I think the WaPo’s Dana Milbank…
…may have just called President Obama “boy”.
Take a look at the last sentence of Milbank’s column to see what I’m talking about.
[Hat tip: Ace.]
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…may have just called President Obama “boy”.
Take a look at the last sentence of Milbank’s column to see what I’m talking about.
[Hat tip: Ace.]
Bingo. I’m taking a screen shot in case it “goes away.”
This is taking “creative reading” to new levels. Perhaps, not the best choice of words, but not to the level of a derogatory comment.
Roman—it’s a joke, a reference to this sort of thing.
It’s not the “boy” reference that’s so jaw dropping. it’s the complete lack of coverage of Obama’s recreational pursuits by the MSM. No, that isn’t really jaw dropping, since there is absolute consistency in the non-reporting of many things he does that are identical to Bush’s activities.
Just the Progressive circular firing squad feeling an itch in the trigger finger …
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
He and Michelle sure are enjoying themselves lately, aren’t they?
I didn’t know about the “sports legends” extravaganza he treated himself to this past week. He must have a lot of spare time.
These people really are becoming more unbearable by the minute.
Soon we’re going to have to stop mincing words, stop tiptoeing thru the PC tulips, and call him what he really is. And he’s most comfortable when he’s shuckin’ an’ jivin’.
Tom
And he’s most comfortable when he’s shuckin’ an’ jivin’.
And he didn’t know jack about shuckin’ and jivin’ until he hit Chi-town in his mid twenties. You don’t learn shuckin’ and jivin’ hanging with a typical white grandma, doncha’ know?
🙂
The Washington Post printed this!
I saw no racist connotations but this does remind me of a NYT story-infomercial during the 1980 election listing Carter’s less than honorable dealings. It was significant because it showed that the liberals were deserting their man for Reagan.
From Messiah to adolescent in 18 months, who could have known? It is now a question of how far he will fall and how fast.
Tom, Gringo I think you are getting close to the edge.
Bob from Virginia: agreed.
It’s striking that Obama isn’t just a fan of sports: he has to be one of the stars. Just like the McCarthy sing-a-long. He always seems to be saying, “I’m just as cool as you guys.” And don’t forget that he also hangs out with Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu. He seems to be a master of getting creds by association, and if the associates are big enough names, no one notices Obama’s meager attainments. When are all these smart and talented folks gonna realize that he is stealing their glory?
“From Messiah to adolescent in 18 months, who could have known?”
That was good Bob, my hat is off to you.
Milbank is just pointing out the more obvious of how this president operates. When was the last time BHO spent more than 2 days in the oval Office actually working??? He’s either playing sports, hosting celebs, or out making speeches. He never actually works at being president; he is definitely PLAYING at president.
This aspect keeps the thought in my mind as to whom is actually minding the store? If he has so much time for fun, then the idea of a puppet president seems more likely.
My impression is Obonga is simply getting as much as he can out of this gig as possible before he is kicked out of office.
Get to ride around on Air Force One whenever and to wherever you want at taxpayer expense?
Check!
Get to have exquisitely extravagant parties with $1,000 per pound beef at taxpayer expense?
Check!
Get to hit the golf course links with NO waiting any time you want at taxpayer expense?
Check!
Get to take (4) vacations a month – roughly once per week – at taxpayer expense?
Check!
Get to mingle with your favorite celebrities, of whom you are enthralled, all the while marveling at the idea they would actually admire YOU?!?! ( Obonga DOES love to have his a$$ kissed….)
CHECK! CHECK!
Whether the author intended it or not, the article is about right in that last sentence. He’s mindset is that of a child.
He’s a kid in the department store with the parent’s credit card and able to spend as lavishly upon himself as he wants – because he knows once the parents find out he’s toast.
Logically, he’s getting as much mileage out of this presidency thing as he can squeeze cause he knows it won’t last past inauguration day of 2013.
He’s an un-serious figurehead, and others are pulling the strings. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why he’s got so much free time relative to past presidents we’ve had.
neo-neocon Says:
Bob from Virginia: agreed.
I’m glad you’re aware and concerned, Neo.
Once a blog’s commentariat reaches a certain size, Gresham’s Law can come into play unless the blogger takes active countermeasures.
************
I didn’t find Milbank’s last sentence objectionable, but:
This sure sounds like an attempt to spin Michelle’s lavish taxpayer-paid vacation as a legitimate diplomatic mission. (Perhaps with a dash of sitcom PC sexism: mom and daughter work while dad plays.)
I figured my comment might smoke out some latent political correctness. I was right. You who object are OK with calling Baraq a fool, a knave, an adolescent, a narcissist, a bungler, a rip-off artist at play in the fields of the Lord, but cannot bring yourselves to go the distance.
Watch the recent video of Baraq with the (mostly black – dare I say that?) Super Bowl winners.
Gringo gets it. It’s a style Baraq wasn’t raised in; it’s a style he adopted in his 20s. He knows it works, both to ingratiate, and to intimidate (you, dear readers).
What about this sentence?
Tom:
Spare me the “latent PC” stuff. Fools, knaves, adolescents, narcissists, bunglers and rip-off artists come in all colors. Race really IS irrelevant, until it’s specifically connected to behavior. Which is what you just did. So yes, you stepped over the line. And into it.
It’s sufficient to focus on the guy’s character, or lack thereof.
This article might be the Dukakis in the tank moment.
Or the Al Gore sighing during the debate moment.
Or the Howard Dean moment.
Or the Bush intrigued by the grocery store scanner moment, etc.
If this column is read by a sector of the population – people can identify with the lack of empathy Obama is showing so many unemployed people by being unable to focus on his job.
Tom: if you mean that Obama speaks one way to mixed crowds and another to mostly black crowds, that’s not news. If you mean he adopts a slightly more streetwise urban black speech, accent, and manner with the latter, that’s not news either. Nor does it matter. Big deal.
I’m not sure what you mean, really. If you mean he’s a con man and he uses the race card to further his ends, that’s hardly news either. If you mean he sat in Rev. Wright’s church all those years and listened to anti-American rants, that’s certainly not news.
It sounds like you mean something else, though. And that something else might be more explicitly racist. If so, I don’t share the sentiment, nor (I believe) do most of us here. That’s not PC thinking on our part, that’s just the fact that we don’t think in those terms. Obama’s flaws have to do with basic human traits, not racial ones.
The point about the POTUS is that we are always seeing a presentation. He is not “most comfortable” being or doing something. His comfort level rises and falls according to the role he assumes.
IMHO, he is most comfortable at the role his mother modeled: the anthropologist, trying to figure out from a distance the aliens he is observing. An example of his being the anthropologist is when he was caught on tape at the fund-raising dinner in San Francisco ruminating about the mysterious people in the sticks who were “bitter clingers to guns and religion.”
This may or may not be disagreement with Tom: if the POTUS is comfortable, it is merely comfort at the role he is assuming, a costume he is putting on.
Regarding the POTUS playing the sports guy, I recall his talking about “Kaminsky Field” last year around the time of the All-Star break. “Kaminsky” is OK, because that is how Chicago-speak treats “Comiskey.” But to mix up “Wrigley Field,” the home of the Cubs, and “Comiskey Park,” once the name for the home of the White Sox, bespeaks a role he needed to practice a little more. After twenty years in Chicago on the South Side, home of the White Sox, no less.
That is where I was coming from. If you Google the matter, you will find out that Obama had issues even as late as 2008 establishing his street cred. Because it was an assumed role. “Assumed role,” thy initials are B.H.O. No there there.
Bad link.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html
The original model forest gump said..
“we have the best government money can buy”
gs—just to clarify: I didn’t find Milbank’s last sentence objectionable either. I was making a joke, based on the times when people keep imagining racial slurs against Obama where none exist (such as Maureen Dowd imagining Wilson saying, “you lie, boy” to Obama).
Fouad Ajami has a great essay at HamraBlueshttp://www.hamrablues.com/
Here is a taste for anyone who thinks Obama will get a second term:
“It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can’t be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer–a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.”
Oops, that should be http://www.hamrablues.com/
Gringo, one needs to consider which costume Baraq finds most comfortable. I suggest it is in his shuckin’ jivin’ Jeremiah Wright role. That allows him the implicit victimhood of blackness while simultaneously empowering him to drive the country into totalitarianism. If that isn’t social justice rooted in racism, Baraq’s racism, I don’t know what is. He is The Man.
Daily he relies on victimhood, along the lines of “It ain’t my fault, it’s Bush’s.” Neo and others may not see that as his shuckin’ and jivin’, his racism, but I do.
I guess I’m being called racist for being uppity enuf to try to point it out.
I see Barry Soetoro’s mission is to brings the economice progress of Detroit along with the Law and Oder of Gary topped off with the cool headed intelligent response to disaster like that of New Orleans. He is already bringing the legal wisdom of Massachusetts to the fore.
economic.. Jeez, it really is tough being brain damaged..
The line that jumped out at me was his bragging of beating out a pro Ballplayer, being the Olympian, street B Ball, athlete on top of all of his other “gifts”. Ain’t he just a grandiose guy, enjoying any pursuit or endeavor, he’s always the best one in the room, or the court or the field.
The other thing, is he and the wifey are enjoying themselves so immensely, celebrating his birthday, APART.
And it has that feeling of his escaping the press detail to go watch an “imaginary soccer game his daughter was playing” at the school where the team did NOT play that day. Could he be enjoying a real “boy” day, with the “boys” “behind” the scenes. Could it really be gay day play? And it seems he likes to put forth the image of a “guy”, maybe because there are some doubts about his sexual preferences, or to keep those doubts at bay.
Jim,
I agree in part — he is so used to adulation that, in my humble opinion, he needs to feel that he’s the best at everything he does — and to get affirmation for it.
It’s the affirmation that gets to me. If President Obama wants to believe himself to be the greatest basketball player that ever lived, let him; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as Thomas Jefferson once said in a different context. But when he needs other people to agree with him — when he, in fact, needs some of the real best basketball players to agree with him — well now, that’s a little weird.
No doubt Neo could speak better than I to what this means psychologically. To me, it bespeaks a basic insecurity — which suggests to me that, when Obama’s adoring crowds turn on him, it won’t be pretty.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
He wants to be the fairest of them all. And HE IS. in his own mind.
And I agree that it will soon get ugly when the adorers turn on him. “He who does not adore me is against me.” might be his credo.
It’s a very scary idea that he will soon start to decompensate as the chickens coming home to roost do so at warp speed, with support collapsing all around him.
I fear our enemies are anxiously awaiting to act on their plans when he starts to go down the tubes.
His grandiosity does not pick my pocket, but it threatens my nation. And the world.