The left just doesn’t get it. As a result, their response will be seen, by most reasonable people, as off-topic, out-of-tune. Just like the Tucson memorial service. I watched the full Obama speech in Tucson, because I did not want the filtered version from the mainstream media press club/cheerleading section.
Most of the speech was good. I would rate it an 8 out of 10, until the last 5 minutes or so, when Obama started sounding like the kickoff stump speech for his 2012 reelection campaign. I was amazed by how many of the same points — almost the same phrases — in the speech were made earlier in the day by Sarah Palin. But in truth we are a nation divided, and although I agreed with 95% of Palin’s video, I don’t believe we are capable of finding common ground anymore. There are two Americas (at least) — broadly speaking, two worldviews that are incompatible. One must defeat the other. There is no common ground between tiny, efficient government and a government that tells you what light bulbs you must use (full of mercury — Palin should call them “death bulbs”) and taxes your potato chips like they were cigarettes. There is no common ground, no compromise possible between pro-life and abortion on demand.
But I digress. The Obama speech (prior to the final “campaign rally” section) was not bad. The atmosphere in which it was delivered must have given many Americans a queasy feeling. The audience was indeed, as Rush Limbaugh suggested, like a cheering section at a pep rally. This was a memorial service devoid of solemnity and dignity. Yes, one can celebrate the lives of the victims, and even bring some warmth and humor to the proceedings when talking about the positive and human aspects of their individual characters. But the incessant applause and standing ovations were totally out of character, unless perhaps one was raised in a boisterous black church. (Was that why the Obama team orchestrated this incorrectly?)
But Obama finally USED these victims by telling America that we should be the good little cooperative, nice, compromising, people he wants us to be (now that he’s out-gunned in the House of Representatives) because that’s how the deceased victims wanted America to be. The gall. He does not know what those folks believed. The father of the little girl who was murdered said he believes we should not curtail our own freedoms because of this.
Chris Matthews’ leg must be tingling joyously over the speech, but although Obama said mostly the right things, the whole affair left me feeling odd, like a shot of lemon juice in your hot chocolate — an off-note. The attempt to use this tragedy for political ends is not going to fly. They tried to sell global warming propaganda to the people. It didn’t work. They tried to sell Obama to the American people, and after a brief taste of him, he’s fallen and he can’t get up. They can’t sell the idea that because of one violent kook in Arizona, our dangerously contentious nature has been revealed, and we must now repent and be “nice,” because we’ve forgotten how to love one another. Phooey.
