I don't usually point to a blog piece simply because I love both the sentiments and the style, but
this one deserves to be savored. Excerpts:
Why the peace, love and internet “progressive/liberal/left” is in a snit defies logic. Weren’t these guys listening during the primaries, caucuses and general election? Or was the din in their echo chamber too loud?
Like Bible thumpers cherry picking passages, you could probably find Obama quotes to back up any position you want to take, if you Google long enough. Far from being some crusading straight shooter, Obama has always been a clever double talker. That is, when he’s on script, or in other words, reading or submitting ghost-written speeches. Off script, his words are often laughable, yet, equally adaptable, just much harder to decipher. “Uh, ah, above my pay grade…” can mean anything you want it to.
However, when the cardboard titty groper is putting words in his mouth, Obama becomes a double talking linguistic maestro, using language to magically transport an easily transfixed listener/reader to the brink of logical thought, only to employ a deft “sleight of tongue/pen” that metaphorically yanks the rational rug deftly from beneath one’s feet. Thus, true believing KoolAid drunks are left dazed and dazzled, while the mentally sober, upon noting the reaction of the bamboozled, are generally moved to hurl, immediately after muttering, “‘the fuck did he just say?”
He has “always said” he would “end the war” in Iraq as much, and as soon, as he could, only to re-deploy troops to Afghanistan. Only a braindead, pie-in-the-sky optimist could have ever taken anything he said as being “anti-war.” And yet, though repeatedly warned, some people feel cheated. Well, boo-hoo.
I'll add this. Cinie correctly points out that the phrase "We are the change we've been waiting for" is, from a logical standpoint, stupid. From a neurolinguistic standpoint, this bit of wordplay is brilliant. On an unconscious level, most minds will process the statement as "We [Team Obama] are the ones we [citizens of the United States] have been waiting for." It's self-flattery disguised as audience-flattery.
5 comments:
Did anyone see Obama on MTP recently? He actually described a solution to the current economic meltdown as involving workers having to "take a haircut" in exchange for keeping their jobs. When he goes off-script, he really...goes.
Why, Joseph, I'm flattered. Seriously. Thank you.
The original phrase was "We are the leaders we are waiting for."
It was spoken by the Hopi Kikmongwi elders sometime in the 1920s during a meeting in a kiva. Obama ripped it off. I heard about it twenty years ago when I was involved with Native American Rights issues.
We are the change we have been waiting for came from an Alice Walker book, also.
Intelligent Obama fans probably thought that the doubletalk they were hearing was that of a progressive trying to appeal to the center. But it was the other way around.
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