How Did You Love The Speech?

Obama gets some good reviews for his speech in the NY Times (and the sun rose in the east...).  Having read the speech, I am a bit of a non-believer - as with his condemnation of both Jeremiah Wright and his own grandmother or the criticism of left-winger Bill Ayers and offsetting righty Tom Coburn, Obama took his normal conciliatory tack of rebuking both sides and presenting himself as the calm man in the middle.

So to appease righties such as myself we heard Krugman seemingly tossed under the bus early in the speech:

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding.  In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness."  Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.
 
For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack.  None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.
 
So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy.  We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.
 
But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.  As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.  Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

Which is fine.  Yet a bit later the President adopts Krugman's message:

And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.

So Krugman et al are wrong to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin but right that we all need to be more civil.  I don't think for a moment that the man who described his Republican counterparts as "hostage takers" includes himself among those who have lowered the tone, so I am reading this as a call to the right to pipe down. 

The NY Times editors apparently heard it the same way:

It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.

Yeah, they know who the bad guys are, so the President didn't need to sully his hands.  Please.

NEVER MOVE ON:  Lectures on civility from the guy who flipped the bird to Hillary Clinton and John McCain during the 2008 campaign.  Whatever.

 

Comments

[Ignatz]

--which is no government at all, or also known as anarchy i.e. No rulership or enforced authority--

It is of course one of the great historical ironies and stupidities that anarchists are primarily of the left and marxists themselves spout the fairy tale that somehow the state will whither away once universal power has been lodged in it.

[Stephanie]

I can't assume anymore that they know anything of civics, or history, or economics, Sara

Why should you it's day zero and all that stuff happened a long time ago. I'm surprised they even champion that ancient Darwin stuff. Evolution can't have happened if history begins today.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Not the first lady, who looked like she'd been involved in some kind of explosion involving purple jell-o.

Now this is funny. Someone pass it on to Ann. :)

[OldTimer]

Thank you so much for posting that piece, Ignatz. The writer captured exactly the offensive effect the event was having on my soul last night. It was impossible to connect emotionally to the alternate-universe mentality packed into that university stadium. They came across as godless creatures from another planet, where up is down, and down is up, and no one was murdered at all.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

This is for Jane:

See full size here.

It is an ad that ran in the Boston Journal in 1915.

Now I understand better why my Grandmother went around the neighborhood and gathered up all the newspapers after her name appeared in an article on woman's suffrage protests and she didn't want my Grandfather to find out.

Doesn't look like there was anymore civility then than there is now.

[bunkerbuster]

Soylent fantasizes: ``get their lips around the Great Obamic Johnson.'' Don't ask, don't tell, dude, please. Your job may make you lonely but your mixing of political rhetoric and homoerotic imaginings is just sad…

[Melinda Romanoff]

Bubu-

Mom's off the computer?

So glad you can get in before she calls you to dinner and you have to do the dishes.

Trying to reply to yesterday's banter is getting pretty weak, even for you.

Proving you CAN read is a major step towards enlightenment, so, go thank your parents for that.

[Porchlight]

Either Obama wanted nice people to think he was being nice and mean people to think he was winking at their meanness;

This is it.

The NYT got it just right. The left understood the real speech. "Keep it up laddies, it's working!" was the true subtext.

How "good" the speech was matters not a whit. It was good cop, bad cop. This is Obama giving the high sign to the left while placing himself "above the fray" for maximum 2012 positioning. All of the MSM and most of the conservative punditry are going right along with him.

Palin's speech was a wild card - we'll see if "blood libel" sticks like "death panels" did. Otherwise squaredance is right; the left won this battle hands down.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Why is no one upset over Glenn Reynolds’ WSJ article a day before Palin’s video? I don’t get it.

The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel. BY GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

[Jane says obamasucks]

Wow SArah - interesting. Thanks

Bubu. Fuck off.

[bunkerbuster]

How come everyone who criticizes Palin is called a hater?
I don't hate Palin, I disagree with her politics. Yet every criticism of her is ascribed to hatred by wingnuts. pathetic and so hypocritical. these are the same people who squeal like stuck pigs when someone calls them racist...

[Melinda Romanoff]

Nice try!

But you're still using revolving door logic.

You keep trying to slam it, and the next panel just hits you in the face.

And if you change your story any more, we'll call you Mr. Salty!

Catch up!

You're falling behind on your reading!

Psst, ask mom for help.

[bunkerbuster]

Thanks Mel, I appreciate that you contribute what you can to the discussion.

[narciso]

There's all sorts of free range crazy here, in the LUN

[Threadkiller]

Bung, you called her a wingnut on the "onion" thread.

Post ">http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wingnut"> here quickly and you can change history. Wingnut is not a term of endearment. But if you want us to believe you don’t hate Palin, pick words that don’t express hate.

[Sandy Daze]

14 Jan 11

Listened to some of Mark Levin's show last night. A man called in relating the following: His son was serving and at the Beirut barracks at the time of the truck bombing (23 Oct 83), (survived but with mental trauma). Some time afterward President Reagan gathered all the families of and deceased and wounded; the media was present. Reagan told his team that they were going to do this right, and had the media removed. After the doors were shut, the President gave a 30 minute extemporaneous speech regarding the heroism and sacrifice, and how what happened in Beirut, although tragic, was part of the long thread of American service. (I am relating the caller's comments as best I can, I was not there.)

The caller and his wife sat on one side on Cap Weinberger, on Weinberger's other side sat a woman by herself. After President Reagan finished his remarks, the woman turned to Weinberger and told him this, 'please thank President Reagan for his words. I lost my husband six months ago and lost my son at the barracks bombing. I am staying at a hotel down the road and after this ceremony, I had planned to go back to my hotel room, take a handful of pills and end my life. President Reagan has told me in his words that I must not do this, that I must live my life as they would have done.'

(Again, this is an imperfect recollection of a callers comments to Levin's show.)

I was very touched by this show, the dignity, the humanity and the witness.

~+~

Was it on this thread that someone suggested that Sarah Palin should give the Republican response to the State of the Union address ?

What an absolutely brilliant idea. Most Strongly Concur.

Take good care,
Sandy

[Sandy Daze]

14 Jan 11

Chubby,

Thanks for the link to "Rudy Guiliani: Sarah Palin has what it takes" Good catch, but . . .

. . .an endorsement by Guiliani 18 months ago is not quite the same as someone standing tall in the saddle over the last week !

~+~

I Most Strongly Concur with the idea that Sarah Palin should give the Republican response to the State of the Union address.

What an absolutely brilliant idea.

take good care,
Sandy

[ruralcounsel]

O's speech was a masterful walk between the lines. Just enough crticism of the Left's rabid attack on political discourse to satisfy the right-moderates who knew who they thought he meant, just enough ambiguity and ambiguiousness about who started the "rabid dialect" war to allow the Left to smugly go about its business.

The biggest problem I have is that the heatedness of rhetoric is a direct measure of the total dissatisfaction the Right has with the direction and speed at which the Left is dragging the laws of this nation. Want to cool the rhetoric? Quit trying to install your socialist nightmare on us, and get back to a Constitutionally-constrained government.