UPDATE: And here I thought that the acolytes of St. Obama were about providing Change You Can Believe In? And they can't even Buy American when it comes to B-List celebrities? Shameful, I tells ya. (H/T: Instapundit)
Tomorrow night's events at Invesco Field promise to be comedy gold. The One will present his speech in front of a backdrop that is based on a Greek temple. Even the reviews from his fellow Democrats aren't especially favorable about this latest demonstration of another great Greek word, hubris.
Said one Democrat: "This is a disaster of mythical proportions." Said another: "It's not enough that he wants to be president -- he wants to be Zeus." Said the first: "Will he send down thunderbolts from the mountain?"
Obama can be quite good with words, especially when he's reading from a TelePromTer, but he surely seems to have trouble with images. From the first pseudo-presidential seal to the vaguely heroic posters in Berlin through the second pseudo-seal and the variations on the House of the Rising Obama, it's been alternately disquieting and hilarious to see some of the stuff that's been going on. All of these examples are self-inflicted wounds. Then there's the problem of Obama's hero-worshipping supporters in the arts. Their contributions get really icky at times, as in this particular self-congratulatory video featuring a plethora of minor celebrities including Barry Manilow, who I assume will have to ramp up his efforts by re-writing one of his long-past dubious triumphs later on that goes like this:
His name was Barack
He is a vision
He gave speech back in oh-two
It was a true clairvoyant view
He would campaign now
Then eat his waffles
And while he tried to be the star
It all was content-free
Hope change for you and me
Sure, it's dumb but they had each other
Not Mike Huck-a-bee
At the campaign, campaign oh-eight now
Mark Penn's been consigned to a trash scow
At the campaign, campaign oh-eight now
Pure thoughtless passion was always in fashion
At the campaign, what's not to love
At the end of the day, mockery seems the right response to what we've seen. This guy, this campaign and this party are so full of themselves that they deserve to be mocked. In the end, there's not much substantive analysis to be offered from what's happened in Denver the last few days. Intellectually the Democratic Party has been on auto-pilot for well over 40 years now. The best and the brightest of the party are people like Rahm Emanuel, tacticians first and last, but lacking in the ability to come up with any new ideas. Quick - tell me a genuinely new and innovative idea that has come out of either the Obama or Clinton campaigns.
As my thoughtful portsider friend Rich points out, the Republican Party has done undeniable damage to the Republican brand in the past 8 years. The blame for that can be widely allocated. But when the elephants march into St. Paul next week, you won't be hearing anyone criticizing John McCain for his stagecraft. And in the end the Republicans have the same trump card that they've been playing for the past 40 years - they aren't the Democrats.
7 comments:
Mark,
before you get too carried away with this "How dare he appear in front of Doric columns." meme, you might want to take a gander at Bush's stage props at the GOP Convention 4 years ago.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Bushs_2004_temple.html
I understand the need to throw crap at the wall, and the tendencies of many Dems to go all Henny Penny everytime you guys start slinging mud. But sometimes, crap is just crap. This seems to be one of them.
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
I’m not outraged by the Doric columns at all. I’m amused, because it’s just another manifestation of Obama’s Brobdignagian ego. And I saw the Ben Smith piece yesterday, before I wrote this. If Obama went with the Doric columns like Bush did, but hadn’t been issuing presidential seals and striking heroic poses, it wouldn’t resonate at all. After Bush did his Top Gun stunt with the Mission Accomplished banner on the aircraft carrier, it set him up for five years of mockery. I’d even concede that some of the mockery of Bush was warranted. I want to elect a president, not a philosopher-king.
Mark,
I applaud your mockery, and think it is a great and proper political tool. One of my biggest problems with my fellow Democrats is that they don't have the good sense, cajones or wit to give back to the Republicans in kind. You say that noone will be attacking McCain's stagecraft, and you are probably right. But it isn't for lack of material.
The McCains have a history of guilding the lilly that would make Joe Biden proud. Their personal histories have a way of becoming grander with the passing of time. McCain's cross in the dirt story, which he described so evocatively at Saddleback, appears to have been pilfered from Solzhenytsin. His recall of the event didn't occur until after 2001, in spite of the fact that he wrote three separate detailed accounts of his time in Hanoi prior to 2001, and NOW refers to that moment as one of the great epiphanies of his life. Ditto the story of how the McCains adopted their Indonesian daughter. It now involves Cindy being pulled in to Mother Theresa's office in an Orphanage in Jakarta, and being personally implored by the good Sister to take two children with cleft palates back to the states, one of whom became their adopted daughter. The problem is, Cindy McCain never met Mother Theresa, and Mother Theresa never interceded on these childrens behalf.
Now what the McCains did was a wonderful thing, and I would never try to pretend it wasn't. But why do they need to enhance either story? The reason is that both stories play well to Evangelicals and Catholics, and the McCains made the calculated decision that the Dems would never have the stones to call them on it. Personally, I think they should have BS called on them, and I would bet a days pay that republican operatives, given similar circumstances, wouldn't hesitate. I just wish we would grow a pair and stop worrying about offending someone, or getting caught being hypocritical. You guys don't care, and I applaud you for it.
Rich
I’ll have to find it later, but the Solzenitsyn meme in re McCain has been pretty thoroughly debunked, I believe. As for the rest, I don’t think the problem with the D’s is that they don’t have the stones to mock Republicans. No one ignores Larry Craig or Mark Foley. The problem is that too many of your political colleagues immediately go into “I am appalled” mode.
But you are right – mockery is a good tool. It’s no coincidence that a lot more people have read Swift than have read Bentham. Although I’m willing to wager you’ve read both….
Mark,
mocking Foley and Craig was like shooting fish in a barrel. It didn't exactly take chutzpah to be front and center on that one, so they don't count. I am curious to know where you saw the Solzenitsyn story debunked. I have been looking and have found the opposite.
Happy hunting.
Rich
It doesn’t take much chutzpah to mock Obama either. In fact, it shouldn’t take much chutzpah to mock any politician. I didn’t hesitate to slam Norm Coleman the other day and he’s on my side (kinda).
Rich,
Here's what I found on the McCain Solzhenytsin thing - Orson Swindle, who was a POW with McCain, says that he heard it from McCain directly in 1971. That would be two years prior to 1973, when Solzehnytsin's account was published. Swindle doesn't exactly have the best name for a reliable source, and I remember first hearing of Swindle in 1992 when he worked for Perot, but I don't have any reason to suspect he's lying about it. Perhaps you do?
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