All Hail the Great Uniter...

Giving credit where credit is due, our Celebrity in Chief reads one hell of a speech.

Very presidential.

As if for a singular moment in time, the ‘Great Uniter’ lived up to his billing ~ asking for cooler heads to prevail and calling for an end to divisive, partisan speech.

If just for a moment, it seemed the President remembered that he was the leader of a country instead of the leader of radicalized wing of a once-proud party.

Obama is undoubtedly a skilled orator and the words were adroitly crafted – there was only one problem.

I didn’t listen to the speech, I read it.

You see, I suffer from OSIRS (Obama Speak Induced Reflux Syndrome). For some reason, whenever I hear the president speak, the regurgitation reflex is overwhelming – so for the sake of my esophagus, I have taken to reading transcripts instead. (Truth be told, I suffered from a similar malady under ‘W’. His justification of needing to ‘sacrifice free market principles in order to save it’ caused significant esophageal erosions..)

The problem with reading speeches instead of listening to them is that you miss the little things, like:

• Jan Brewer getting booed
• Frantic cheering throngs
• People shouting ‘we love you’
• And….T-Shirts..

Of Course, POTUS can’t be held responsibility for stupid people ~ boorish snots who boo the governor (at a memorial service), a thunderously clapping mass of humanity (at a memorial service) or people shouting ‘we love you’ (….at a memorial service). Nope, the president gets a pass on those actions – but that’s as far as it goes.

Location, location, location. Maybe it’s just me, but perhaps the choice of venue was flawed? I dunno, maybe a place of worship might have been more appropriate, given the quoting of scripture and evocation of the name of God on several occasions? Perhaps a more somber setting would have been better if one were serious about being….serious.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. Its not like such events have not been held in similar venues before. Hmmm….whatever could have been the difference?

MAYBE IT WAS THE EFFING T-SHIRTS?!?

“Together We Thrive” was a retread from Obama’s website ‘Organizing for America’. Seriously? T-Shirts? Did they have a beach-balls bouncing around in the crowd and a light show too?

And just like that, a memorial service was transformed into a 2012 campaign rally and the hopes that our president was finally turning into something honorable was dashed....and I looked a wee bit closer.

Instead of an ‘Oklahoma City’ moment in which a president could be seen reconnecting with the country after a brutal mid-term defeat, the week’s events instead revealed a hyper-politicized, partisan exercise in hateful, purposeful stupidity, slander and opportunism.

If Obama really wanted to cool tempers he would have done so as soon as the rhetoric heated up. Remember the ‘let’s not jump to conclusions’ narrative after the Ft. Hood massacre? Instead, the president let his attack dogs loose (I suppose when the verbal targets are your political enemies, then the truth can be a casualty as well) and the results were predictable.

And it all started with the sheriff (and here I thought those guys were into the whole law-enforcement thing). According to Dupnik (or Sheriff Roscoe P. EffTard, as I lovingly call him) “There is no doubt in my mind” that Loughner was affected by rhetoric (e.g., Limbaugh, Palin, Tea Pariters, et.al) although he freely admitted he had no evidence of such. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

The fact that our red-thong-clad-with-handgun-wielding-psychotic-murderer was bat-shit crazy was apparently irrelevant to Dupnik (as well as the MSNBC talking heads, the NYT, the pitiful excuse for democratic congressional leadership [to include our illustrious Secretary of State])

Just for funzies, lets look at a few of the clearly hard right influences / hobbies of Loughner:

• Truther: God only knows how many conservative truthers are out there… tens of thousands at least.
• Athiest: Whoops, shouldn’t have said ‘God’ above. Those damn righties are known for their refusal to recognize the possibility of a supreme being
• Pothead: I know I like to wax poetically about Bush’s complicity in 9/11 while smoking a fattie
• Music Influences: Duh. Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies’ is probably on Palin’s iPod!

(disclaimer: couldn’t care less in one’s faith or lack thereof, recreational drug use, political conspiracy beliefs or music tastes…and ‘Bodies’ is actually on my ‘favorites’ playlist on my iPod…)

Did I mention Sarah Palin? Because the media sure did! Over and over and over and over and over (and over). Why? Because of voting ‘targets’ incite violence? The White House and the media was dry humping its collective leg over the thought of finding some form of Palin-paraphernalia in Loghner’s possession (not that there was any). So desperate were they to pin some form of blame on either her or the Tea Party that they abandoned any hope of reason or fact checking…. and the president sat by and let the anger foment. As Michelle Malkin put it, a strategy was in place…and it is called, ‘Blame Righty’.

Malkin does a wonderful job of not only chronicling the history of falsely blaming the ‘right’ for any number of tragic events (ever notice that the media never blames the actual shooter, but instead drones on about ‘vitriolic influences’ or some such nonsense? Personal accountability being passé’ and all…) she also chronicles blatant left on right ‘hate crimes’, but I again digress.

The media / democrat / stupidity brigade continued to target Palin and the Tea Party for ‘angry rhetoric, and the use of gun-speak (targets, reload, blah, blah’ all the while forgetting such presidential gems as:

• ‘If they bring a knife, we’ll bring a gun’
• ‘Get in your neighbor’s face’
• ‘Punish our enemies’ (in reference to conservatives)

The list goes on. Other Dems have also used such languaging in the past (as have Republicans for that matter). One congressional Democrat ran an add of him (gasp) shooting a copy of proposed ‘Cap and Tax’ legislation…. Oh the horror!

Predictably, Palin took the bait. In a very nice speech, where she too showed her skill in teleprompter reading happened to use the term ‘Blood Libel’…. and then it was on. Despite the backing of such notable / knowledgeable liberal thinkers such as Alan Dershowitz as to the correctness of the term, Palin was instantly branded as ignorant, stupid and quite possibly anti Semitic for the use of the term. This, of course, was just useful collateral damage for the president and media allies. Truth and fact were irrelevant. The feeding frenzy went unabated.

And then….

The Great Uniter came.

He read a great speech.

And we all held hands and sang Kumbaya (all the while, oil climbed near $100 per barrel and the economic news remains just north of wretched and our debt ceiling climbed to $14 trillion….but darn it anyway, at least NOW we have civil discourse!) Pesky 1^st Amendment…screw it.

Predictably, after the ‘Defining Moment’ of Obama’s career, the presidential kneepads were again issued to the press corps. All hailed the Great Uniter. My favorite of these ‘pieces’ was an article written by Dan Balz in the Washington Post, ‘As Obama Urged Unity, Palin Brought Division’. No, it wasn’t Oklahoma City and Laughner wasn’t McVeigh, but that wont stop the media from trying to make it so.

I think my friend, the Professor said it best:

"So THIS is what it takes for President Obama to finally visit Arizona or the Tucson border corridor. After countless invitations from the least citizen on up to the governor herself. THIS is what i...t takes to visit a state where kidnapping, murder, and rape even of children is an ongoing and daily horror.

"But it's profitable. It's only Mexicans affected, right? And some right-wingers who get upset? Obama ignored those invitations. Because it might make him look bad - so bad, that he'd have to act like a leader..

"But now that daily horror and tragedy doesn't involve some redneck rancher, or some Mexican, but instead a public official - I guess we all agree the President looked pretty good on Wednesday."

Eff him and eff how good he sounded.
Eff healing.
I don't see anything healed that this President is in a position to affect.
Just more Oprah shit.

So, let us rejoice in the possibility of our lawmakers sitting together at the State of the Union address (and gee, ya can't even tell how many less Democrats there are that way) and enjoy 'civil discourse'! After all, it was the right speech (at the wrong place...and the wrong time...but still, 1 out of 3 is a 33.3% improvement over his normal performance average)

Bleh.

'All Hail The Great Uniter'