Some constellations of signification seem memetically inevitable. So it is with the Cult of Obama.
(being a Serr8d joint)
On his visit to Egypt, Obama toured Giza, and jokingly compared himself with the carved imaged of a chief workman on one of the pyramid tombs. The pun was in the prominent ears. His guide chivalrously denied the comparison, stating that in his view, Obama better resembled the famous images of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun.
Fawning media coverage of the Obamas is nothing new, anymore, but the attempt at forging an iconicity continues. In Newsweek, the Obamas even seem to have acquired a magazine dedicated to the labor of the fashioning. Despite the suggestion that at times the Obama’s marriage has been under strain, we are now to understand that the signification of the loving couple extends to their being “ambassadors for date night“.
Now, I’m going to make a prediction. Whether we know it or not, Shakespeare has already mapped out the memetic trajectory of the Obamas in Antony & Cleopatra. Shakespeare’s great project in that play–the most difficult to stage of all of his dramas–was to counterpoint the regime of virile Roman power with the alternative of a co-regency in which what the literary critics would now call “the feminine” and “the masculine” principles are brought to bear equally. The stark utilitarianism of Roman diction and power projection is contrasted with the otiose pleasures of the Egyptian court at Alexandria. And behind that imagery of the marriage of the sun and the moon, Shakespeare has performed an epistemological act of archaeology that Foucault could hardly dream of, dredging up from behind North’s Amyot’s Plutarch the actual challenge posed in Egyptian history to traditional Egyptian religion by Amenhaten and his famous consort, Nefertiti. Here’s the Wiki:
In Year 4 of his reign (1346 BC) Amenhotep IV started his worship of Aten. The king led a religious revolution, in which Nefertiti played a prominent role. This year is also believed to mark the beginning of his construction of a new capital, Akhetaten, at what is known today as Amarna. In his Year 5, Amenhotep IV officially changed his name to Akhenaten as evidence of his new worship. The date given for the event has been estimated to fall around January 2 of that year. In Year 7 of his reign (1343 BC) the capital was officially moved from Thebes to Amarna, though construction of the city seems to have continued for two more years (till 1341 BC). The new city was dedicated to the royal couple’s new religion. Nefertiti’s famous bust is also thought to have been created around this time.
In an inscription estimated to November 21 of year 12 of the reign (approx. 1338 BC)[citation needed], her daughter Meketaten is mentioned for the last time; she is thought to have died shortly after that date. Circumstantial evidence which shows that she predeceased her husband at Akhetaten include several shabti fragments of the Queen’s burial which are now located in the Louvre and Brooklyn Museums.[4] A relief in Akhenaten’s tomb in the Royal Wadi at Amarna appears to show her funeral.
[Close-up of a limestone relief depicting Nefertiti smiting a female captive on a royal barge. On display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.]*
During Akhenaten’s reign (and perhaps after) Nefertiti enjoyed unprecedented power, and by the twelfth year of his reign, there is evidence that she may have been elevated to the status of co-regent[5]: equal in status to the pharaoh himself. She was often depicted on temple walls the same size as the king, signifying her importance, and shown worshiping the Aten alone. Perhaps most impressively, Nefertiti is shown on a relief from the temple at Amarna which is now in the MFA in Boston, smiting a foreign enemy with a mace before the Aten. Such depictions had traditionally been reserved for the pharaoh alone, and yet Nefertiti was depicted as such.
According to many archaeologists, the systematic defacement of many of the images of the two in the wake of their deaths suggests that the attempted revolution was met with a posthumous backlash:
The first recorded formal relations of Egypt with foreign countries were under Amenhotep III. Under his reign, Egypt enjoyed an economic boom. He built many temples and monuments across Egypt to honor his favorite deity, Sobek, who always was depicted as a crocodile. Some records of his relations were included in the el Amarna letters many of which were scattered before they could be protected properly.
Akhenaten instigated the earliest verified expression of monotheism, (although the origins of a pure monotheism are the subject of continuing debate within the academic community and some state that Akhenaten restored monotheisim while others point out that he merely suppressed a dominant solar cult by the assertion of another, while he never completely abandoned several other traditional deities). Scholars believe that Akhenaten’s devotion to his deity, Aten, offended many in power below him, which contributed to the end of this dynasty; he later suffered damnatio memoriae. Although modern students of Egyptology consider the monotheism of Akhenaten the most important event of this period, the later Egyptians considered the so-called Amarna period an unfortunate aberration.
Mind you, I’m not saying that Obama is presiding over a period of unprecedented American prosperity, but among the animosities that Akhenaten may have created may very well have been the extraordinary building projects that he undertook, and the taxation that would have fueled them.
Shakespeare, typically, wasn’t writing just or even principally about the history of Rome and Egypt. The topicality had to do with the end of Elizabeth I’s regency and her gradual racheting up of censorship in her latter years, and the prospect of her replacement by the schoolmarmish James. He’s revisiting in part, as well, the experimentality of the late 1580s and early 1590s, and the ethos of romance. As David Quint points out, romance is the music of what doesn’t happen. It is an alternative and compensatory alter-history, written by the vanquished. In the Camelot history of JFK, we have the image of the once and future king, whose accomplishments, had he not been assassinated, would have been . . . what? Glorious, certainly.
Shakespeare’s play is also, among other things, a metapoetic treatise, when taken alongside Julius Caesar, in which the Jakobsonian axes of syntagm and resemblance are played off against one another, but that would bring us into a wider consideration than this specific topic merits in a short format. In Antony & Cleopatra, we see Shakespeare in a valedictory mode, taking his personal leave of the gorgeous, sumptuous language of high Elizabethanism, just as in Henry V he took leave of his stock dramatic character, Falstaff, whose death was meant to represent, among other things, that of his notorious dramatic rival Robert Greene. At the same time, in A&C, he is mourning the “might-have-been” of Essex, whose rebellion after his shamed return from Ireland (mentioned hopefully in Henry V) signalled the end of an era of romance.
Throughout A&C, Octavius, later Augustus, is represented as a kind of implacably impersonal historical inevitability, and a conservative one, at that. The poetry is all Antony’s. Whatever we may think of them as realities, President and Mrs. Obama have been garlanded and infused with a great romanticism. When the implacable force of the economy dashes them, though, we can be sure that the contours of their enduring appeal to the vanquished will resemble that of the main characters of Shakespeare’s play. I imagine it’s a foregone conclusion that A&C will be recast for the Obamas. And they will be recalled most fondly for the music of what never happened, blame it on whom you will.
*
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion–cloth-of-gold of tissue–
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
A&C, II, ii
Careful there!
Masterful strokes from your quivering hand, I must admit. But why are you so afraid of their success in the light? Or that of the what-may-have-been concerning JFK? What if doom never befalls upon them. Will you recall these darkened words!
The JFK thing really is annoying to any student of history: he was a mediocre, little-liked president who was viewed as weak, uncertain, and likely to lose his next election. It was only after his death that the left turned him into an icon like James Dean; known more for being famous and cool than anything he actually did. Like a belief in Evolution, support of abortion, and adherence to AGW, the adoration of JFK is a badge of authenticity for the left and a generation of aging boomers. A badge based not on fact or reason, but media crafting and popular culture, a more sophisticated version of the emperor’s new clothes.
Little-liked? Irish Catholics are average in height, and they loved their man.
Pull your dress down ‘cleo, there’s company here.
Didn’t Dan tell Semen to take a hike yesterday?
“His guide chivalrously denied the comparison, stating that in his view, Obama better resembled the famous images of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun.”
I denounce his guide.
When I read Cleo’s comments I’m taken by the duality of the angry teenage virgin vibe and the cues that he/she’s an angry 40+ year-old loser. At least thor has daddy’s money and Sammy has a dopey earnestness he might grow out of. Cleo would be the same miserable, pathetic creep on a blog about puppies and there’s really no cure for that except a quart of vodka and a bottle of sleeping pills.
Not ignoring Dan’s masterpiece above, but that was a powerfully accurate money shot, Cleo. Solutions for tomorrow’s economy will not be found in yesterday’s failed cliches de jure. Bmoe must surely be cleaning both nostrils of that sticky shot.
I knew there was something familiar about you,
brave knight‘cleo.Recent discoveries of skeletons of the workers at Amarna (Akhenaton’s capital) show signs of malnutrition and extreme hard labor. We’re talking starving women carrying back-breaking loads.
Given that — and the speed with which Egypt turned away from the Aten cult — I doubt it was a time of prosperity for anyone except the pharoah’s family.
(How quickly did they turn? Tutankahmen’s original name was Tutankaten. He died at, what, 19, but they still managed to get his name changed most of the places it appeared.)
But can one escape romantic notions of the future, whether one has a cynical nature toward the media as supporting cast or not? When one asks “if beauty can really save the world” isn’t the response of “it’s the nature of the beast” quite possible? Optimism as oxygen to the human spirit. Not discounting the depth of your perception and abilities of placing tangential narrative up to examination, but isn’t the implacably dashed conclusion in your thesis as equally wishful as those of the romantic? The future may hold upside to that of Shakespearian foreshadowed dashed, or that of A&C’s final act.
Every Spring is anticipated by those who love fresh flowers. Cheeky smile!
Shelly said it better than most of us:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!â€
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Oh yes, Cleo, it will, and his war face hides his animus toward that lily white jury that tried to take him down for scoring a three-hole shot on that little Colorado slut.
Kobe as victim of the oppressor, money, greed and lies. Symbolism is a mighty war face.
Shelley was a Romantic, a true vomit worthy Romantic, frankly. Quit fuckin’ up Dan’s thesis with your tardedness, Joe.
Great. Another WWF battle between the resident trolls and everyone else.
I think I’ll sit this one out.
“What if doom never befalls upon them. Will you recall these darkened words!”
They’re like pyromaniacs enrolled in a fire safety class.
They fan the flames of fear and hate because it’s seemed to work in the past. But they don’t get that the past is over. Oh, if something terrible happens resembling the fates of Abe and JFK, they will spout remorseful platitudes, but they will be defensive in nature, designed to ameliorate the perception of their complicity. They will do anything to
disrupt success of this President, because such success will be an inexhaustible repudiation of all they believe in………..
Yeah, watching Yippy Dog indulging in another round of sexual fantasies about big black men doesn’t hold much appeal.
It has nothing to do with what I believe, or what I want to happen, or what I think is cool or fashionable today. If it suddenly became fashionable to believe God created the earth in 1776, evolution never happened, the world is flat and the moon is green cheese, and a bunch of you idiots elected a government that decreed it so, IT WOULDN’T FUCKING MATTER. Because the reality is none of it is true.
Here are some things that are true: A bushel is a measure of corn. Money is a measure of wealth. Corn can be grown. Wealth can be created. If you let good farmers keep their seed corn, they will grow more corn and there will be more corn for everybody next year. If you let good investors keep their seed money, they will create more wealth and there will be more money for everybody next year.
If you confiscate the good farmers seed corn, and give to gluttons, next year we will all go hungry.
You can quibble about the details all you want, but these are the fucking facts.
“If you confiscate the good farmers seed corn, and give to gluttons, next year we will all go hungry.”
Even if the confiscator is Archer Daniels Midland?
shorter Moe: Money grows on trees, fact!
Yeah, I know. They fuck you at the drive-through, I hear. Miles down the road, and you find out they’ve fucked up your order, and it’s too late to go back.
And when some suggest that a profit is better turned somewhere other than on the bones of the sick and dying, they get shrill.
Even a grave digger got to eat, and speculate!
They’re like pyromaniacs enrolled in a fire safety class.
17. Comment by Semanticleo on 6/7 @ 11:04 am
They fan the flames of fear and hate because it’s seemed to work in the past. But they don’t get that the past is over. Oh, if something terrible happens resembling the fates of Abe and JFK, they will spout remorseful platitudes, but they will be defensive in nature, designed to ameliorate the perception of their complicity. They will do anything to
disrupt success of this President, because such success will be an inexhaustible repudiation of all they believe in………..
———————————————-
I see that your posts are being deleted.
Anyway, you have it all wrong. There is not much we can do to disrupt this president’s plans. I do not use the word “success,” as you have not defined what success would consist of, and it really has to be defined in order to discuss it. In fact, I think the use of “success” is intentionally vague as used in the talking points that you are repeating.
Obama and the rest of the Democrats are crashing and burning on their own. They debate nobody, listen to nobody, they answer to nobody. The real issues are these: (1) How to put up candidates that are really different, rather than just similar operators with a different label; (2) How to work around the slavish media that have thrown their lot in with these socialists; (3) How to repair the damage that they are so busily perpetrating.
What the fuck is the measure for deleting comments? It’s more fun if you know the rules…..
Bring a little more than snark. Use evidence. Forge a coherent argument. Address the topic(s).
“Great. Another WWF battle between the resident trolls and everyone else.
I think I’ll sit this one out.”
Aye.
Free Cleo’s snark!
The year is 2004
“They debate nobody, listen to nobody, they answer to nobody. The real issues are these: (1) How to put up candidates that are really different, rather than just similar operators with a different label; (2) How to work around the slavish media that have thrown their lot in with these CONSERVATIVES; (3) How to repair the damage that they are so busily perpetrating.’ fixed it…………
Short answer; read Doris Kearns Goodwins’ ‘A team of Rivals’.
“Bring a little more than snark. Use evidence. Forge a coherent argument. Address the topic(s).”
So is that arbitrary? Or does the same rules apply to everyone?
So. LBJ as Antony and Doris Goodwin as Cleopatra? That sounds like some steamy stuff right there.
Citing an entire 800-plus-page book is not an argument, Semanticleo, nor is it a rebuttal.
Try harder. You never know: if you actually pose an argument, you might avoid deletion.
Thanks, Dan.
That Kobe fellow came over to TennesseeFree and left a disparaging comment for enlisted men, to wit:
I’m thinking it’s that pathetic little shit Thor. Dan, does your kobe above match this IP?
(Of course I edited that comment. That, I will not stand for it.)
Cleo, you are exonerated. Dan is being petty and Kate-ish. Hehe. That had to sting.
Serr8d: Yes.
So says aunty ‘Cleo, with her legs scrabbling for the clouds and Michael Moore bouncing like a doughboy between them.
“Serr8d: Yes.”
taken out of context.
Sir, your comment is not relevant to the topic at hand. Take your little tantrum elsewhere. You are scumming up Dan’s brilliant Shakespearian diagramming thesis. Rules are rules.
I’m thinking it’s that pathetic little shit Thor
Oh, it’s definitely thor.
“So says aunty ‘Cleo, with her legs scrabbling for the clouds and Michael Moore bouncing like a doughboy between them.”
Collins says; ‘hmmm. Good content. Precise argument. No snark!
APPROVED !!!!
Ouch, that really stings ‘cleo.
Well, it would if it made a lick of sense, I am sure.
What can the context that would justify that be?
Have you answered my questions about torture in the other threads, ‘cleo? That would be a start.
You know, I kind of poured myself into this post, but the important thing is that y’all can get your hate on. Enjoy.
I love those videos of surprise reunions once a soldier comes home.
It’s a Obama-voting soldier in the throes of a teary embrace with his Obama-loving child, how can you not be touched?
“What can the context that would justify that be?”
Base upon yer rules, that comment should be deleted for lacking substantiation while being laced with some sarcasm, which I will not stand for.
“I kind of poured myself into this post”
Your work is first rate, Dan. You hastily deleted one of the few compliments I’ve given righties. But I DO wonder why you’re working for the 2nd Team.
I, for one, salute the solid academic thought and interpretive analysis of Dan’s post.
Very insightful work,
Mr. Collins..
It’s very very difficult to imagine Barack Obama being held accountable, Dan. I can’t get my head around it.
I liked the post, Dan, but Obama-as-Antony doesn’t really work for me.
Although certainly a flawed character, Antony had some real accomplishments under his belt.
Obama is closer to Commodus or Elagabalus.
Barack Obama is more closer to Andrew Rigley I think.
sorry … *Ridgley*
Feel free to delete it, then.
sorry… *Ridgeley* …
I am resolved that this not be a day of Fail.
Dan, just to interrupt the trollery and take on the point of your post, whilst I agree that Will’s Anthony and Cleopatra captures the metapoetic facets of the O! presidency, I feel that the great Hal Roach captured more of the story with stunning prescience in his great work Sons of the Desert.
The plot is eerily reminiscent of the Ones early years from the association with a sinister organisation in Chicago, the transparant mendacity than no one appears to notice, even the comedy schtick with the cigarette.
And the point where our hapless hero scratches his head and grimaces in that embarrasing way while his, (only slightly less hapless), minder intones; “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Stanley”. Well, all I can say is that the feeling I get is amazingly reminiscent of the pitying anger invoked as our modern Stanley lets us down again.
Come now, Dan is free to hold onto his strongly held beliefs (not well worded, but so what). The man is merci-filled and loving as Archbishop Romero. He sees the world as he does and he need not apologize for that.
For deleting your posts, deep inside, he feels badly, but merely wants you to respect him; it’s a mutual effete sort’a thing, I believe. Dan loves you, Cleo, inside his heart he does.
The clown in the last scene has some pertinent sarcasm.
“@29 Comment by Semanticleo on 6/7 @ 11:26 am #
The year is 2004.
[…]
How to work around the slavish media that have thrown their lot in with these CONSERVATIVES”
—————————————————————————————–
The delusion of the creature Semanticleo in a nutshell. Where have you been for the last eight years? Where were you during the 2008 elecetion? The mainstream media have been openly partisan for the left for decades, started demonizing Bush in 2000, continued after he was sworn in, and then some of them backed off for a few months after 9/11. They thought it might be bad for business, all things considered. After that they started right up again.
He has been on auto-pilot for longer than that. Archer Daniels Midland? That is some vintage boilerplate, right there.
Robert Greene was Shakespeare’s dramatic rival? From your link, concerning his death at 32…
This fellow seems pathetic, even for those times.
serr, from Greene we have the first extant word of Shakespeare as dramatist, the famous “upstart crow” characterization. Without going into the very complicated rivalries of the time, that’s important. Greene was the first person in England able to make a living from writing for the popular press, without benefit of a patron, because of his careful cultivation of his own image as a notoriety. Many of the tropes and conceits of Shakespeare’s work can be found in Greene, though you have to chase them for their full development over many pages, whereas Shakespeare had the gift of intensest concentration.
Greene may or may not have known that he was going to die at the time he wrote “A Groatsworth”. Had he not, it would have been–for one so prodigal by his own testimony–strangely provident for him to have attempted to cultivate a feud with the rising dramatist. I think Shakespeare understood that.
It’s like Mikayla and Hannah.
The cult of Obama and it’s future is already seen in the present: Venezuela.
Good stuff, Dan. If some would insult and deflect and, well, characteristically lie through their teeth, I fully support your showing them the door, for what that’s worth. Who needs it.
Greene exhorts all men (at the golden age of 32!)
I’ll drink to him, now. But in moderation.
Is it snarky or just plain mean to notice that even WS predicted that King Barry would have poop of beaten gold?
Oh. My. God. Green, speaking as The Grasshopper…
Maybe this should go in the Carradine thread?
I knew of an actual “Dr. Kill”. Probably a coincidence, though.
Say Dan, would you identify the three gentlemen who are thought to be addressed by the Groatsworth? Or are there no three gentlemen but only types?
Comment by serr8d on 6/7 @ 11:33 am #
Thanks, Dan.
That Kobe fellow came over to TennesseeFree and left a disparaging comment for enlisted men, to wit:…
serr8d: Thanks for finding my comments worthy of sharing. As for Kobe/Semanticleo maybe someone should apply for a Baker act on him because he seems likely to hurt himself. Perhaps I was being a little selfish when I requested prayers considering their are guys like this clearly more in need of heavenly intervention.
Shakespeare, metapoetics, axes of syntagm? Good lord. He’s a crypto-Marxist little leftist wanker from Chicago who tricked his way into power. I suggest Walker Percy’s great tirades on “paltriness” from his novel Lancelot. It’s all you need.
#33: And just think, it was less than 24 hours ago that I predicted whore’s sense of invulnerability would lead it to keep showing its’ ass just a little too much. Thanks.
Regarding the effacement of history and such I think the Bammers cult should erect all the statuettes and etch heroic paens into stone sometime in the next 6 months because I think most of us know there is going to be a full court press to convince the American peepels that “There were never mass crowds gathered, no one ever fainted. These are wll right-wing talking points. There was never any revitalization of unironic neo-socialist realism. This just proves how deeply engrained the right-wing psychosis is etched into our collective pysche.”
O and re ‘feet’s characterization of the media striving for the appearance of competence and success as horrific, eleventy times yes. I think there was a thought somewhere in the dextroshpere at one point claiming that the media couldn’t maintain there current level on crazy partisanship, but just wait until the next election cycle ramps up in what should be a few months.
Obama as cornhole target for his shemale concubine works for me.
Out by the pool; hearing the wisdom of philosophers, trapped in a country music song…
#2
No. Today is as good as the Obama administration is ever going to get.Unless, fo course, you like socialism and the economic collapse of the US. Then the future looks bright.
This is the most confounding thread I’ve ever encountered here.
All I know is, I consider Obama’s adoration emetic rather than memetic.
Obama is a great public speaker, there is no denying that. No one in the Arab world had anything good to say about Bush so this is a start at least. If Obama makes America look better in the Islamic world then that is good enough for me.
“Obama is a great public speaker, there is no denying that.”
Yes there is. Teleprompter.
“If Obama makes America look better in the Islamic world then that is good enough for me.”
At the expense of effacing ‘his’ country and what the the being liberal with the truth.
I think you’re much confuzzled.
You have some serious fucking problems if that is the standard you set for the President of the United States.
When it comes to Obama iconography the sphinx is pretty good, but you can’t beat the Dashboard Obama.
Ed Rush and George Cromarty wrote that in 1957. How did they know??
Oh, and an excellent post Dan!
Ahem.
Really?
Sheik Ahmad will be surprised to know that he doesn’t exist.
Where in the Islamic world? Iran? I think they like him a lot better, so much so that they giggle when they think about him. I think the Taliban likes him better too. Yay!
And you idiots keep engaging the trolls, as if they have anything to contribute, or would if they did.
Thank you, Swen! That what the theme song as it were of my old band, but we only knew a couple of verses we got from Cool Hand Luke. We are getting together again this Saturday for the first time in about 5 years and some new verses will be a nice surprise.
We heard you the first hundred or so comments Rob. Thanks.
That’s wierd, Swen. The version I remember went something like:
Plastic Jesus, really nifty!
Only costs a dollar fifty
Sitting on the dashboard of my car.
Brought to you by the Pink And Perfect Plastic Icon Company of Del Rio Texas, Halleluia!
The Arab world is eyeing us like it wants to do us I think. This is cause of Obama and you don’t like it I feel sorry for you cause you are a hater but me it makes me feel pretty.
I love Del Rio they have those cool tall tree bush thingies there and it looks very peaceful when you drive in to the valley.
But they aren’t monsters, happyfeet. It is important to keep that in mind.
Bmoe, where’s it gonna be? I keep forgetting to ask.
Friday Night about 8 we will be at the Caledonia, on Clayton St. behind the 40 Watt (X will be playing the Watt that night, hence the early start) and then Saturday late afternoon/early eveningish at the Blind Pig’s Second Annual 10th Birthday Party. The Blind Pig is across the street from where TK Hardy’s used to be down by the river off Oconee Street.
The version of “Plastic Jesus” that I remember, but this was 1972 and I know from Swen above that the song is older so this is another version.
it makes me feel pretty
Exactly.
This is good news from the Arab world. Hezbollah camp loses Lebanon election
Ma, he’s makin’ ears at me !
[…] I still hope Dan is wrong: Fawning media coverage of the Obamas is nothing new, anymore, but the attempt at forging an […]
reagan’s 1980 convention speech could be given today:
?
“In the Camelot history of JFK, we have the image of the once and future king, whose accomplishments, had he not been assassinated, would have been . . . what? Glorious, certainly.”
Too bad he was shot down in his prime by a crazy commie.
Saaayyyy.
Could all the insane conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assasination have been propaganda trying hide the fact that Oswald was, in fact, a communist?
A disinformation campaign if you will.
Comment by Kobe’s Stroke Hand on 6/7 @ 10:06 am #
FOAD, thor.
Wait, that’s Semen?
Can’t tell the morons with out a program.
“Comment by Kobe’s Stroke Hand on 6/7 @ 10:57 am #
Oh yes, Cleo, it will, and his war face hides his animus toward that lily white jury that tried to take him down for scoring a three-hole shot on that little Colorado slut.”
Naw, it’s whore.
No one else could display such vacuity and such bile in one moronic statement.
“Comment by Semanticleo on 6/7 @ 11:13 am #
“If you confiscate the good farmers seed corn, and give to gluttons, next year we will all go hungry.â€
Even if the confiscator is Archer Daniels Midland?”
Doesn’t ADM sell seed corn, you fucking moron?
If there were a fly on the wall when those Islamic leaders spoke amongst themselves, quietly, of Obama, it would hear one word:
APOSTATE
Rob, we have different definitions of engagement.
Given that this is the eleventy-billionth time you’ve condescended to us, you appear to be in no position to be holding forth regarding futility.
So, malaclypse, while you recognize the futility of engaging the trolls, you’re gonna keep doing it, while scolding me for trying to tell you not to bother?
Hokay.
Somebody let me know when it’s possible to discuss things again without whor, et. al. leaving their diarrheic trails through everything. You folks get on with the business of rehashing the last eight (or, with ‘KKKleo, forty plus) years with the trolls.
You’re gonna have to take that up with the proprietor, Rob.
thor is the only really nassty troll, I think. Nishi was little-girl mean, but sorta cute; Auntie cleo is easily swatted aside. thor is simply snake-venom mean. Like that Halloween monster: it’s purpose is only to harm, and it’s nearly impossible to vanquish.
Needs a right cross. With garlic.
its more fun now with state sanctioned media. tingle my shivers
Becareful of sleeping with strange women…
Just a diversion from Obama worship.
This food taster story seems a mite Pharaonic or has this been the case with Presidents heretofore and I just hadn’t heard about it?
reagan 1980:
?
Great piece Dan…
But, I don’t think any of the Kos Kidz would even get what you’re talking about here…
I mean, that’s okay though…
As long as you’re not trying to say anything radical and unfounded…like the Egyptians kept slaves or anything…
Very good piece Dan. And of course great image Serr8d.
Interesting: Drudge is hinting the NYT will report growing worries (panic) in the Obama economic team. For some reason, what they are doing is not working.
Must be Rush Limbaugh’s negativity.
That depends on your definition of “working,” Joe. If by that you mean improving things like GDP growth and employment figures, it’s a true disaster, but in political terms it’s working like a dream to rope in as many compliant dependents as possible before the 2010 midterms.
I don’t recall having conceded anything vis-a-vis the ostensible futility of “engaging the trolls”. I don’t recall having scolded you either. I’m simply observing that you appear to be a performative of that against which you inveigh. And “telling you not to bother” is an interesting reformulation of “you idiots keep engaging the trolls”.
That said, I still think you’re a smart and eloquent commenter. And I still have fond memories of my encounters with your kloognome back at Bradley. I wish you well.
O!
O! no!
Peace be upon you.
Keith Hennessey answers Austan Goolsbee’s false charges on automaker bailouts.
Well-presented and thought provoking post, Dan, although I disagree.
how is the floor?
Meanwhile, “god” is sighted in France.
I peeked in this morning, and it looked, well, coagulated. Seems to be kind of dry. Will attempt a sortie tomorrow in sockfeet to shut the goddamn windows, because it’s been raining like hell here.
What was the incompatibility you were concerned over with the poly, cynn?
Has there been a point in the campaign and administration where Goolsbee was honest?
Well, not to make this a DIY screw-up, but apparently I was supposed to use water-based products over the extensive filler I used on my 100+ year old soft fir floors. I used oil based, and in many spots covered over existing finish because I couldn’t differentiate between that and sanded surfaces. Now it looks like the floor has stretch marks, as it were. As long as the freaking thing dries and the smell goes away…
You can always buff it.
Maybe. I just know that’s something what is done sometimes.
What I should do is hire on of those Zamboni hockey dudes to level my upstairs. Also, I cannot take Austan Goolsbee seriously because he has a twee name and he is too young to know what the fuck he’s talking about.
I’ve found Goolsbee’s behavior throughout to be surprisingly partisan JD. His peers seem to be cutting him an awful lot of slack so far, though I get the impression now and again that they’re surprised by him as well.
Cynn, if your filler spots aren’t too extensive you may only have minor local problems that you can fix over the spot itself. I’ve seen occasions of this sort of incompatibility (waterbased thingy of various sorts underneath oil based thingy of various sorts) result in what’s called “hazing”, with the moisture of the underproduct trapped and fuzzing up (so to speak) the top coat. Anyhoo, if something like that does show up you may be able to remove your topcoat in the area immediately above the filler, feather back the edges of the topcoat, remove and replace the filler with an oil based product, then re-topcoat locally and still achieve an even looking finish. If this does appear necessary to do though, it’s best done soon, before the topcoat has fully hardened. But in any case, best luck with it.
Noted and thanks, sdferr, but I’m already thinking shag carpet.
Somebody let me know when it’s possible to discuss things again…
That’s not my job.
Nor is it yours.
Dan, before I sign off, I just want to say that I think the right is informing Obama with way more symbolism than he is capable of sustaining. You are attempting to create some kind of mythology around him. That is more an attempt to raise a Burning Man effigy than anything else.
To many of my persuasion, Obama is a groundbreaking icon, and that is fine; he is. The more pessimistic of us see him as a deer-in-the-headlight footnote, driven by ideals but slammed by an economic backlash.
The fact that you guys try to attribute some kind of classical hubris to Obama says two things: 1) You have an affinity for classical references, which is always good; 2) You do not live in the present.
Sdferr – At the point where Goolsbee started lying about the Obama campaign’s message on NaFTA, saying one thing on the trail, and Goolsbee telling the Canadians that it was just campaign rhetoric and they did not mean it, it became quite easy that he was just a partisan hack. Surprisingly, the MSM has given him a pass ;-)
um, cynn, did you read the link at 122? It’s not the right that’s doing it. We’re merely observing it.
I’ve been watching and listening to his peers from academia JD, or at least the ones I see now and again on CNBC or the ones I read in the blogworld. So far I haven’t seen anyone call him out on his now multiple dishonest assertions. It’s hard to imagine that his reputation among them isn’t suffering though.
Yes, but you are adding to the hagiography. Just leave it alone. He stands or falls on his own.
Who is the saint you’re pointing to cynn? These are politicians and political economists we’re talking about, in the context of political actions and behaviors.
Then let’s leave them in their place, and not idolize nor demonize them as anything else.
I’m not supposed to note or take notice when someone like the President’s economic advisor lies through his teeth on a nationwide political talkshow? Or the President himself does much the same thing? That sounds like a ridiculous position to take it seems to me. Human beings are built to pay attention to things like that, to try to puzzle out why there are contradictions, what the objectives of the falsehoods may turn out to be, how those objectives may help or harm the causes the falsifiers seek to achieve. It would be wrong not to pay attention to them.
How about something from my favorite ‘Obama is the anti-Christ(maybe)’ site.
Much more compelling in my mind that making the guy out to be Antony.
Sdferr – Sadlÿ, so long as you are advancing Teh Narrative, this kind of partisan hackery seems to make them more popular, not less. See Reich, Krugman, et al.
sorry, cynn made me do it…=)
JD, your “you” in “so long as you” leaves me befuddled. You mean, maybe, they?
Being compared to King Tut isn’t exactly a compliment. He accomplished little as Pharoah, may have been murdered in a political power grab, and is remembered as significant only because a British guy managed to discover and rob his grave before his subject’s descendants could do so.
that’s how I read it sdferr. not sure what to make of the umlaut, though. ;D
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
Heinlein, Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
I thought the umph-laut was for decoration. He’s a secret baroqueist, that JD. :-)
or he’s address some heavy metal band.
addressing. something in the water this weekend. I keep not typing what I think I did.
You are both correct, I have no clue how my Blackberry pukes out some of these symbols sometimes. And yes, sdferr, that was a very inelegant construction on my part. When in doubt, assume that Barcky and his minions are being called a douchebag, and that usually clears up any confusion;-)
I missed the Tiger show this afternoon JD, were you lucky enough to catch it?
On tivo. I knew it was over when he chipped in for eagle on 11. El Tigre is back, and hitting fairways. Watch out.
Interestingly, the word for lightning is virtually the same in Hebrew
That’s not surprising at all. Arabic and Hebrew are about as close as Spanish and Italian, after all.
You say tomayto, I say tomahto, you say shalom, I say salaam, you say shibboleth, I say sibboleth…
reagan 1980:…
Ack! Yesterday I damaged my love for “Say Anything” by watching it with the “Comments” on, and hearing John Cusak repeatedly refer to himself as a “Reagan-era kid,” as if we were to understand that signaled enormous and irreparable pyschological trauma.
Cynn said;
The more pessimistic of us see him as a deer-in-the-headlight footnote, driven by ideals but slammed by an economic backlash.
One more time. He is a cheap Chicago political hack. He is as venal and as grasping as any other Illinois machine politician. he cares absolutely nothing about the people of this country and everything about power and what it can get him. Yet you continue to think that there is virtue in what he has done. Jokes on you. Shame on you for dragging the rest of us down with you.
Everything John Cusak learned about politics he read in one of his scripts.
cynn, his economic policies are a shame and the crisis deepens because of them. His foreign policy is a sham and there he poses as something he’s clearly not and more importantly, as something he should not and must not be. His domestic policies are fascist. His thinking is messianic and racist. He’s fantastically dishonest and a tool and a fraud.
Even in the land of the blind postmodernists who elected him, his approval ratings are worse than Dubya’s were this many months into respective Administrations. His cabinet and other posts (where they’re even populated) are filled with cheating amateurs and corrupt old hacks. In a time needing careful introspection and essential personal reforms back to productivity, self-responsibility, and reorganizing, all we see, hear, and get are some odd meandering platitudes to an ideology that isn’t even definable, much less effective in what we must do and must do now.
By all accounts we elected a cheap suit in a crisis and the wheels are coming off by the day. This is utterly the wrong guy for the times and even as a nation of easily distracted materialists and entertainment hounds, we’re slowly beginning to realize that. Something is very wrong and it wasn’t all Booosh, was it?
What it was was a cultural dishonesty involving selfishness, gross overspending, an enormous collective abandonment of values, adopting multiculturalism and it’s relativist ethics, absorbing predigested narratives and opinion, and in short, lying to ourselves. We’ve even gone so far as to appoint our jester class to thinker, broadcast the result in tasty snacks, and convert ourselves from the antiquated ways of real value and principle to the pop-culture and the national religion of extreme political correctness and racism.
Because that’s who elected this guy and that’s why they did it.
Now ask yourself if this previously jobless minor leaguer with a controversial radical past was the character to restore the virtues we’d better set about restoring right now, and to do so from an office we should never trust to provide such values in the first place. Or was he a con job ginned up for the gullible, the weak, and the racist among us?
At this time in the nation’s and people’s history, cynn, Obama was one of the poorest choices we could have made. He’s the product of the tail end of boomer selfishness; he’s a final-phase experiment in self-indulgence. He’s a tantrum acted on a national and world stage and it seems we’re the last to know because some half of us are in denial, apparently needing an even harsher slap to the face to regain awareness then those we’ve already seen over the last few years.
Fortunately there’s a revolution of sorts going on in Europe, possibly because their economic houses are in ruin and the fundamentalist mideast is thumbing their noses at them and the world. They may be a step ahead of us, us having been the core of their current economic issues via interconnecting banking systems. Other tinpot freaks thump their chests these days, an entire continent reverts to the dark ages, and communism seems solid and expansive in China and resurgent in Russia.
Is this a time to install hopeychangey poseurs and having done so, a time to look away from the inevitable results? This is not the America it takes just to remain America, cynn. We’re a nation of frauds having elected a fraud. We’ve lost our way. We’ve lost our identity and now we’ve saddled ourselves with debts and conditions that likely will challenge our survival.
Worse than that. Someone turned Cusak onto Noam Chomsky. It ruined him.
Yours is sort’a a deep-knee bender, JHo.
People love The Edge. I can’t understand it. He stands there in wet cement strumming that same worn out disco-era rhythm on his Echoplex. I’m the one busting ass. No build-up, no show, no pre-solo preparation whatsoever, after the chorus I don’t say nothing; I simply scream “The Edge!” And the bloody stooges go crazy for the man, as if he deserves more than a wall of farts. You tell me what I’m supposed to do, how I’m supposed to feel of the charade. The bloody Edge save any bleedin’ Africans from starvin’? He wouldn’t stop his strummin’ long enough to save a sodomite from a fifty-foot snake. Every Paki hoolie who loads his amps knows I carry the man.
The Edge ain’t nuttin’ but a punter. For the children of San Salvador I curse his false glory!
Yours is sort’a a deep-knee bender, JHo.
No sh*t. Wow. That’s Gibbons “Rise and Fall” in a few paragraphs. I’m tempted to paste it on my refrigerator. Or bury it in my backyard for future generations.
He’ll just run into the arms of America, Pride.
Cusack used to be one of my favorites.
One man come in the name of dumb
One man come and go
One man come here to shit the rug
One man to spew and blow
In the name of dumb!
One thor in the name of dumb
In the name of dumb!
One bore in the name of dumb
I was kinda hopin thor would fisk the daylights out of #158.
Because he swings that way and never hesitates to say as much.
[…] the heretic Pharaoh’s reign and contrasts it with Obama. If you are of a scholarly mind, Behind the Cult of Obama, and Its Future is a wonderful read. Here is a […]
On his visit to Egypt, Obama toured Giza, and jokingly compared himself with the carved imaged of a chief workman on one of the pyramid tombs.
The side with the teeth goes into the wood, big guy.
Does anybody else think the Obamessiah couldn’t handle putting together even one of those Sauder retard-assemble pieces of furniture, let alone, say, a cabinet?
17. Comment by Semanticleo on 6/7 @ 11:04 am #
“What if doom never befalls upon them. Will you recall these darkened words!â€
They fan the flames of fear and hate because it’s seemed to work in the past. But they don’t get that the past is over. Oh, if something terrible happens resembling the fates of Abe and JFK, they will spout remorseful platitudes, but they will be defensive in nature, designed to ameliorate the perception of their complicity. They will do anything to
disrupt success of this President, because such success will be an inexhaustible repudiation of all they believe in………..
6% drop in GDP, unemployment 9.4% and rising, soon to be followed by interest rates?
I’d gladly cheer on any success of this President, whenever he decides to quit fuckin’ around and start achievin’.
As for the assassination/martyr porn, remember who took out JFK and Abe. Hint: not “right wing extremists”.
Somebody keep an eye on Ted Rall. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/28-3
“Obama as God”
Putting Obama ahead of “The Prophet” ought to really make us friends in the Muslim world.
This kind of utter nonsense qualifies as that “Oh Sh*t” that obliterates all those “AttaBoys” on the foreign policy ledger.
He conquered fear, and he conquered hate, / He turned dark night into day, / He made his blazing saddle / A torch to light the way…
[…] is Ozymandias Dear Readers: I must admit, Protein Wisdom gave me some incentive to go back into literature, to effectively tie Egypt into current events. […]
#107: You have summed up in a nutshell why thor is the only troll here I want to actually track down and shoot. His type is only about 5% of the opposition, but we’re never going to be able to proceed in reforming this country and its’ politics until, like the hardcore Tories after the Revolution, they’ve either been killed or forced into exile never to be heard from again.
I’m willing to accept either outcome; that was why I was hopeful that its’ long absence indicated it had left for good. Oh, well.
You wanna really keeeel me proper, do ya, cause it ain’t right, the way I think and the way I talk my thoughts out loud.
Well there, Slingblade, I says you’re not right in your bumpy head.
No, it’s the way that you don’t sling thoughts. Cynn, ‘cleo, even Sammy sling thoughts. They may be factually and logically wrong thoughts, but they are simply opinions. Like assholes, everyone has one.
You delight in being as hateful and graphically insulting as possible, especially to the lady commenters; at least half your comments are for no other purpose, and all of them have that as one purpose. You persist in posting here, even when the site owner has asked you to leave; even when the other writers remove your posts; even when people try to avoid you with Trollhammer.
And no, I don’t want to keeel you; as I said, I’d be perfectly satisfied if you just left. However, I don’t want to read your spew and hatred any more. I don’t want to watch you insult people like Darleen whose little finger contains more wisdom and knowledge than your entire body; like N.O’Brain’s son, who has given more to this country than you ever could. And not even Trollhammer allows me to avoid those things, because you value your hate and venom and illusion of intelligence above everything else, so you make sure it can’t work.
People have tried various non violent ways of dealing with you, and have had to learn the lesson anew that ultimately the only way to deal with evil people is to remove them. You don’t educate slime; you don’t teach it a lesson; it just stays slime. The only proven way to deal with it is removal.
Now go away and live. Your choice.
Boo!
You’re too pathetic.
I’m gonna live large either way, hick.
It’s OK to cry. Let it all out. You just need to let those hot tears run free. There you go.
Eff you Bono.
“What a thrill for four Irish boys from the North side of Dublin to honor, you Sir, the next President of the United States, Barack Obama.”
“Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you.”
You know, JHo, I seen a million faces and I rocked them all. It’s true, I rely on an echo machine and studio reverb chorus effects way, way too much, and I’m not a fret burning solo guitar God, but at least I can keep a sweet beat. And who the fuck wrote Party Girl, that was Bono’s lyrical abortion. Can’t pin that on me.
How long must we sing this song…
#167
I don’t know , but he sure as hell can’t assemble a cabinet.
#171 As my poor old grandfather would’ve said, thor’s not worth the powder and lead it would take to blow him away.
I think ‘tinkling teefs hitting the pavements‘ is more correct in thor’s case. Skin in the game, and all of that.
As my wealthy grandfather used to say, any dumbassed duddering hick who spends his time Photoshopping turds and threatening to rear his bumpy head needs to be soaked in the ambient stench of his ramshackle outhouse, fully, completely drenched in his own pointless shit.
Where’s that loooooooney, SDN?
#167
I don’t know , but he sure as hell can’t assemble a cabinet.
That’s most unfortunate, esp because like most Affirmative Action cases he’s been promoted way beyond his ability. This makes us all the more dependent on the people who influence him (Biden? Rahm? Summers? nice…)
There was an excellent article (in the American Thinker?) about the Head Noobie In Charge & His time at the HLR as its racially installed “president”. After the hard work of producing circa six pages of “legal notes” (less than what 1L Law Students must do for their intro projects), He “outsourced” the day-to-day running of the Law Review to another student. Indefinitely. Because the “outsourcee” had the misfortune of being white, he has since been relegated to a mid-level government position, despite essentially runing one of the most prestigious law journals single-handedly. Too bad we can’t all be Negroes, eh? But for the happy little accident of Hussein’s father’s melanin content, He’d likely be a manager at the local Best Buy/Target/whatever – or perhaps a legal secretary in a small firm, at best. Oh well – guess you fight the economic crisis with the prez you have, not the prez you wish you had. Awful shame that, once He gets done with the country, nobody’s going to want to vote a black dog catcher for the next 50 years…
Ohnoes, teh wittle wacist shakes his wittle angwy white wiggery e-fist.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3617/3598460422_6b0d88a2f6_o.jpg
Ding.
One wonders what it would be like without the blacks and hispanics, who gladly vote for incompetence so long as it’s THEIR kind of incompetence…
Hi. I think YOU’RE white trash.
Dong.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/barack_obama_legal_scholar.html
“The “successes” he uses as campaign tropes often turn out to be due to the work of others for which he has claimed credit, or to be much less significant than meets the eye.”
@183:
“I think”
lol.