I, Obama

Have y’all noticed something peculiar – and a little off-putting – about Barack Obama’s rhetorical style as president? Have you noticed how he over-personalizes shit? Makes it all about him?

I’ve noticed this for a while, but felt compelled to blog about it tonight... after President Obama’s surprise visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Where he said this:

“I’ve made a promise to all of you who serve. I will never send you into harm’s way unless it’s absolutely necessary. I anguish in thinking about the sacrifices that so many of you make. That’s why I promise I will never send you out unless it is necessary.”

You anguish, Mr. President? You anguish? Dude, nobody wants to hear about your “anguish.” Least of all soldiers who gotta go out tomorrow and get shot at.

It’s your job to anguish about stuff like that, Mr. Obama. Being president is the hardest job in the world, and you wanted it. Now just do the job without congratulating yourself for having to do it... and without soliciting sympathy.

I found the complete text of Obama’s Afghanistan remarks online. Check this out:

“I'll tell you right now the same thing that I said at West Point last December. If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.”

Did previous presidents talk this way? I don’t think so. Nor do I think a president should talk this way... constantly referring to himself personally, to his own feelings, to his own power.

Let’s keep an eye on this moving forward. I will surely blog about it again.

Random wrongness

Hard to believe that Smokey Robinson, Morgan Freeman and President Obama don’t know the first verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by heart. This is embarrassing. (Hat-tip: Deron Snyder at The Root.)

Random wrongness

Obama’s ‘Negro dialect’

The burning controversy about Sen. Harry Reid’s old comment about Barack Obama is such a waste of time. The comment wasn’t insulting, wasn’t shocking... and was likely true.

In case you haven’t heard, Reid reportedly remarked that Obama was electable because he was light-skinned and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Today, talking heads white and black are clutching their pearls... Joe Scarborough, Jonathan Capehart and Michael Eric Dyson, to name several.

Capehart is like, “No one should say the word ‘Negro.’ ” (Negro, please.)

As for Obama adopting a Negro dialect if and when “he wanted to have one,” consider this old Obama campaign vid, which I recall blogging about in 2007. Check Obama’s pronunciation of “alligator.”

Dreams from his father

I knew a right-wing reaction was coming. But I clutched my pearls when I read today’s opinion piece by Wesley Pruden, former editor- in-chief of the Washington Times, about President Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor.

Mr. Pruden concluded with perhaps the most racially provocative paragraph written by a legitimate American journalist in the 21st century. To wit:

“It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what [America] is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared... in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.”

I worked at the Washington Times during the 1980s. I’ve had a conversation or two with Wes Pruden. I couldn’t believe that graph. He is on some Lawrence Auster shit.

And his words are ricocheting all over the Web. The liberal watchdogs at Media Matters sent out an email alert. The Huffington Post piled on.

Media gossip site Gawker is running a poll on whether Pruden’s piece is more outrageous than some shit Glenn Beck said about Roman Polanski and health-care reform. (Pruden is ahead three-to-one.)

Now, before even 24 hours have passed, the “blood impulse” column is mentioned on Wesley Pruden’s Wikipedia page.

On a biological level, the idea that one’s comprehension of (and respect for) America depends upon the birthplace of one’s father, or to whom one’s mother was sexually attracted... I mean, that’s plain silly.

On a metaphorical level, though, everyone understands what Pruden means by a “blood impulse.” He means that white Americans are the best Americans. The only true Americans. Non-whites can become good Americans maybe... but it’s not “natural” for them, not instinctive.

So then. Pruden wants to bring mamas and daddies into it? Let’s talk about his father... the Rev. Wesley Pruden, Sr. (pictured below).

As the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out, Pruden the Elder was a staunch segregationist in Little Rock, Arkansas. The New York Times once described him as “a hot-eyed pastor.”

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Pastor Pruden pumped up the white mobs in front of Central High School in 1957, “verbally encouraging them, according to [journalist Roy] Reed, ‘to fight niggers, communists, and cops!’ ”

Here’s what the New York Times reported when Rev. Pruden’s Broadmoor Baptist Church was kicked out of the Pulaski County Baptist Association in 1959:

“Mr. Pruden is the chaplain and former president of the Capital Citizens Council, which has promoted resistance to the racial integration of Little Rock’s public high schools. He has also directed ‘freedom fund’ collections for the legal defense of persons arrested in segregationist demonstrations.”

So when Wesley Pruden, Jr., talks about having a blood-borne understanding of what America is all about... I am led to wonder about his natural instincts.

After all, his great-grandfather David was a corporal in the Confederate army. His great-great-grandfather – John H. Pruden – owned slaves in North Carolina. Can’t get more American than that, I reckon.

About that bow...

Seeing that most commenters here are cool with Obama’s bow to the Japanese Emperor – as a sign of cultural respect – I wonder what actual Japanese people are saying about it.

Thank God for the internets, where bilingual folks can read Japanese online forums... and blog about it in English.

Such as Joshua Williams. His “Japanese Headlines Examiner” blog is on Examiner.com. Here are a few online comments Williams says he translated from Japanese:

“What a bow!”

“Such a deep bow from Obama, what a fine guy.”

“I’m surprised he bowed. He’s really trying hard to meet the Japanese way!”

“President Obama is a top-class person, isn’t he? Amazing!”

“I laughed because it was a much better bow than I had imagined.”

“Obama has more of a true Japanese heart than most Japanese do.”

But then a commenter at Examiner.com, one Ted Nakagawa, replied:

“What we are not getting translated [by Williams] are these Japanese blogs with posters to whom the Obama Tokyo bow is somewhat ‘going to their nationalist heads’.

“All kinds of nationalist comments such as amazement that a nation defeated would be bowed at in this manner, and ‘Long Live the Emperor!’, and also abject surprise at Obama bowing like this -- racial ephitets are also made about Mr. Obama in disdain (for example, referring to him as ‘kuronbo’ (or ‘little black boy’)...

“One Japanese poster is questioning if this kind of Obama [bow] to the Emperor is not a violation of US diplomatic protocol, and another one predicts that Americans, despite what Japanese might think -- are going to get mad over this...”

In another comment, Nakagawa added:

“Comments (in Japanese) on the same Japanese blog that were NOT fawning over Obama and his controversial ‘ojigi’ before the Emperor, some in fact questioning it and suspecting it insincere, have apparantly been purposely left out of this journalist's translations and report.”

I am not looking forward to a week’s worth of talk-radio and cable- news folderol over The Bow, curious as I am about the actual protocol. The signal-to-noise ratio is gonna suck!

WTF??

I know Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck will trash him next week for this... but dammit, look at this picture of our president.

Who-da-hell told Barack Obama that he, as President of the United States, should ever bow down to a foreigner?

I don’t like this, y’all. Makes Obama look chumpish. (And I had already started wondering whether he’s a lightweight.)

I’ve only spent a little time in New Orleans, but I can tell you... a Mardi Gras Indian wouldn’t bow down to the Emperor of Japan. Nor to anyone else. (If you don’t understand what I mean, listen to this.)

Who is Obama gonna bow down to next? Ice Cube?

Before he won the Nobel Peace Prize...

... President Obama received this unique honor:

Transvestites Against Obama

Stuck on health-care reform

I don’t pretend to be an expert on politics or policy. But I sure nailed this health-care debate two months ago. To wit:

“Barack Obama knows he can’t sell reform to the American people as a matter of wealth redistribution.” Yet the ideological essence of health- care reform is redistributive. It is key to the Left’s idealized vision of the welfare state.

Government-run health care is the unfinished business of liberalism going back to the Truman Administration.

That’s the briar patch President Obama is in right now. He will address Congress tonight, making his last best push for health-care reform... but he will dare not argue that taxpayer-funded health care for everybody is a duty of government.

He knows he can’t sell that.

As for the Right... sure, the Right wants to destroy Obama just for the sake of destroying him. And they’re hitting him with all they’ve got. But that doesn’t mean conservatives are wrong to be suspicious of a “public option.”

Just listen to what “progressive” economist (and former conservative) Glenn Loury has to say about a public option. (“I know I’m not supposed to say this...”)

This 6½-minute video clip sums up the whole issue rather nicely:

Thomas Sowell is nutty as fuck.

Today provided a double dose of right-wing black brainiacs from the Reagan era.

Prof. Walter E. Williams was substitute host on “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” And fellow economist Thomas Sowell was his guest via telephone.

Williams and Sowell are friends going back 40 years almost. Super- intelligent cats, no question.

But check out what Tom Sowell said when asked about President Obama’s plan to address America’s schoolchildren next Tuesday.

You heard about that, right? Obama will give a start-of-the-school-year pep talk to the nation’s kids. And conservatives are attacking him for it.

Why? Well... click here and listen on my Vox blog.

Can you believe it? “Hitler, Stalin, Castro...”

Poor Barack Obama. He’s living a nightmare, caught between right- wingers who depict him as a socialist dictator... and “progressives” who want him to actually be one.

The first Obama joke

Couple of weeks ago I was on the East Coast, and my rental car happened to be satellite radio equipped. Satellite radio is cool.

I found a political talk channel called POTUS. Dug it.

On POTUS I heard a mildly amusing interview with a comedian I’d never heard of – W. Kamau Bell. I decided to find out more about the cat.

Do you know what Kamau Bell’s claim to fame is? Kamau Bell is credited with telling the first Barack Obama joke on Comedy Central, the cable channel. He did it way back in 2005.

Given that the premise of his joke was that Obama could never get elected, perhaps Mr. Bell should not keep bragging about this.

And given that he led up to the Obama material with some ugly nasty personal putdowns of Condoleezza Rice, dude has nothing at all to be proud of, in my opinion.

Judge for yourself:

Jokes.com
W. Kamau Bell - Obama
comedians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

MSNBC vs. MSNBC

The latest worst thing to happen to the U.S. news industry (except for all those newspapers dying) is NBC’s decision – its business decision – to turn cable-news channel MSNBC into a wing of the Democratic Party.

The sad folly of that decision is evident in MSNBC’s “coverage” of the health-care debate. Specifically this month’s town-hall meetings with members of Congress... where some citizens have gotten loud ’n’ salty.

MSNBC has packed its primetime lineup with doctrinaire liberals, adding radio talkers Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz to the bombastic duo of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. Apparently MSNBC has instructed these hosts to behave like a Fox News of the Left. All partisan, all the time.

I remember (fondly) when libertarian Tucker Carlson and moderate Republican Joe Scarborough were part of the evening mix. (Olbermann, petulant adolescent that he is, would refuse to “throw” to Scarborough, meaning that Keith never ended his show with “And now, here’s Joe Scarborough,” the way he does nightly with Ms. Maddow.

(Keith actually bragged on the air about dissing Scarborough when Rachel Maddow took over. “I’ll be glad to throw to you,” he told her. Or something like that. Fucking child.)

The problem with an avowedly partisan “news” channel is... you can’t trust it. You can’t believe what they say, because objectivity and even- handedness are not values for Olbermann, Matthews, Maddow and Schultz. Their leftist agenda drives everything.

They are Soldiers for Christ (figuratively speaking) in the war against evil conservatives, corrupt Republicans, their greedy corporate puppetmasters, and Ronald Reagan’s ghost.

Even summer-vacation substitute hosts like Lawrence O’Donnell are licensed to push the Democrats’ party line.

MSNBC, in other words, is almost as worthless as Fox News.

Rachel Maddow this month has been pushing a narrative regarding those town-hall protests over health reform. She calls it “astroturfing” and “false-flagging,” not genuine grassroots opposition.

Every night, Maddow tells her viewers that the public dissent is being orchestrated by right-wing political pros.

Which relieves Ms. Maddow of the mental discomfort of having to contemplate why anyone would want to resist socializing health care. It also relieves her of the hard work of analyzing the Obama Administration.

Olbermann, Matthews and Schultz have also pushed the “astroturfing” narrative.

Thank goodness for “Morning Joe.”

Joe Scarborough got sent to 6 a.m. (3 a.m. on the West Coast!), and he made it the best show on MSNBC.

This morning, Scarborough gave the simplest, most cogent explanation of President Obama’s current political problem that I’ve yet heard on MSNBC. Joe said that Obama is “overloading the circuits with ideological items that most Americans just don’t give a damn about. Especially when they’re not working.”

When the people are not working, that is. It’s the economy, dumbass. Obama needs to show people he can fix the economy before he starts trying to change the health-care world as we know it.

I’m just saying... the best marketing minds on the planet couldn’t sell “New Coke.” Because the people didn’t want New Coke. They liked the old Coke.

Barack Obama is out there trying to sell the “New Coke” of domestic policy.

Yet most of the talking heads on MSNBC would have you believe he’s on a mission from God. (Figuratively speaking.)

An amusing anecdote

Last night I and two other “Treme” producers dined in Studio City with filmmaker Anthony Hemingway.

I’ve known Anthony going back 10 years, when he was a first A.D. on “The Corner.”

Now he’s editing “Red Tails,” a feature film about the Tuskegee Airmen that he directed for George Lucas.

Anyway... at dinner, Anthony Hemingway related a story that should amuse any fan of “The Wire.”

He was in Washington, D.C., for Inauguration Day. And he was sitting with actor Andre Royo (“Bubbles”) and Royo’s family, about six rows back, as Barack and Michelle Obama made their way along a rope line, shaking hands.

Knowing that Obama was an avowed “Wire” fan, Hemingway urged Royo to stand up and draw Obama’s attention. Royo was reluctant, but eventually he did stand up... just when Obama was directly down front.

As Hemingway tells it, Andre Royo’s rising brought Barack Obama’s eyes up. Then Obama pointed at him and said: “You’re my dude from ‘The Wire.’ ”

“It made Andre’s life,” Hemingway told us with a laugh. Royo’s daughter was like, “Daddy, the president knows who you are!”

CORRECTION (08/17/09): I messed up this story, y’all. This incident actually took place in Prague last April... during President Obama’s visit to the Czech Republic. Hemingway and Royo were in Prague shooting “Red Tails.”

I apologize for the mistake.

Jackie Mason is nutty as fuck.

Jesse Lee Peterson is nutty as fuck.

Jesse Lee Peterson, the favorite Negro of right-wing talkers such as Sean Hannity, made a career out of hating on Jesse Jackson. Now he’s more than happy to hate on President Obama.

Have you seen this mushmouth motherfucker on Fox News? I expected to see more of him since President Obama took office.

Well, this week he’s guest-hosting for John Ziegler on a local L.A. radio station. Click here to hear a 1½-minute excerpt from yesterday’s show, which Jesse Lee began by rehashing the Skip Gates drama.

Brew ha-ha

So... President Obama is gonna crack a few beers at the White House this evening with Skip Gates and that Cambridge cop, Sgt. Crowley.

You wanna bet Obama ends up in handcuffs?

Victoria Jackson is nutty as fuck.

Obama’s boner

As soon as President Obama said Wednesday night that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly,” thereby inserting himself into a trivial incident, I knew he’d made a big political mistake.

Now it’s looking like Obama’s bonehead play might cost him more than a few days’ distraction from health care.

It could be the biggest mistake of his career. The kind of mistake that gets written into the history of American presidential politics.

It’s not just that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are beating him up about it. Rush and ’nem be stomping on Obama daily. They are in the stomp-on-Obama business. If it wasn’t this Skip Gates deal, it’d be something else.

But. It’s trouble when they hit him with something that sticks... especially in the minds of voters in the middle. The Left loves Obama; the Right hates Obama. The Middle makes all the difference.

And what’s gonna stick is: The President of the United States, having incomplete information, chose to attack some local cops. And to make it about race. On prime-time TV.

Talk about acting stupidly.

Today, Prez is in damage-control mode. Below is a 6-minute clip of Obama addressing the daily White House press briefing, in which he tries to restore his standing as Conciliator-in-Chief.

Maybe it’ll work. And maybe this will become a “teachable moment” about when the President of the United States should lip off... and when he should hold his tongue.

(Perhaps Prof. Gates could do with such a “teachable moment” his own self.)

Live-blogging President Obama’s health-care press conference

5:13 p.m. (Pacific Time) – When President Obama promises that his reform plan will “keep government out of health-care decisions”... and that reform will “not be paid for on the backs on middle-class families”... he is acknowledging the profound problems inherent in the concept of socializing medical insurance.

Now we can debate whether or not those promises he just enunciated make any sense...

5:28 p.m. – The main thing I wonder, based on Obama’s opening statement, is:

1) If the government “limits” the amount of money insurers can “force you to pay out of your own pocket,” and;

2) If “no insurer will be able to deny you coverage for a preexisting condition,” then...

... will this destroy the basis upon which health insurance is a profitable enterprise? And, therefore, will private companies stop selling health insurance because there’s no money in it?

And if private companies get out of the insurance business, does that mean the U.S. government will become the only player in the game?

Will “reform” be a side road towards a single-payer system?

5:34 p.m. – Wow. Is Obama on the defensive or what? ...

5:57 p.m. – I am amazed that Obama answered the Skip Gates question... and especially to say the Cambridge police “acted stupidly.” That’s gonna suck a lot of attention away from health care, which was supposed to be the President’s focus. ...

6:17 p.m. – Actually, I’m a little cheesed off that Lynn Sweet even asked him about Prof. Gates. Is Barack Obama the Negro-in-Chief or the Commander-in-Chief?

7:08 p.m. – MSNBC’s Chris Matthews just echoed a point I made here on Sunday.

Regarding the press conference, Matthews asked, rhetorically, whether President Obama had explained why we need to change the health-care system, what those changes would be, and how America would pay for it.

“It’s not clear to me,” Matthews said, “that he did any of those things.” Whoa.

And Matthews wants health-care reform!

8:13 p.m. – Even MSNBC’s Ed Schultz – Obama’s biggest cheerleader on a channel full of cheerleaders – says the President’s performance tonight was too “passive.”