I am thinking of some writers from the liberal intellectual coterie (and conservatives as well) who have made some interesting pronouncements of late regarding the 44th president.
One such writer is Richard Cohen (h/t Lauren Victoria Burke) who found it necessary to pen what I am sure he believes was an honest heartfelt critique and assessment of the president before grudgingly giving him his endorsement.
"One of the more melancholy moments of the presidential campaign occurred for me in a screening room. The film was Rory Kennedy’s documentary about her mother, Ethel — the widow of Robert F. Kennedy. Much of it consisted of Kennedy-family home movies, but also film of RFK in Appalachia and in Mississippi among the pitifully emaciated poor. Kennedy brimmed with shock and indignation, with sorrow and sympathy, and was determined — you could see it on his face — to do something about it. I’ve never seen that look on Barack Obama’s face.
Instead, I see a failure to embrace all sorts of people, even members of Congress and the business community. I see diffidence, a reluctance to close. I see a president for whom Afghanistan is not just a war but a metaphor for his approach to politics: He approved a surge but also an exit date. Heads I win, tails you lose....
....I once wondered if Obama could be another RFK. The president has great political skills and a dazzling smile. He and his wife are glamorous figures. He’s a black man, and that matters greatly. He remains a startling figure for a nation that was still segregating its schools when I was growing up — and killing the occasional person who protested.
History was draped over Obama like a cape. His bona fides in that sense were as unimpeachable as Bobby Kennedy’s. The crowd adored Obama, although not as much as I think he adored himself. Liberals were intolerant of anyone who had doubts. Obama was not a man, but a totem. A single critical column from me during the campaign triggered a fusillade of invective. The famous and esteemed told me off. I was the tool of right-wing haters, a dope of a dupe...
..Obama never espoused a cause bigger than his own political survival. This is the gravamen of the indictment from the left, particularly certain African Americans. They are right. Young black men fill the jails and the morgues, yet Obama says nothing. Bobby Kennedy showed his anger, his impatience, his stunned incredulity at the state of black America. Obama shows nothing.
On the movie screen, Robert F. Kennedy’s appeal is obvious: authenticity. He cared. He showed it. People saw that and cared about him in return. With Obama, the process is reversed. It’s hard to care about someone who seems not to care in return. I will vote for him for his good things, and I will vote for him to keep Republican vandals from sacking the government. But after watching Bobby Kennedy, I will vote for Obama with regret. I wish he was the man I once mistook him for."
Yes Mr. Cohen, Barack Obama is in love with himself. Which politician isn't? Here is a newsflash for you: The Kennedy boys-including the one you worshiped- all loved themselves as well.
It's sad that Cohen saw Obama's smile before all else. Most of us who happen to be African American cringe when we see these types of pronouncements. As if all the Magic Negro had to do was smile and all of our problems would go away. (I am not sure what kind of look on President Obama's face Mr. Cohen was looking for) Sadly, competence and hard work is not praised, but rather, with the black president, it is seen as being distant and arrogant. Mr. Cohen, like some other whites this election cycle, will not be on the O train for that very reason: The "dazzling smile" didn't last. And yet, Cohen admits that he will vote for President Obama (albeit with regret) because of the "good things" he did.
I guess Mr. Cohen just wanted him to do it with a bigger smile on his face.
35 comments:
....I once wondered if Obama could be another RFK.
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Nope. The best he could hope for was be another Carter, and he couldn't even do that, due to his incompetence and laziness.
He will be remembered for accomplishing nothing that lasted and golfing 150 times.
You don’t have to be black, Muslim, or homosexual to get ahead through government employment. You can also be a dwarf, clinically insane, or just really, really dumb. A piece that came out in PJ Tatler last August sheds some light on the quality of personnel in the Injustice Department.
The PJ Tatler has obtained documents from the Justice Department detailing efforts to recruit attorneys and staff who are dwarfs or who have “psychiatric disabilities” or “severe intellectual disabilities.” On May 31, 2012, Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez issued a directive to affirmatively recruit people with these “targeted disabilities.”
This DOJ policy does not merely involve prohibitions against discrimination, but rather the documents reveal deliberate recruitment efforts to hire as attorneys and staff for the Department of Justice people suffering from psychiatric disorders and intellectual disabilities. Moreover, applicants can “self-identify” their disability by means of the “Standard Form 256, Self Identification Disability.”
That is, if you put “I am crazy and stupid” on your resume, you will be given hiring priority. Yet government workers are paid 40% more than their presumably intellectually superior private sector counterparts.
Bobby Kennedy helped McCarthy purge the American left in the '50s and accommodated his brother to the segregationist South in the '60s when he was still a hard-nosed hawk-realist (what we'd call a "neocon" today.) He shouldn't be deified, especially by todays left.
Field, you have said several times that Obama is the lesser of two evils for President. However, your criticism of Cohen for speaking the truth about Obama tells more about you than Cohen.
As a depressed Negro I can honestly say I agree wholeheartedly with Cohen's comments, esp in regard about how Obama has treated AAs. I have spoken about Obama's insults and pretense not to see us as a race in existence. I will never forget his coldness toward Blacks and his claim to be the President of all Americans--EXCEPT Black Americans.
I am miffed at your attack on Cohen. There is nothing he has said that is not true. I am from the sixties, and I remember JFK and RFK. I especially remember JFK's famous speech that in essence asked the nation "are we to consider America a free nation for everyone, except Negroes?"
I remember the look of horror on RFK's face when he saw the devastation poverty took on our people and his determination to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Today, I especially remember Obama for DOING NOTHING EXCEPT CREATING MORE SUFFERING AND MISERY FOR BLACKS.
And you have the nerve to castigate Cohen for saying the truth of how Obama has treated us? I said it before, and I say it again...You are an uncle tom...Go fuck yourself.
depressed Negro
Another RFK...as in a man who was killed before he could prove that his smile held any power to actually accomplish and change something in a crazy political world...the same political climate that assassinated him?
RFK still has a smile because it's immortalize in picture. This is the dumbest most nonsensical analogy I've seen.
Then it ends with all the "good things," President Obama done, as if she rather the President smiles more instead of accomplishing those "good things".
Wheh?
Well I would remind Mr Cohen that those heroes that aspired to bring social justice and a brave new Camelot, JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Abe Lincoln, found out the hard way that it doesn't seem to be a particularly healthy lifestyle.
So perhaps the POTUS, any POTUS, had better just do whatever they can without too much fanfare. Maybe?
Obama as RFK? Please. Of course, the obvious hasn't been mentioned.
Why is Obama a failure?
Why? He started out lucky. He was spared the big blindside attack that nailed the US on 9/11. That's one.
Two. He didn't have to choose a goal. It was laid out in advance. His job was to get the country's economy back on track AFTER seeing what sent it off into the ditch.
What sent the economy into the ditch? Liberal lending policies that put huge amounts of capital in the hands of hapless borrowers who threw it at houses.
How do you fix that? You don't try to put the lenders out of business.
You don't try to squeeze all the other enterprises that keep the economy moving along.
You get out of the way. You loosen up everywhere you can.
But Obama the dummy can't do that. He and his central-planning buddies can't abide all that independence.
Did anyone notice that Hurrican Sandy was far more destructive than Katrina?
The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is filled with water. That tunnel is two miles long.
Why didn't the Obama administration prevent the flooding of that tunnel and the subway tunnels that are also filled?
Looks like the press is giving Obama another pass.
If this hapless clown wins a second term, the entire US is going to seem a lot like the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
As expected, the post-Sandy looting has begun.
Seems the cops are rounding up the usual black suspects in Coney Island for emptying the liquor stores and the Rent-A-Center joint of all its flat-panel TVs.
When Mr Obama was running for President the first time, more than one Liberal blogger pointed out that Mr Obama was pretty much an Eisenhower-style Republican. Almost no Leftist held Mr Obama up as a paragon of Liberal or Socialist values. His first term bears this out.
I wonder why Mr Cohen is having this not-epiphany so late.
Mold
You right-wing types need to get your story straight.
Every blog I read has a story about how often Obama golfs, sometimes it's 100, sometimes 125, sometimes 150!
Make your minds up for christ's sake.
"Well I would remind Mr Cohen that those heroes that aspired to bring social justice and a brave new Camelot, JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Abe Lincoln, found out the hard way that it doesn't seem to be a particularly healthy lifestyle."
This is true. The wingnuts now are even crazier than theyy were then.
"Every blog I read has a story about how often Obama golfs, sometimes it's 100, sometimes 125, sometimes 150!
Make your minds up for christ's sake."
They can't. It's an evolving meme.
"Did anyone notice that Hurrican Sandy was far more destructive than Katrina?"
No.Too early to tell. You must be a fake engineer.
"Bobby Kennedy helped McCarthy purge the American left in the '50s and accommodated his brother to the segregationist South in the '60s when he was still a hard-nosed hawk-realist (what we'd call a "neocon" today.)"
Yep.
The Purple Cow said...
You right-wing types need to get your story straight.
Every blog I read has a story about how often Obama golfs, sometimes it's 100, sometimes 125, sometimes 150!
Make your minds up for christ's sake.
To a shallow man, someone losing count is the issue. To others - we simply say, he golfs a lot and do not lose sight of the main issue.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. - T.S. Eliot
Through the law of cause and effect we choose our destiny. Moreover, we are our own prophets for we constantly project our future state by the seeds we plant in the present. - Cheryl Canfield
The payroll data firm ADP, which recently became partners with Moody’s Analytics, revised their estimate of the September jobs created down from 162,000 to 88,200. That new number is considerably less than the Labor Department’s count of 114,000, which included 104,000 from the private sector.
Once again - more lies. So unemployment went up in Sept to 8.3 not down to 7.9 as Hilda tried to lie to us. She was offended people questioned her numbers, just like Obama was Offended people questioned his lies on Benghazi and we all know how that is turning out.
Now Oct's Unemployment will be 8.2-3% - Not good for Barack Carter.
The eternally incompetent are perpetually offended.
FN, Some of your readers are just like
the New Jersey Jets .They think they can WIN but all they do is lose.
Call POTUS out of his name.But your
mother ( if she is over 70) is better off today then she was 4 years ago..."And that`s a FACT".
"Well I would remind Mr Cohen that those heroes that aspired to bring social justice and a brave new Camelot, JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Abe Lincoln, found out the hard way that it doesn't seem to be a particularly healthy lifestyle."
Yeah, that's the ticket. Be a fearful instead of a fearless leader. Those are the kind of dedicated leaders America needs. Be afraid for your life, and be practical! Obama and Romney both are those kind.
Thanks Desertflower. You are a genius when it comes to courage.
"Every blog I read has a story about how often Obama golfs, sometimes it's 100, sometimes 125, sometimes 150!
Make your minds up for christ's sake."
They can't. It's an evolving meme.
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No, it's an evolving number. It goes up everytime he golfs. He doesn't golf as much now, because campaigning is more important than being president. But if he wins, it's back to the links!
ditto
all politicos love themselves
but what is horridly unique about that bankster hobama
is that he is loved MORE by his nazis than he loves himself!!!
and uniquely unconditionally!!!!
ie hobama has called himself lazy
but hobama nazis slew those who agreed!!!
shame!!!
cc this to that failed bankster hobama and his lies about jobs/recovery
shame!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2012/10/31/panasonic-pummeled-after-forecasting-massive-loss/?hpt=hp_t3
Blacks take any opportunity to mug anyone, like this unfortunate white guy who's dumb enough to be in a largely black neighborhood in Brooklyn.
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/19975754/surveillance-video-shows-man-beaten-robbed-in-nyc-as-hurricane-sandy-struck
that ruthless amoral evil nazi bankster hobama is an icy thin skinned pissy inhumane hoax!!!....
cohen was FAR too reticent and kind!!!!
In the year that followed, Obama would pump $14 trillion into Wall Street’s accounts, the biggest transfer of wealth in human history, but the “rising tide” would swamp Black America. Black male unemployment, which stood at an official rate of 17.2 percent when Sowell posed his question, would exceed 20 percent as the crisis deepened, with never a hint of targeted policy consideration from the Obama administration. Today, at 16.8 percent, Black male unemployment is markedly higher than twice that of white men (7.7 percent) – a significant widening of the great gap that has come to be thought of as “normal,” beginning in the early Seventies. The “hidden” chasms of Black joblessness have grown even more under Obama’s economic tutelage, as Blacks disproportionately crowd the subterranean corridors of the long-term and “discouraged” unemployed – a despairing cohort whose ranks have swelled to record levels during this rich man’s “recovery.”
“Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president.”
Black wealth has virtually disappeared. Data gathered prior to 2007, when the full scope of the subprime mortgage catastrophe was just becoming known, showed median Black family wealth at about $5,000, one-twentieth of the median white family’s $100,000 holdings. Since then, the bottom has fallen out from under whole communities, with Blacks hit by far the hardest. By the second quarter of 2010, Black home ownership had declined from its 2007 level of 48 percent to 46.2 percent, a 3.7 percent drop, and still falling – a guarantee that median Black household wealth is well below the $5,000 registered in 2007. (Median wealth for single Black women at the top of their earning capacity, ages 36 to 49, was precisely $5 – five dollars! – in 2010.)
Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president. As election year 2008 began, Obama took the most pro-banker, laissez faire capitalist position on home foreclosures of the three major Democratic presidential candidates. John Edwards backed a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on interest rates, while Hillary Clinton supported a “voluntary” halt and $30 billion in federal aid to homeowners. But Obama opposed any moratorium, mandatory or voluntary, and balked at cash for homeowners and stricken communities. As president, his program to stem the flow of foreclosures has been pitiful, near worthless in slowing the spiral that has taken down much of what once considered itself the Black middle class.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama%E2%80%99s-depraved-indifference
So Field, I guess what he's saying is that now that we have a Black President, He should be doing something for the Black people. My only question is, Why hadn't the previous 43 Presidents done anything for he Black people. I mean truly done something. Not because politically it made them look good, I meaningfully, honest to God do something that is just right. Period. Why does Obama have to be the one to say, "hey, the jails are filled with Black men." Every President before him knew this or helped create this. Obama doesnt have to show anything. These are facts that America has always known and has always been scared to talk about. This whole article feels a little like J. Edgar Hoover's Co-Intel Pro campaign to me. Let's pit the Black voters against the Black President by telling them that he doesn't care about them as much as the other white President did. The one thing i'm grateful for is that my people aren't stupid. We know when someone truly cares...and Obama does care. He doesn't have to shout "kill whitey" to care, all he has to be the best damn role model he can be in the midst of a country who elected its first Black President in 2012, 47 years after Jim Crow, when South Africa elected its Black President the same year apartheid ended!
hobama has gentrified and whitened american cities as no wm prez ever
and
his black hobama nazi drone peers have taken notes quite well
cc atl
the racist cancer of that blackish hobama has just begun to rot the globe
may god bless us all
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/black-misleadership-class-lines-behind-transit-privatization-atlanta
@Whitey and Friends.
I guess Andrea Mitchell will now be on to lead you Obamabots in apologizing for thumbing your nose at all the canned food and stuff people will never need now - right?
You see liberals never seem to think through reality and their actions. Even though we saw the Red Cross fail in Katrina and Haiti you were just sure it would all work out well this time.
"I am here in NewYorkCity & the media is not covering the real calamity that's underway.Hundreds of thousands of people have NO food or water"
Michael Moore
At a press conference this morning on Staten Island, a host of local officials, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, gathered to highlight the needs of the hard-hit borough in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And, although many pols spoke, no one was more impassioned than Borough President James Molinaro, who called the Red Cross an “absolute disgrace” and even urged the public to cease giving them contributions.
“Because the devastation in Staten Island, the lack of a response,” Mr. Molinaro said to explain his comment to NBC after the press conference. “You know, I went to a shelter Monday night after the storm. People were coming in with no socks, with no shoes. They were in desperate need. Their housing was destroyed. They were crying. Where was the Red Cross? Isn’t that their function? They collect millions of dollars. Whenever there’s a drive in Staten Island, we give openly and honestly. Where are they? Where are they? I was at the South Shore yesterday, people were buried in their homes. There the dogs are trying to find bodies. The people there, the neighbors who had no electricity, were making soup. Making soup. It’s very emotional because the lack of a response. The lack of a response. They’re supposed to be here….They should be on the front lines fighting, and helping the people.”
http://politicker.com/2012/11/staten-island-borough-president-dont-give-money-to-the-red-cross/
Once again, there's another weather related 'sale', with 100% discounts for black people:
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/looters-target-coney-island-sandy-article-1.1195080
Sandy is my bee-yatch!
Claude said...
So Field, I guess what he's saying is that now that we have a Black President, He should be doing something for the Black people. My only question is, Why hadn't the previous 43 Presidents done anything for he Black people. I mean truly done something. Not because politically it made them look good, I meaningfully, honest to God do something that is just right. Period. Why does Obama have to be the one to say, "hey, the jails are filled with Black men."
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Didn't Lincoln free the slaves?
And why is it that the jails are full of black men? Any theories, Claude?
Looks like the right's favorite son has taken quite nicely to the prez. Gov Krispie Kreme has many nice things to say about the job B is doing unlike the last time we let a Repub into the WH and an entire city drown. Let's not even mention Gov Etch-a-sketch's latest flip flop about FEMA.
PilotX said...
unlike the last time we let a Repub into the WH and an entire city drown.
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What an asinine comment.
That totally discredits anything you will ever have to say about anything.
CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG).
"The CSG is the one group that's supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies," a high-ranking government official told CBS News. "They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon."
Information shared with CBS News from top counterterrorism sources in the government and military reveal keen frustration over the U.S. response on Sept. 11, the night ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.
...
Counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News express frustration that key responders were ready to deploy, but were not called upon to help in the attack.
...
Absent coordination from Counterterrorism Security Group, a senior US counterterrorism official says the response to the crisis became more confused. The official says the FBI received a call during the attack representing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and requesting agents be deployed....
...
Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.
It was decided from the first moments that this wasn't terrorism, because it would be politically harmful if it were terrorism.
So the joint force in charge of counter-terrorism was not convened. That would have created a paper trail.
And so four men died.
Field you really put yourself out there as a Obama Zombie..
He sells out his base at every chance he gets!
Just last week Obama playing the ever present BI-Partisan Card said to radio host Michael Smerconish "Ill wash John Boehners car... Ill walk Mitch McConnell's dog to reach bipartisan deal on the debt ceiling"
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/obama-offers-to-walk-dog-wash-car-to-get-a-deal-with-147379.html?hp=l1
Right after Nov 6th he will ROLL OVER to Republicans in this debt ceiling battle.
You know it, I know it,and everyone else here reading this blog knows it.
You want to make him out to be some super hero when he really is just a habitual capitulate.
What good is it to have a "So Called" democratic president when he rolls over for Republicans every step of the way.
Gary Johnson , Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson... ANYBODY but Obamney !!
Cohen only has a job because WaPo needs someone who can pretend to be a liberal columnist.
Steven D
"So the joint force in charge of counter-terrorism was not convened. That would have created a paper trail.
And so four men died."
If wingnuts had only cared about the over 4,000.00 who died in Iraq...Oh wait, that was under a republican president. Moving right along.
"If wingnuts had only cared about the over 4,000.00 who died in Iraq...Oh wait, that was under a republican president."
Bush never witheld aid to people in harm's way for political purposes.
More service members have died on Obama's 4 year watch than in 8 years of the Bush Admin. And with his drone attacks, the number of innocent civilians has increased dramatically. Apparently the sicko gets off on it.
Not to mention the absolute silence about the murder rates in "communities of color". How IS the south side of Chicago doing with the big O in charge?
The only thing noteworthy about Brakabama is what color he claims to be. He's the ultimate token. The ultimate revelation of how woefully inferior the left thinks black people are. If the democrat party considered black people to be anything more than a race of genetically inferior children, they wouldn't feel so comfortable insulting them every time they open their wretched mouths. Brakabama is simply a hood ornament on the racist democrat party's hood.
Good riddance to the worthless little shit.
that bunch wouldn't spit on the best part of the negro in charge.
I'm finally realizing that on Wednesday, November 7th, America will be transforming from its first discernible "Black" president to its first Robot, with beady eyes and a big head, president. America, the country comprised with many "firsts".
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