Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Who do you say that I am?

Ed Driscoll has some fun with Richard Cohen’s Obamyopia. Washington Post columnist Cohen, while giving signs of increasing frustration with our president, is still bafflingly baffled by who he really is. Ed says:
Who indeed. If only Cohen worked for an organization that had people paid to gather facts and…what’s the word I’m looking for — reported them to the public — yes, that’s it! — before going all in on a candidate. Perhaps someone should invent such a business. It could combine a mass audience with a veneer of… hmmm, what’s a word that rhymes with mass? Class! Yes, that’s it.
You could print it on paper for a retro vibe and call it news on paper, a paper of news, something like that. I’m sure there’s got to be a catchier name for it, and it’ll come to me eventually. But in these days of media experimentation, such a venture could really catch on with elitist readers, particularly inside the Washington Beltway.
Obama is an arrogant, inexperienced ideologue whose climb up the political career ladder has been assisted by the Democratic machine at every step. He has been insulated from the vetting process of our rough-and-tumble political system by a host of cronies and operators, in an environment (Chicago) where, with the endorsement of the permanent ruling class, failure is almost impossible. He grasped the brass ring of the presidency, lifted up by an adoring media, for which his candidacy and ultimate victory represented the happy ending to the gloomy narrative of the Bush years (and if the honor of objective journalism – always something of a myth – became hopelessly compromised, then it was surely a small price to pay for the pleasure of seeing, and for the prestige of helping to engineer, the desired conclusion to the great liberal fairytale). An easy victory in the presidential election, on top of his charmed (albeit short) previous string of political successes, gave Obama an exalted sense of his own intelligence, wisdom and competence, as well as a peevish disdain for those who disagreed with him, which congeries of vanity, alienation and obliviousness to public opinion impelled this advocate of statism – bred in the cocoon of big-city machine politics, steeped in anti-American radicalism - quite naturally to expand the reach of the state in all directions. His imperviousness to the empirical proofs of the falseness of his worldview has permitted him to lay the groundwork for social and economic ruin – a prospect that, not surprisingly, has alarmed a majority of America’s voters, whose grave misgivings have already begun to be felt at the ballot-box, and will, in all likelihood, only grow stronger and more widespread in November.

Whatever else he is, Obama is not an enigma.

7 comments:

Michael Lonie said...

But Mr. Cohen is too stupid and ignorant to understand what you just described, and too lazy to find out the facts himself.

Too bad he isn't a, what's the word? Oh yeah, a reporter. We used to have some of them. They all disappeared. Whatever happened to them?

Merilyn said...

Reporters? That is the same question we are asking here in Australia, regarding the love-in over Julia! No one must ask any hard questions, and certainly must not look into her background when it comes to her "socialist leanings" whilst at Uni.
You would have thought that the media had learnt its lesson with Rudd, [a carbon copy of Obama].

Anonymous said...

Obama is an arrogant, inexperienced ideologue

See there? Paco got it in one! But Michael, I don't think Cohen's trouble is being stupid or ignorant - I believe he's willfully blind.

Like several million others, who refuse to see the truth even when the truth is standing right in front of them, getting into the same handbasket.

RebeccaH said...

I believe the "willfully blind" theory too. These far-left liberals have lived their entire lives believing they were nature's nobility because they "care" so much, and want to change everyone's life for the better... according to their terms. It's a religion with them (of which the late, unlamented Glowball Worming is merely one of many sects). Obama was the Second Coming... I leave it to you to figure out who the First was, but, for them, it sure wasn't That Guy in the robe and sandals.

How do you give up a religion you've devoted your whole life to? What we're seeing now is crumbling faith and its accompanying distress.

And I like it, for the sake of us who do actually live in the real world.

Anonymous said...

Three former Soviet citizens spoke at the monthly ACT meeting in Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles), CA. Dimitri put it succinctly, Obama is a Communist. Not a socialist, but a Communist. What better source than from the mouth of an expert.

Bob Belvedere said...

Wonderfully succinct and bang-on.

Awarded the THE RIGHTEOUS RANT OF THE DAY at:
The Camp Of The Saints

Paco said...

Thankee, Bob. Every time I give more than a minute's thought to the guy, I feel like ranting.