Pursuant to Darleen’s post, I noted in the comments how I can not remember another President cheapening the office with such alacrity as Obama has. Singling out specific conservative talk show hosts on whom to blame the “extreme” tenor of political discourse in this country? Casting them as opportunists, rather than earnest critics? What happened to dissent being the highest form of patriotism?
Makes me wonder: What is more “alarming”? Market-approved speech criticizing the government? Or the head of the free world singling out Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — individual citizens — as the cause of some of this countries political ills?
And yes, that was a rhetorical question.
Limbaugh responds (via Byron York):
I asked Limbaugh what he thought about the president’s comments. His program’s popularity is undeniably soaring now, but has it risen and fallen with economic anxiety — that is, was he less popular during times of economic security and more popular in times of economic worries? Since Limbaugh has been broadcasting nationally for more than 20 years, there ought to be some sort of pattern, if what Obama says is accurate.
“I have yet to have a down year at the EIB Network,” Limbaugh responds. “I and most Americans do not believe President Obama is trying to do what’s best for the country. Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power. And I have never known as many people who literally fear for the future of the country.”
The point, Limbaugh says, is not that listeners are feeling anxiety about the economy, although many undoubtedly are. It’s that they are feeling anxiety about the Obama agenda.
And part of Obama’s agenda seems to be to leave his critics feeling anxious about, well, being his critics.
Racists, extremists, bitter-clingers, haters: these are the enemies of America, we’re being told. That these very same people just happen to be Obama critics? Probably just a coincidence.
Well, he won! Can’t a President just eat his waffle and jam socialist policies down our throats in peace?
I’d like to think there are some actual cracks in the dam forming with his supporters. An anecdote, if I may:
Last night I was in a skype call with several college friends. One of them has been a rabid democrat supporter as long as I can remember (naturally of course, he is a liberal arts major and has been on social security disability for life due to social anxiety), actually told me back in 2004 he thought Bush would never let go of power if relected. I never brought it up after Obama got in because, what’s the point in saying I told you so with someone who never learns?
At some point during conversation Biden came up. I reflexively made a humorous remark about him, forgetting my audience (the rabid D, a liberalterian who has long since soured on Obama, and a our typical political agnostic but has a general distrust of Washington DC regardless of party) and everyone laughed, even the rabid one. A few more jokes were spileld and the discussion tangent eventually ended of the consensus that we have never had a alzheimers patient as a VP before. I was shocked. Perhaps dawn can still break over Marblehead?
Rush, GB and company will not be able to say they weren’t warned they were out of bounds.
I think partly he wants to make the presidency a redoubt of cocksuckers.
He’s off and running.
Barry gives himself the lie even as he carries the interview:
He the thinnest skinned President in living memory, as evidenced by the citations of Limbaugh and Beck. And as to wild accusations, wasn’t it just a couple of days ago that Barry characterized the core of the Tea Party movement as consisting of birthers?
He ain’t the first, he’s just refining the process.
Me I’m not of a mind to tone down the rhetoric I don’t think thank you though piece of shit little president man.
I think our job as American Americans is to make Limbaugh’s blah blah blah sound tepid.
We ought to notice that the White House in general and Barry in particular never address Mr Steele, who though mild in presentation, has some biting things to say. Funny, ain’t it?
And to make his followers anxious about being mistaken for non-followers, via however tenuous an association, or for failure to associate loudly enough, by chanting the infernal names. Which latter I’ve said too many times, and it sounds like a silly reductio cult-mocking thing, but it’s a centrally big cult- and politics-understanding thing, I (and Orwell) think.
I wish my name was Goldstein.
Levin when ranting makes Limbaugh sound tepid. “Oh, my! Did he say that?! I mean, it’s true, but I can’t believe he said it!”
Levin when coolly explaining Constitution and Founding Fathers’ philosophy is really great radio. Some of those moments will be available in the year 2050 in Classic Moments in Radio by KTel for $9.95, along with that War of the Worlds hoax, some Paul Harvey, and “O the humanity!”
In this he is simply doing Clinton but faster and harder since the lesson the Left learned from 1994 was that WJC wimped out in his triangulations. Rush got blamed by Clinton, on the air, for Oklahoma City.
By fall Obama’s blather will entail that 65% of the country is extremist. He simply is not very bright. We’ll have an election to settle the question.
I dunno. Back when I was a Clinton fan, I’d get annoyed at him talking about Limbaugh by name–didn’t seem worthwhile to pick a fight with a guy that was on 3 hours every day and was GOING to have the last word each time.
Stupid country has always been extremist. What the hell did they think the American exceptionalism was anyway?
I’ll be yet more vile. . .
And I’ll tone it down when Pravda does.
Extremist labels 2/3 of country “extreme,” loses election.
There is a reality, however loosely one may be tethered to it or however far away one may drift for a while. It’s the budget, the debt, the jobs, the corruption, and the loss of liberty, stupid. These things are real and can be spun for only so long. Eventually, labeling the 2/3 of Americans who care about these things “extremist” will land you face down on the ground.
My belief is that he believes he can drag the country there with him. A political, suicide-mission.
I just found out Pam Geller has a book coming out from Simon and Schuster. With a forward by John Bolton.
Congrats to that.
Me, I have an ad for online casinos. Next step? THE WORLD!
Oops. link.
I must be doing something wrong. Just not sure what it is.
I’m thinking about bringing in Gordon Ramsay to help me out.
Yeah – but I think he actually believes this, which is scary.
Once, I saw video of a fanatic fawning over Bono, and he replied to the effect that she shouldn’t make a god of him – he said something clever and to the point but I just can’t remember the words right now. The thing is, I don’t think Obumbles gets even a little bit weirded out by expressions of his own deification.
Hasn’t 99.9% of human governance across time been of either a mild authoritarian or outright monstrous repression of ordinary dolts and their freedom of governing action, at least to the extent of insisting that they have no say in how they’re governed? Seems to me this is the only place the dolts have been given a shot at it, and if that was ever so, then in its minority status, it looks pretty extreme by comparison.
Geoff, he may think he’s an economic suicide bomber but the Tea Party and Zero’s approvals show that he is quite mistaken in that belief. We will unelect his Congress and unelect him soon enough. He will fall and we will not fall with him.
Jim,
I agree but was speaking only of what I think are his motivations, goals, and mindset, not my own.
Yes, I understood you.
I like Joan.
From her link.
For more of the same, SEK.
Let me get this straight. Ann voted for Obama and she’s still a racist misogynist? Well, that’s a bad break for her.
I think wearing a pedo-beard and writing critical works about comics before you’ve ever been laid should be a shunning offense.
And it will be. Here.
If you shoot hoops and polish Dear Leader’s knob, then, that’s cool. Spanking interview, dude. Get Bret Baier to sit yer royal ass down and quiz you on some numbers and “procedures”? Rude bastard!
“the powerless”
There it is, I think. That Americans can think themselves powerless, when they were intended to be the most powerful people ever known, tells us where they’ve turned aside. We had the power. We weren’t careful enough in guarding it; we used it carelessly electing poor stewards; we look to blame someone else for our own faults; we traded it away for puny securities; we took our status in the world to be the norm all while we regressed to the mean and meanness.
Heh, let the shunning commence.
Mr. SEK has a nice wife what is pretty I saw pictures on the Internet one time. They had a wedding for when they got married and someone took pictures.
Get back to me when he consummates, and I’ll reconsider my ritual back turning.
I don’t know why Mr. sdferr but that was kind of heartening, what you said.
I wish my name was Goldstein.
Emmanuel Goldstein?
He changed his name to Jeff.
Partly it is that our “stewards” unexpectedly changed yet managed with help from the media to hide the change that now can’t be hidden.
That one up turning curve will eventually be all the support that the Left has unless the can silence the critics by any means that seems necessary.
they not the.
They secretly thought there must be something wrong with themselves for not buying the fairy tales and poisoned apples of the Press.
That’s why Glenn Beck’s first campaign was to form 9/12 groups and assert that “We surround them.” Because of the ubiquity of the Left’s voice, its educated and sophisticated credentials meant to intimidate and isolate, people felt that they were in a freak minority.
The Tea Parties show otherwise. People get to see for themselves how many of us there are. Scott Brown showed Massachussetts. The 2010 elections (assuming the economy doesn’t crash and burn first) will show the rest of the country.
Except for the elites, who will merely sniff that the barbarians have crashed the gates.
I can’t bring myself to lay the burden on Obama though. He’s only the latest in a century long string of poor stewards (stewards of what, we might ask? stewards of our charter, I would answer).
Laying the ground work to shove through a “Fairness Doctrine.” Though at this point, they are bold enough they may just pass something banning Rush and Beck from the airwaves.
That graph is stunning, Geoff.
Thank Nishi. She linked it originally to prove how the left was winning out with the real movers and shakers of all society.
Matt: They’ll institute something to do with “diversity of ownership” with the radio stations, because those who’ve had their turn at the wheel need to step aside and give others a chance, and yes they framed it in those terms.
Shelby Steele was on Prager yesterday, and although he’s correct about Obama having an extremely grandiose vision of himself and what he need to do as First Black President, he never gets to the root of the problem.
Recite with me: He’s got Narcissistic Personality Disorder. By which I mean that if Obama were the second black president he’d still be doing this crap, still imagining himself as an earth-shattering phenomenon, still acting as if that first black president didn’t count.
“…he never gets to the root of the problem.”
Which again, is not Obama. It is us.
sdferr,
You are bringing this to mind. :-)
And I fully know what you are saying and that is part of our founding philosophy, no?
Good ol’ Pogo. The problem I’m attempting to put a spotlight on though is none nearly so material as the problem Pogo was looking at. I lived back then and can starkly recall the ease with which people would toss trash out the car window as they drove along. Nowadays, to see such an act is startling, at least in my experience.
S. Steele (my emphases):
This is infantilization. Begun in illusion he reflects back illusion. Adults are supposed to know better.
I must be doing something wrong. Just not sure what it is.
Show us your tits!
…allright that was mean
Re: Geoff’s graph link – so, by their own criteria it would appear that the Intellectual Uppers could be considered “race traitors”…
But since we don’t play the identity politics game, I suppose we could just call them “useful idiots”. Or the pithier “assholes”. For the pith!
I was reacting to the interview on Prager, not to the article itself.
Also, I rarely pass up the opportunity to hawk my NPD theory.
That is all.
I’m thinking about bringing in Gordon Ramsay to help me out.
More LolCat posts, and clean your fucking kitchen more often. That’s disgusting.
Pardon the diversion, from a long-absent regular:
on social security disability for life due to social anxiety
A joke, right? Or is his anxiety so severe he cannot stand to even leave his home? But even then, there are jobs that can be done in isolation.
I only ask because — as someone who deals (poorly) with social anxiety — I don’t understand why I’m paying to support his ass.
Hey Rob! Long time and stuff.
I was wondering about the “debilitating” social anxiety thing, too. As long as there are online storefronts, telecommuting, and UPS, there’s no reason for anyone to leave home.
And DEFINITELY no reason to collect disability. Cripes.
I’m rarely troubled by concern for the opinions of idiots.