When he's not Tokyo Rose-ing for murderous religious militias and denouncing people with a thousandth of their body count who try to avoid harming civilians as bloodthirsty aggressors, Glenn Greenwald indulges his other favorite pastime: Portraying President Obama as the Antichrist, and all who hold him in any esteem whatsoever as heel-clicking partisan martinets with no conscience. Occasionally this compulsion has led to outright psychotic breaks, such as when Greenwald divined from the fact that CIA agents had visited a Somali militiary base where torture was rumored to have taken place (at some unstated time before or after) that it was not only actually a CIA base, but in fact "Obama's" base where the President was personally orchestrating a continuing program of torture - and perhaps masturbating while watching it occur.
Well, he didn't actually make that last claim, but then we don't really know what kind of deranged bullshit ends up on the editor's cutting room floor given the pungency of what actually gets printed. So, while this latest steaming pile of Obama Derangement isn't quite that rancid, it is certainly a classic entry in what will no doubt become an anthology printed on toilet paper. You see, MSNBC has hired Obama heavies David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs as contributors, and to Glenn Greenwald this confirms that quite a lot of people are out to pollute his precious bodily fluids. Or more precisely, that everyone who has ever commented on President Obama without their face twisting into a Cheney-esque crocodile rictus of pure hatred and malice is a personality cultist chickenhead. Retch-inducing quotes after the squiggle.
Last month, MSNBC's Al Sharpton conducted a spirited debate about whether Obama belongs on Mount Rushmore or instead deserves a separate monument to his greatness
The fact that seems to enrage Greenwald no end is that this is a widely-held assessment of Barack Obama's Presidency, and even more prominent on the global stage than domestically. That for people around the world, even in many Muslim countries where Greenwald seems to desperately want to believe the President is hated and feared, Barack Obama is in reality admired and general views of the United States have improved worldwide because of his Presidency. Frankly, the only people whose moral assessments of Obama resemble Greenwald's are the Taliban and the Tea Party.
(just weeks before replacing frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur as MSNBC host, Sharpton publicly vowed never to criticize Barack Obama under any circumstances: a vow he has faithfully maintained).
This stops just short of being an outright lie. The actual statement being referred to was a characterization made by Lesley Stahl in an episode of
60 Minutes, but no direct quote from Sharpton to that effect is in evidence. In fact, when he is asked a direct question about criticizing the President, Sharpton simply says that criticism should be "genuine" rather than complaining based on ignorance - which is a pretty rational thing to emphasize in defending someone you support. Perhaps Greenwald interpreted the statement as an insult to his career of doing the exact opposite. Either way, reality is at best treated as a despised red-headed stepchild in Greenwaldian spewings whenever the subject is Barack Obama.
Earlier that day on the same network, a solemn discussion was held, in response to complaints from MSNBC viewers, about whether it is permissible to ever allow Barack Obama's name to pass through one's lips without prefacing it with an honorific such as "President" or "the Honorable" or perhaps "His Excellency" (that really did happen).
Got that? "MSNBC viewers" (read: Someone who posted a comment on the internet) brought up how to address the President, and they
talked about it! Those awful wretches! Don't they know that the proper mode of political discourse is teeth-gnashing schizophrenic monologue devoid of reason or accountability?
Especially when the subject has anything at all to do with Barack Obama! Any honorific saner than Your Nazideathpuppymurderiness means you might as well just get it over with and lick Obama's balls. This is apparently the kind of thing that goes on in the fervid Neo-LaRouchian whackyland that is the mind of Glenn Greenwald. You have to wonder how many pages of enraged mentions of people shaking the President's hand, talking to him with an indoor voice, and clapping at his speeches the editor had to insist on removing from the final piece.
A Pew poll found that in the week leading up to the 2012 election, MSNBC did not air a single story critical of the President or a single positive story about Romney - not a single one - even as Fox aired a few negative ones about Romney and a few positive ones about Obama.
I don't think Mr. Greenwald quite grasps the concept of journalism. People reporting real news are not there to make everyone a winner or scrounge through the shit-soaked detritus of the Republican soul looking for redeeming qualities in the final weeks of the most lying, deranged major-party presidential campaign in US history. But of course, since reality was on Obama's side and MSNBC reported it, that means it's MSNBC that has a problem - not the raving nutjob sifting through minutiae looking for tenuous excuses to attack anyone and everything he perceives as supportive of President Obama. Yup: Glenn Greenwald thinks Fox News - the network of headlines generated by a game of Wingnut Conspiracy Theory Madlibs - is more even-handed in its treatment of the President than MSNBC.
And it goes on like that, for a total of fourteen fucking paragraphs. Which is just mind-boggling when you come back to the fact that Greenwald's entire screed was incited by nothing more than a couple of guys who worked for Obama being hired as contributors by MSNBC. But despite the banality of the topic, somehow the piece manages to drip even more contempt and petty resentment than when he's lying about the administration's foreign policy agenda and pretending to give a shit about civilian casualties he wouldn't even mention if they were killed by Islamic militias. I don't know if he's just psychotically jealous that he wasn't offered a cable news position himself or what, but there's no sane psychological connective tissue between the things this guy says and the events that inspired them. Seek help, Glenn. That or seek a job at your beloved Fox News. I'm sure you'd have much in common with your employers. Or, at least, one thing you both hold dear.
And P.S., fuck the Guardian for continuing to support this demented clown. Normally I ignore Greenwald, but this guy just has no ethical or rational boundaries other than an impenetrable faith that Barack Obama is evil and all events must be interpreted within the context of that unquestionable doctrine. Every feigned appeal to liberal/progressive issues and mores in service to this perverse fixation is just a giant "Fuck You" to the entire left side of the political spectrum by this unflushed toilet of a commentator. I will redouble my efforts from now on to ignore him, no matter how desperately he seeks attention in the future.