still, his handlers worry about this habit, which explains both the serial use of teleprompted scripts even for the briefest of commentary and the almost lightning response from the White House, either that the latest target had it coming, or that the president’s critics themselves were suspect in noticing such insults, or that the remarks were meant only in jest. Note as well that while almost everyone else is culpable, the president himself rarely is — at least not as much as ATM machines, George W. Bush, tsunamis, the European Union, the nine-month-old Republican-controlled House, the Arab Spring, and skyrocketing oil prices. Others err; but the president has made all “the right choices.”
Here is a tiny sampling of those who have been on the receiving end of the president’s disdain:
African Americans: “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.”
Americans: Are “not a model for the world” and have a “tragic history.” Also, “we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” and, more recently, we have gotten “a little soft” and lost our “competitive edge.”
Bankers: “Fat cats”
Border enforcement: Its overzealous adherents want “alligators and moats” on the border and would arrest children on their way to get ice cream.
The Cambridge, Mass., police: “Acted stupidly” and, like law-enforcement officers in general, racially profile
Corporate-jet owners: “Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?”
Democratic base: Must “shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up . . . if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”
That's OK, the GOP has their own target list - anyone that has supported Obama's policies that have produced the mess we're in.
Chief among them, "moderate" Dems, such as a certain Virginia Senator who, conventional wisdom aside, will likely come to regret his pro-Obama votes ... External Link
There's so much wrong with this column, I don't know where to begin.
This is Hanson at his clenched-teeth worst.
One observation and one challenge:
Observation: "Obama feels that he can say almost anything he wants, with the expectation — always borne out in the past — of few consequences. Still, his handlers worry about this habit, which explains both the serial use of teleprompted scripts even for the briefest of commentary and the almost lightning response from the White House, either that the latest target had it coming, or that the president’s critics themselves were suspect in noticing such insults, or that the remarks were meant only in jest."
If Obama's "handlers" are so concerned about what he's going to say that it "explains the use of teleprompted scripts," how do you explain the fact that so many of these supposed insults are embedded in teleprompted scripts?
Challenge: The first to you to simply choose three of the above supposedly insulted groups and name them here gets a detailed response from me, so we can discuss them on the merits. Your choice.
Regarding your first point, it's possible that Mr. Hanson was trying to be nice to Obama's handlers and cut them some slack. Well, you blew that out of the water by profering the probable truth that they're as bad as their boss. is that supposed to be a defense of Obama?
Regarding the challenge: what exactly is it? Mr. Hanson has named the groups. Do your detailed response.
So what is it? Obama and his handlers collectively try to refrain from insults by use of a TelePrompTer but fail because they're all constitutionally incapable? Wow, that's a stretch.
As to the challenge? Pick any three. Your choice. Too many to respond to all.
I think it (Teleprompter) has been used more for controlling the disasterous off the cuff comments he has made when not telepromptered - VDH's argument regarding a correlation of using a teleprompter to keep his divisive comments controlled is not that persuasive. They keep him telepromptered because he is a gaffe machine. His divisive rhetoric is in fact completely supported by his staff. So I actually agree with MikeB somewhat on his point. However, on the larger point, VDH is spot on. Obama is a divider, his campaign chief is a divider. When you really don't stand for anything outside of paying your supporters and skimming some stuff off the top (the Chicago Way under which he was trained) you must divide lest you fall.
One might well think that the claim that a combination of ignorance, arrogance, hypocrisy, nasty temperament, and clumsiness with the English language in one person or even among a whole set of people needs controlling might be a "stretch."
Then one reads your posts here, and realizes how common that combination of afflictions is.
I admire your restraint in replying to someone who uses a minor point in Mr. Hanson's article - Obama’s handlers aren’t to blame for his divisive rhetoric - to suggest that the major points are incorrect and/or unproven. MikeB’s view seems to be that the President of the United States has neither the power nor opportunity to review and revise the words others write because he is the feeble mouthpiece of the mean-spirited staffers he hired. Or perhaps MikeB doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the President of the United States declaring to a world that has a low opinion of Americans that many of us are bigots who don’t like immigrants.
MikeB doesn't challenge the accuracy of the Obama Target List or address whether it’s appropriate for the man who promised to unite America to refer to his grandmother as a “typical white person” and accuse those he disagrees with of hating poor people, sick people and children. I’m sure MikeB can tell us what the President meant by “typical white person” and explain why the President repeatedly claims that 17% of all working Americans who pay 37% of all federal income taxes collected aren’t paying their fair share. And while he’s at it, he can explain what he meant by “constitutionally incapable” and how that term relates to your comment.
"Challenge: The first to you to simply choose three of the above...gets a detailed response from me..."
*Bowing in obeisance and chanting in unison*
We are not worthy to debate with the great and all-wise MikeB, who blesses us merely by suggesting we can earn a spot at his omniscient discussion table.
Normally contests are held for something of value, in this case MikeB's "detailed response" compares to getting a banana instead of a nice Hershey bar for Halloween. As a member of several groups oppressed by this administration I don't feel it's worth my time to debate anything with party mouthpieces and apologists for the regime.
I didn't think Narcissism was contagious until I met people who read Obama's book.
OK, here's just one since I don't have that much time. Sarah Palin. I'm not a huge Palin fan, but the implication in his remark was that he was somehow more qualified to hold the office than she. Going strictly by their resumes, this is completely preposterous. To this date I still haven't heard anyone explain how he's more qualified to be president than any reasonably educated small town mayor.
I do agree with your point. To me, Obama's handlers don't seem overly concerned about his paroxysms, whether these be on- or off-teleprompter. This was perhaps the author's attempt to be fair to them, or simply wishful thinking about there being someone capable of feeling a sense of shame in the Obama administration (which I don't happen to believe).
But otherwise, I think the column was mostly on track.
When I hear Obama speak, I do not hear a president imbued with affection for the whole country. I hear a tribal chief who only looks after his supporters--provided that they are successful--or his intellectual next-of-kin; and I see a thug whose very political existence is based on finding or creating the next "them" against whom he can sic his rhetoric and his minions.
And the "them" are invariably members of We the People--whom he has freely chosen to represent. This man is not even remotely a healer; he is a destructive fire constantly needing strawmen as fuel to continue existing as a political entity.
Although I've never met Obama, I have been demonized by him more times than I can count--as a white guy, a gun-owner, a Christian, a Republican, a tea-party supporter, a proud American, a border-security advocate and a proponent of fiscal restraint (and these are only the things I remember off the cuff).
And, to add insult to injury, I constantly see him smirking from behind the skirts of a media (AKA "journOlists") that he knows are too corrupt to call him on anything of substance.
Result: I soberly, rationally, thoroughly despise the man.
Oh so true my friend. I make "a lot" of money, but pay about 40% in taxes because it's ordinary income. I am sick and tired of being vilified by these dopes on the left! Enough of their jealous whining! It's all lies! I have nine siblings all of whom are conservative and none of whom make "a lot" of money. There's no jealousy between us. No fighting or whining about who deserves what. I made hard choices and worked hard and it "paid off!". That's it.
So what! Would I be a "better" person if I were a panhandler in San Francisco instead of employing dozens of people?!?!
There's so much wrong with this column, I don't know where to begin.
Mike, you know EXACTLY how to begin. In fact you begin virtually EVERY comment to EVERY Hanson column EXACTLY the way you began this one. The very words and phrases, "so much wrong with this column" and "where to begin" seem to shadow every utterance by Hanson.
Which brings me to the second point, and the word I used, "shadow": you are the ultimate Hanson groupie. You follow VDH around like a chihuahua, barking at his shoes.
I'd recommend seeing VDH speak and addressing questions to him directly though those questions would have to be a a different variety than the trivial nonsense usually directed at him through this forum. I have heard him speak on several occasions. It has always been a tour-de-force presentation: no notes, amazing organization of thought and argument, cogent analysis. You would enjoy it. And you might stop being so silly.
