Clarification: my opinion about Obama’s Tucson speech
From the evidence of certain comments and a couple of emails I’ve received, it seems I didn’t make myself clear enough when I first discussed Obama’s Tucson speech—even when I expanded on my position here and here in the comments section.
I pretty much agree with Byron York here, and I have from the start. And when I state than I also agree with Rich Lowry that it was “a magnificent performance,” I mean to especially accent that last word: performance.
When I wrote that Obama’s speech was “pitch-perfect,” that’s what I was talking about. Like so many of Obama’s great conciliator orations—I am thinking especially of his “let us all reason together about race while I’m making excuses for my mentor the racist demagogue Rev. Wright and calling my own grandmother a racist” speech, for example, which was extraordinarily effective with many of the people he needed to reach at the time in order to continue to be viable as a candidate—it accomplished the task. Obama did just what he needed to do in Tuscon (accent on the “he”), and he performed the job very, very well.
It takes a bit of thinking, though, to realize that, if he had really wanted to damp down the inflammatory rhetoric, he could have and should have done so earlier, before it hit its marks. He had plenty of time.
But no. As I wrote here:
[This] is Obama’s m.o. He likes to play bad cop good cop, and he’s the good cop.
As far as wishing, as I wrote at the end of the original post, that government could live up to the expectations of an idealistic child such as Cristina Green, I’m giving her credit for being a great deal more thoughtful than a two-year old yelling “gimmee, gimmee!” in a candy store. I’m not talking about giving people whatever they want, whether it’s possible or not. Nor am I talking about mere civility, and certainly not about the absence of strong argument.
I’m talking about the sort of hope that an intelligent nine-year-old can have that people in government will be trying to do what’s right: to tell the truth, to be thoughtful and logical, to listen to their constituents and be responsive, and to work together to figure out what’s best for the country rather than what will solidify their own power. Things like that—things that the cynical non-nine-year-old in me realizes are highly unlikely to occur.
Kyle Smith in Sunday’s NY Post. Not a wasted word.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_maddening_crowd_JqXyn0dQn9mO5O4rUkhtHO
Bandmeeting: It’s no accident Obama chose to speak in front of students. Very little he does is an accident, except every now and then when he speaks off the cuff.
By the way, to be pedantic, “maddening” in that headline is a common misquote. The original is “madding.”
Neo — Perhaps “maddening” was intended to be a pun.
mizpants: that occurred to me as well. In fact, in my original comment I wrote something about that and then took it out. I took it out because I think it makes no sense as a pun–the words are too close in meaning—although I suppose “maddening” means to make other people angry, rather than just to be angry. Also, for most people, the pun would be too obscure. However, it could be a pun I suppose, just not a very good one.
The bottom line is he is serving himself, but assuredly not the country, very, very well.
Great.
Let’s just increase the Nat’l Debt Ceiling to $16 trillion while we’re at it. The sheep won’t mind; they’ll just huddle in their blue T-shirts, thriving together.
Agreed.
For the very brief time I watched the speech (and not on purpose — it was still going when I guessed (and hoped) it would be over, I recognized the face of Obama, I heard his singular voice, but listening to the words, my first thought was “Who is this man, and what did he do with the real Barack Obama?”
He is in full-manipulation mode, and triangulating to save his life — his polltical life. And he needs to if he has any hope in 2012.
Personally, I have my hopes in 2012 — and prayers — and they definitely do not include Barack Obama!
The occasion leaves me with a bad taste. Maybe Obama’s tackiness is sinking in on the public as time passes, but I’m not at all sure. In contrast to the Wellstone funeral, the Left seems to be getting away with it this time.
Lee Atwater, or Bill Clinton’s Carville-led rapid response team for that matter, might well have turned this into a Dukakis-in-the-tank incident.
It’s like you bought a crappy vacuum cleaner from a door to door salesman, so you complain to the company and they assure you they’ll send by a salesman with a much better pitch.
Neo: “… I’m talking about the sort of hope that an intelligent nine-year-old can have that people in government will be trying to do what’s right: …”
1) Why would any rational being, who has been paying attention, expect or assume that *he* was.
2) Even an intelligent nine-year-old is still just a nine-year-old (I know, I was one) who knows next-to-nothing about issues of adulthood … and society, and governance, and law, and legal rights, etc.
2a) If a think is worth doing *because* it appeals to the sensibilities and expectations of an intelligent nine-year-old, should it not also be worth doing because it is *right*? In which case, we might as well ditch the “It’s For The Children” spiel.
I’d be more convinced of Obama’s sincerity if he hadn’t
dyed his hair for the occasion, and if the jumbotron hadn’t instructed the pep rally to cheer.
Cap’n Rusty:
I didn’t watch the speech, so I don’t know about the hair dyeing. But I saw the Gateway Pundit post about the “applause” line, and there were commenters who said that it was just closed captioning and nothing to get excited about.
I’m frankly starting to wonder about Gateway Pundit lately, I’ve seen several occasions where Jim Hoft gets all worked up over nothing. I remember a thread a couple of months ago about the heavy metal band GWAR “disemboweling” “Sarah Palin” as a part of their stage show. I’m not a heavy metal fan and I didn’t know GWAR from a hole in the wall. Hoft was in high dudgeon about it, and the commenters chimed in with their outrage. But then some commenters who were familiar with their antics said, “Relax, people. That’s just their schtick. They do that with everybody.” Sure enough, one commenter posted a link to a video where they “beheaded” “Obama”. So it was much ado about nothing.
We had Obama Tucson speeches every week in high school during football and basketball seasons:”
“Gimme an O, gimme a B…gimme an A…gimme an M…gimme an A….
And we were a little rube, hick school out in flyover country and we wasn’t nearly as smart as you’n east coast folks done be.
A performance is only “magnificent’ if you don’t think of it as a performance. The moment you realize that some one is performing you you understand the fraudulence.
In Tucson he said, “Before we are Democrats or Republicans, we are Americans.” I was reminded of his famous speech that originally grabbed everyone’s attention, back in 2006. He said, “There is not a red America or a blue America. There is only the United STATES of America.”
Heavens. How long will it be before he starts yammering something like, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” and “Yes we can.”
And then flipping the crowds off.
I think he must be counting on our willing suspension of disbelief and our short memories. You can see where he’s hoping this is headed . . . .
rickl: I posted those links with a tinge of reluctance, because I’m aware that Jim Hoft goes over the edge now and then. But, increasingly, the Information Ministry pushes the facts over the edge, and we have to go there to find them.
The pictures speak for themselves. I like the suggestion that the “applause” line on the jumbotron was simply close-captioning. That would mean that Obama was actually speaking the word “applause,” but it was being spelled out for the hard-of-hearing. Allegorically, that appears to have been the case!
Cody Keenan did a nice job writing Obama’s speech. Obama’s delivery was not great; His had his usual “chin-in-the-air” Il Duce pose and his cadence was clipped. His performance left a lot to be desired.
FenelonSpoke: just to clarify, when I say it was a performance, I’m not talking about his delivery. I didn’t watch or listen to it. I’m talking about the content being a strategic performance rather than something that is sincere.
I knew what you meant, neo;. I agree. That’s why I said Cody Keenan wrote the speech-or wrote most of it-and I think the entire thing, from the choice of venue to the tee shirts, to the content was political art and manipulation. I have a background in theatre and also years of speaking in public as a clergyperson. Obama’s performance was sheer “tent revival” hucksterism as Jeanne DeAngelisI describes it in an article at “American Thinker”. I was just noting that his delivery was also poor.
I praised the speech, but because it was the first speech he has made to my recollection that wasn’t all about him.
He said some nice things about the lives of the fallen, praised the heroic performances of those who tried to help. Of course it was a performance. But my expectations were pretty low.
The cliches didn’t make me cringe as much as usual. The tee shirts and the inappropriate whistling and cheering (which Obama could have stopped with a word) were inexcusable at a memorial. But then whoever is the protocol person at the White House should be fired for incompetence, or else Obama should start listening. He seems to have no ability to discern that which is tacky.
“… But then whoever is the protocol person at the White House should be fired for incompetence, or else Obama should start listening. He seems to have no ability to discern that which is tacky.”
He’s an alien, no matter where he was born. It’s not only that he doesn’t like America … or Americans; it’s that he doesn’t understand us, he doesn’t understand our culture, he doesn’t understand what is and is not appropriate. And he seems not to care that he doesn’t get us.