What Is Truth, Mr. Obama?

Ahh, the Truth. Remember the good old days, you know, the days of the Obama campaign when a new dawn of truth was imminent? Remember the rosy days when Mr. Obama's people would tell us that he understood that "words mean something"?

Maybe you don't. I sure don't. But I sure remember John McCain being lambasted -- by the media, by bloggers, and by Barack Obama -- for saying last year that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound...the workers of America are the fundamentals of the economy."

Mr. McCain was right, the fundamentals were sound. People were buying and selling; people were exchanging labor for goods; people were trading fairly and honorably nearly everywhere in America. Workers were doing what they do, as were buyers.

Of course, falling stocks, red ink, bankruptcies, foreclosures, bailouts: all these suggested, at least to the Omniscient Obama Campaign, that Mr. McCain was clearly doddering, slipping into sputtering senescence.

And then magic happened. Thus Sprach Obama last week:

If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy ... then we're going to get through this.

And what did his chief economic advisor say on "Meet the Press"?

Of course, the fundamentals (of the U.S.) economy are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology.

Definitely a confederacy of dunces. These are the voices of doom and gloom: they adopted that strategy in the campaign season -- they NEEDED the economy to tank in order to control the narrative and the electorate's mood -- and now they need the economy to thrive so they can control the narrative and the electorate's mood. The most depressing voice in the American economy -- Obama's -- is utterly new, pressed into action to invigorate things.

And his new voice is John McCain's.


Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

I Was Wrong: Bill O'Reilly And Barack Obama Negotiate

I was simply wrong.

This past Friday I posted comments about the much-awaited (I guess) interview between Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's, I mean, the DNC's Barack Obama. In my comments I said that I thought Mr. O'Reilly did a reasonably decent job, that he asked tough questions and managed the interview well.

I also said that I felt Barack Obama did rather well, too.

After watching the interview a second time, I have to say that I was wrong in several places. First, while Mr. O'Reilly did ask some tough questions, he made something of a buffoon of himself -- and gave Sen. Obama some much-needed relief -- when he buddied up to the senator in a faux display of unity, with the two of them talking of saddling up and riding off to retrieve $78 billion in foreign aid that has been allegedly senselessly squandered. It was a very low moment in journalism, vapid, silly; sticky with narcissism.

I also believe, and I only touched on this on Friday, that Mr. O'Reilly sabotages his own interview by failing to self-edit. The guy, clearly, cannot shut up, and his leading questions, all padded out, just make him sound like, I don't know, Keith Olbermann, but without the glasses. Like Olbermann, he's quite taken with himself, and it shows in his posture, his self-referential remarks, and his over-wrought need to express where he agrees with Sen. Obama.

I note, too, that the very first question he asked his post-interview guests, Democrat Jane Hall and Republican Monica Crowley, was about him, about whether he made a fool of himself. Of course, he quickly emended the question with more SELF-reference: it was not all about him, he conceded.

But maybe it was all about him. Perhaps Bill O'Reilly represents the fulfillment of every journalist's dream: to finally interview great figures as equals, or even inferiors, injecting oneself in every sentence. Surely young journalists hope that their next story will be the one that breaks something huge, that brings them attention. Surely such a hope tempts reporters to inject themselves into their stories, eager for the big "gotcha moment," bringing great acclaim their way. Isn't Bill O'Reilly just the logical conclusion of a journalist's ambitions, holding court on all matters of state and culture?

When I heard yesterday Mr. O'Reilly's Friday radio program rebroadcast on some AM station (there is no decent talk radio on Sundays), I heard him tell his listeners that the reason he ran his interview with Barack Obama moments before John McCain gave his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was because of conditions set by the Obama campaign. Apparently, as one caller noted, John McCain is too much of a gentleman to have tried to upstage Barack Obama the Thursday night Mr. Obama gave his acceptance speech at his party's convention. John McCain waited till the next day to try to upstage the Democrats' candidate. But Mr. Obama, or so Mr. O'Reilly suggested, would only agree to an interview with O'Reilly if Fox ran the interview before McCain's speech. If this is true, it is stunning. Apparently it is true, as Mr. O'Reilly said that his hands were essentially tied: if he was going to have a shot at Mr. Obama then he would have to comply with the campaign's wishes. But the journalistic integrity of Mr. O'Reilly is now rather suspect, for he's admitted to being used by a political campaign. One wonders in light of such news how else Mr. O'Reilly has been used by the campaign in this interview.

As to Mr. Obama himself, he clearly remains an affable and likable chap. But that he squirmed and dodged and split already split hairs regarding his lack of support of the clearly and demonstrably successful surge in Iraq; that he could not simply say, "I was wrong," speaks volumes to me, and those volumes are resoundingly negative. He was wrong, and we all know it. And we all know he knows we know it. Yet from Mr. Obama we get nothing, really, but evasion, shrouded in the admission that the surge was successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams, meaning that everyone was wrong about the surge. (That Sen. Joe Biden yesterday actually took credit† for the successes in Anbar province, or so he offered on the Meet The Press, is a stunning example of the sort of doublespeak he and Mr. Obama enjoy.)

To think, George W. Bush is a bad president because of his alleged intransigence. Amazing. Apparently if Barack Obama is elected president, he promises to give us a third term of George Bush's inability to change course.

So, I was wrong in my assessment of the O'Reilly/Obama summit, at least in part. There is much that commends it, but there is more that condemns it. It strikes me as two men using each other for personal gain. If that is what it is, I am left feeling like I've watched something really rather unseemly. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next three installments, the next of which airs tonight.

†Senator Joe Biden, Sept. 6, 2008, on NBC's "Meet The Press": 'The surge helped make that--what made it possible in Anbar province is they did what I'd suggested two and a half years ago: gave local control.'

©2008 Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

The Pain Of The Obvious

The linguistic-forensic specialists have unanimously concluded that a crime has been committed. Well, maybe only I have reached that conclusion. But it’s still unanimous.

Though it was a brain jarring slip-of-the-tongue moment, Hillary Clinton somehow managed to escape the watchful eyes of pundits everywhere. But I, your ever-vigilante sleuth, was not lulled into inattention by Mrs. Clinton’s performance on Sunday’s Meet the Press†. Of course, it was easy for me to be ever-vigilante: Mrs. Clinton’s misstep was the very first answer she gave in her conversation with MTP host Tim Russert.

MR. RUSSERT: When we arrived in South Carolina yesterday this was The State newspaper, and the headlines agree to this. And let me share it with you and our viewers: “Clinton Camp Hits Obama, Attacks ‘painful’ for black voters. Many in state offended by criticism of Obama,” and ‘remarks about’ Martin Luther King. Bob Herbert, in The New York Times, columnist, weighed in this way: “I could also sense how hard the Clinton camp was working to undermine Senator Obama's main theme, that a campaign based on hope and healing could unify rather than further polarize the country. So there was the former president chastising the press for the way it was covering the Obama campaign and saying of Mr. Obama's effort, ‘The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.’ And there was Mrs. Clinton telling the country we don't need ‘false hopes,’ and taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We've already seen Clinton surrogates trying to implant the false idea that Mr. Obama might be a Muslim, and perhaps a drug dealer to boot.” What is this all about?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, beats me, because there's not one shred of truth in what you've just read. And I regret that, because obviously a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.

Had I been sitting in Mr. Russert’s stead, I think Mrs. Clinton’s comments would have given me more than a moment’s pause. For what I hear is Mrs. Clinton regretting that there was not one shred of truth in the statements Mr. Russert cited; she would have NOT regretted things if they had been true. Perhaps if I parse her statement with a little more assiduity I will find some clarification:

GNADE: Why do you have regrets, Mrs. Clinton?

MRS. CLINTON: “…because obviously a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.”

GNADE: Do forgive me, Mrs. Clinton. But am I hearing you correctly? It sounds like you are saying that you would have no regrets if the impression, i.e., that Mr. Obama is offering “false hopes,” that Dr. Martin Luther King was essentially impotent without the help of a white president, that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or a former drug dealer, and so on -- you’d have no regrets if these were true? Is that what you are saying?

MRS. CLINTON: There you go again, Bill, putting words in my mouth and ripping what I’ve said out of context. I am tired of you people putting –

GNADE: With all due respect, Mrs. Clinton, but “you people”? Are you sure that such language is fitting? THIS interview IS the context of the words you just uttered. And rather than putting words in your mouth, I am taking them out, as you just offered them freely; they’re your words, not mine. And it sounds to me that you are saying you’d have no regrets if these things were true.

_______________________

SHE COULD NOT HAVE MEANT IT

In the past few days, I have heard pundits and press tell me that what Mrs. Clinton essentially said about Dr. King was entirely true, harmless, and not one whit racist. Fred Barnes, conservative commentator for Fox News and editor of The Weekly Standard, announced that he had no problem with what Mrs. Clinton averred. Conservative radio oracle Jay Severin stamped his imprimatur on Mrs. Clinton’s words. And the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page states that

“On the merits, Mrs. Clinton obviously is correct. It did take a President’s signature to bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fruition. And the idea that saying so takes anything away from King’s legacy is absurd.” (WSJ, January 14, 2008)

To me this is so much pedantic affirmation. I am left with the sense that such pundits and opinion-makers think that it is OK for Mrs. Clinton to state “what every one knows.” For if that is indeed the case – if Mrs. Clinton was merely offering us a moment of historical clarity in pronouncements of the obvious – then we are still left wondering why she should be given a pass. Clearly she knows we “ALL KNOW” this historical fact; clearly we do not need her to suddenly turn into a school teacher with a Cliff Notes lesson. She’s not running for presidential pedagogue; her comments are indeed unnecessary if we are all well aware of the monumental importance of LBJ and his liberating pen. Surely Mrs. Clinton knows two things when she teaches us the plain history of the Civil Rights Act: First, that we all know Dr. King did not sign the Act; second, that many African-Americans will NOT respond kindly to the reminder that their liberation did not ultimately come from themselves. The Great White President set them free; HE granted their petitions.

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton was undeniably contrasting herself as the president who could deliver; she would be the (white?) executor of the sort of hopes that Mr. Obama could dream about but never fulfill. He offers mere hope while she offers action. He has visions; she makes decisions.

You get the picture, and it should not be a pretty one. Mrs. Clinton actually WAS playing a race card in her seemingly innocuous statements. (This all reminds me of a talk radio discussion I commented on regarding “racist facts.”) It means nothing to me that Mrs. Clinton was stating the truth, for the truth is, as we all know, often brutally painful. One recalls the biblical exhortation that we are to speak the truth in love. Telling one’s lover the truth – “Geez, you’re fat!” – may be a truth “everybody knows,” but sometimes love (and political wisdom) urges us to suppress the obvious. "The truth hurts" is no cliché. It is instead a reminder that we all need to be a little more circumspect when we speak, Mrs. Clinton included.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†See transcript here.