In case you didn't realize Barack Obama's inauguration speech was "very grim," you should read this:
I was picking my daughter up from her friend's house this morning, listening to NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday (it's only a five-minute drive, and I forgot that Will Shortz is only on Weekend Edition Sunday), when my impeccably bad timing corralled me into listening to a waste of airtime wherein NPR's Scott Simon interviewed The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz - no, wait, excuse me: * ahem * -
The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz -
for a piece entitled, wonderfully, Obama's Reach For Bipartisan Not Long Enough?, about the president's determinative first three-and-a-half weeks. Simon, of course, uses as his benchmark Franklin Roosevelt - you know, the guy Obama succeeded, right?
Ms. Rabinowitz, who sits on the illustrious editorial board of the WSJ along with Curly, Moe and Shemp, is actually taken seriously (I guess) by Simon and NPR as she sadly exhibits the increasingly curious rightwing predilection for ever more tightly embracing not-Reality. Here is the piece from which it seems today's NPR appearance was extrapolated. In it, she calls "pure rubbish" Obama's executive orders regarding treatment of detainees, orders which she says
effectively undermin[e] efforts to extract (from captured al Qaeda operatives) intelligence essential to the prevention of terror attacks
- because, you know, Torture Works!® It's What Keeps Us Safe And Makes Us American - and in which she alludes that a President Obama, had he been leading the nation during World War II, would have sought to
raise a glass and talk things over with Hitler.
Anyway, here are some "thoughts" plucked right from Ms. Rabinowitz's beautiful mind in the NPR interview. She jumps right in and refers to President Obama's
tone-deafness, which he's carried through [from the campaign]
You remember that tone-deafness, right? The tone-deafness that forced him to settle for a crushing presidential election win, right?
And talking about President Obama's campaign and inaugural pledges to end the unconstitutional and un-American policies of the BushCheney administration, she clucks
"no more expediency" - his way of referring to the efforts to save the nation from further attacks
Translation: Torture, Indefinite Detention And Removing Habeas Corpus Keep Us Safe. And George Bush Was A Great President. She continues:
[Roosevelt] managed to conjure a very believable optimism. This is simply not true yet of Mr. Obama, who has not quite learned to project urgency without a sense of imminent doom and catastrophe, and that's a model he'll have to face. Roosevelt's inaugural address filled the nation with a sense of hope and ebullience. One should compare that to Obama's very grim inaugural address . . . There was not an ounce of celebration.
Wow - "very grim." Sheesh - I now understand why Ms. Rabinowitz must have won her Pulitzer: for revealing to Those Who Were There the Truths They Did Not See. NEWS FLASH to the millions of Americans who witnessed Barack Obama's inauguration address: It was very grim. No celebrating! So there!
I suppose to a certain demographic - a demographic to which I would guess Ms. Rabinowitz belongs - Barack Obama's mere presence at the presidential dais on inauguration day was in and of itself "very grim," never mind that the man had the audacity to actually take the oath of office - harrrummph! - and thus Ms. Rabinowitz feels compelled to share with hoi polloi such as us this salutary Truth - for which we should, in turn, be appropriately grateful. Not an ounce of celebration, indeed.
Let's see - by the time Franklin Roosevelt took office, the Depression was, umm, three-and-a-half years on, right? And we are, let's see, ahh, 14 months into a "recession," right? So maybe Mr. Obama has figured out that one of the first things that he must do is to convince Those Who Are Not Yet Convinced - people like, oh, say, every single Republican member of the House of Representatives, and Ms. Rabinowitz herself? - of the very real peril we face. FDR didn't have to do that - everyone by March 1933 recognized it. But why let History and Reality intrude into a great yarn, right? So Rabinowitz goes on -
as he fights for this stimulus bill, we get a greater and greater sense that we are at the edge of an abyss
- which Ms. Rabinowitz obviously believes we are not, and therefore, she says,
I think that there is that need to adjust the tone.
Yes, President Obama, please: adjust your tone. Srsly. Your tone is upsetting dear Snookums here. There, there, now, Snookums, it's all right. The nasty grim tone-deaf man can't hurt you.
Ms. Rabinowitz, it would seem, has the same ability as Mr. Bush did of seeing into another's soul. She knows what's in Mr. Obama's soul:
Mr. Obama had better internalize his belief, and not just say it or communicate it
She says President has been
rubbing [our] face in a reality that is not yet upon us
Heh: "Reality?" You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Y'know, the Depression is not here. There are no people selling apples on the sidewalk, there are no lines filled with hungry men. We are a very far distance away from that time.
Okay, if you say so.
As for "bipartisanship," Ms. Rabinowitz notes uniquely that Mr. Obama's failing is that, well, he somehow believes that Republicans don't want to work with him. Oh, and that "the media" - herself, evidently, excepted - are playing right into that bizarre interpretation of the record:
[Obama has] got others [in the media] to say, "Well, look at these Republicans - they really want this bill to fail."
In Ms. Rabinowitz's "Reality," voting nearly unanimously against a bill doesn't mean you want it to fail. Saying, "I hope he fails" means you don't hope he fails.
Ms. Rabinowitz and her Republican kin who inhabit the very small and besieged archipelago known as the Islands of I, Me and Mine have taken to spluttering and fuming more and more strenuously as the rising tide of Global Meltdown - the same Global Meltdown their blindly followed instincts have created, the same Global Meltdown they still somehow believe it useful to deny - renders their natural habitat smaller and smaller, leaving them less and less room to maneuver. The past eight years have shown them to be flightless creatures incapable of soaring, let alone getting off the ground; thus they are reduced to squawking and flapping their gums and strutting imperiously about a comically ever-more-tiny domain of which they each believe themselves to be unchallenged master.
As some grim tone-deaf guy said, the ground has shifted beneath them and they don't even know it.
(I can't match the artistry of the substantive takedown Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith did a couple of years ago on the estimable Ms. Rabinowitz - you really should go read it.)