Oh-oh, say, can you see, by the opinion poll's early light....
By a country mile he is the greatest English-speaking speechifier of the modern age, no-one in recent memory approaches his use of verbal and body language, calm and authoritative, grim, wise, resolute yet comedic, rhetorical, fluent, at times mesmerising, he's even grammatical. Obama makes Tony Blair look like the cheap shit he always was, with his verbless, clunking gibberish, his arch, phoney boyishness and his Godawful fucking sincerity; polished, imaginative, timed to the split second, Obama's speeches are what we must now call the state of the art, populist, yet in a way learned, inspiring, even though you know he's lying his arse off, he can move you to tears and his speech to fifteen thousand sentimental Tusconians - and billions worldwide - as the star of the Arizona Memorial Show would, in another branch of showbusiness, win him an Oscar. He'll settle, of course, for a second term.
It really was dreadful, a variation of the Oh! it's the little people who make it all possible schtick of the drugged-up, egomanaiacal Oscar winner. He listed the foibles and All American qualities of each of the dead and wounded, just as though all of them used to set on the White House stoop with him of an evening, sipping low-calorie whisky and shootin' the breeze, talkin' about the ball game, eating potatochips. And praying together.
Not even the slightest sparrow falls,
but your heavenly president sees and knows it.
The crowd, supposedly in serious mourning, went wild, cheering, stomping, clapping, whistling; ovations came, honestly, about every thirty seconds. Jeez, it was like he really did know all them folks, personal, like.
And, his words cloaked in nobility, self-effacement and tolerance, he kicked the high-protein shit out of Skanky Sarah Palin and her redneck lynchmob. He wouldn't be blaming anyone for inspiring this bloodbath, fuck, no; he only ever used moderate language, believed that Americans could all get along, wasn't any need for bitter disagreement, he was too wise, too paternal, Mosaic, almost, for all that partisan shit. Now that these good folks were all dead it was time for people to moderate their language, try and love each other a bit more'n they do, and get the fuck off his ass, him so sensitive an' all.
He kept his best 'til last. We all had to live up to the American Dream, he sermonised, the one dreamed by nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, shot dead in the Tuscon Massacree
To the obvious delight of her parents Mr President emoted thus: "If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit." Even if, he didn't say, every fucking day of the Goddamned week we shoot or bomb or napalm little Pakistani children, little Afghani children, little Iraqi children in fact, any little children, anywhere.
Merkins, if the Westerns are to be believed, used to sing hymns at hangings, their infantile failure to understand solemnity, to value silence and ritual over soundbite and applause, is, therefore, in their own tradition and last night's memorial service gave the rank and the rotten - the great and the good, the dignitaries, as they see themselves - an opportunity to grandstand and allowed the yeomanry to enjoy a good, old-fashioned grief hoedown, even some tongue-tied, bogus Native American shaman was permited to open the show with a preposterous plea to the Creator and a stuttering, feather-waving blessing in the direction of Life's compass points, easy to see, without looking too far, that in the home of the Free, not much is really sacred.
Obama did himself a power of good and, if nothing else, the parents of the poor, shot child were evidently bouyed-up a little from their grief by all the Presidential attention,
a brief hug, even, from the First Lady; they'll always remember it, and no harm in that.
But the standing-room-only show, with its rank nationalism, its hymns and Bible readings and its carpetbagging politicians made clear the disease at the heart of the American experiment. If they are such wonderful, kind hearted, God-fearing folks why does their Godliness stop so abruptly at their own borders and why is it that forty thousand of them a year are shot dead by their fellow patients, I mean patriots, of course I do.
ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellent
.....they create a devastation and call it peace.
UPDATE. WHAT THE 'PAPERS SAY
UPDATE. WHAT THE 'PAPERS SAY
- The Guardian,
- Article history
Barack Obama has just made the finest speech of his presidency. It is not just that, in performing the role of pastor to the victims of the shootings in Arizona, he shed his professorial reserve and became the empathetic head of state that everyone who crammed the National Mall on his inauguration expected him to be. Nor did his speech contain memorable phrases. It was that, after two bruising years in power, Mr Obama has at last found his voice. He did so by rediscovering the themes that made him an outstanding presidential candidate. If he can set a tone not just for Tucson and the aftermath of Saturday's dreadful events, but nationally and for the rest of his presidency, this will be the change we can believe in.
13 comments:
I guess it will never be known as anything other than the American 'dream', Mr Ishmael: a fantasy that many subscribe to, but few could coherently describe. There seems to be a widespread acceptance of the concept that the end justifies the means, in the USA; that the 'Dream' can flourish, even if supported by innumerable outrages. 'Collateral damage' is a phrase invented there: like all language it is a tool, and the job of that tool is to create fatalism, to cause people to believe that the consequences of chasing the 'Dream', no matter how appalling, are inevitable and excusable. The 'Dream is still alive and well, though: over 1 million American people lost their homes to foreclosure in 2010, compared to 'only' 918,000 the year before. Nightmares always come to an end, but the 'Dream', it seems, lives for ever.
Just a small error-correction, Mr I. According to a Reuters report, the number of homes foreclosed last year was over a million, thus the number of Americans who lost their homes is likely to be very much higher.
The strangeness is that the most powerful nation the earth has ever known is populated by these children, these puppets. It's as if they are not really real. So the dead aren't really dead. And the slaughter is not really a slaughter but a Playstation shoot-em-up just like the chopper boys video from Baghdad.
Yes, Obama, the hopeless bastard, has an easy way with his weasel words, is eloquent, even, against the standards of the day but, God help us all, and I mean that most sincerely, folks, it is an empty and cold elegance. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. That he is and, yes, we can.
It has come to something, rain puddles in heaven or no, and that is a vileness too far even for a politician, when the shroud of a nine-year-old can be waved in front of her grieving parents. Even the President of the united States must sometimes have to stand naked, and say "I'm sorry for what we've done", and then fuck off home and hug his undead children.
It was fucking odd.
He always sounds to me as if he is repeating something piped to him via an earpiece without connecting personally with any of the words.
That must have been a bullshit festival too far. When it comes to being an empty suit with the gift of the gob Barry Bullshit even beats Spunkin` Bill Clinton.
Christ, what a prospect; Barry Bullshit vs Sarah Birdbrain for the Big Chair. Isn`t there some corrupt Senator or hick Governor to throw a wild card into the ring ?
Mind, we can`t talk, not with the three overpromoted policy wonks running our main parties.
The only hope is a nut with a gun.
Too many nuts with guns, Mother's Ruin, too many ruined mothers. All that bloody effort to get a child. Years and years and decades of cramps and blood and depression and fluid retention....when Queen Anne died, her coffin was square-shaped,she was so swollen up with the fluid retention.....
And the deed done, the body swollen as the parasite child grows fat on the mother's very substance, her hair falling out, her nails turning white with calcium drained out of her to make a baby, the hours in the dentist's chair to fill the teeth leached to make the baby's very bones... and the walking leaning backwards to balance the huge swell of child within; then the apalling, ignominious pain as you learn - hey - you are just an animal after all, and this is what all that make up and cleavage and stuff was all about - the sperm piercing the ovum, to keep the whole gene game going. And then, assuming everyone survives, the lactation, the urgent screaming and nuzzling, the pain in the breasts, the milk pouring down the front of the dress... and then comes the really hard bit... the money, the things, the restriction of one's world to a tiny domestic space devoted to ensuring this little loved intruder thrives and grows...And to see that precious thing, grown from one's blood and bone, exploded, destroyed, blown apart, and used to make political capital...'twas ever thus - the women weep.
Who wrote the speech? Granted Obama can read, but so can many others. Doesn't make him the special one. In fact, for what its worth, I don't think his delivery is a good as Reagan's, who had a folksy empathy, whereas Obama comes across as an arrogant nigger with an inferiority chip.
But, as someone commented on a previous thread, bullshit not substance is now the order of the day.
This is all still relatively new to the Americans.
The British, though cynical by nature, had Blair who has made us all even more cynical and equipped us better to spot an insincere, emoting gobshite when we see one. That Obama - he's an insincere, emoting gobshite. He's the black Blair.
The yanks will get there eventually.
It was so awful, so arrogant, mr mike, that I cannot imagine anyone but Obama hisself, having written it. I thought, also, that Reagan's folksiness was aimed at infantilising his audience, and largely succeeded. He had a pimple on his nose, and he squoze it, remember. I think he was born with Alzheimers, and mummied, like an idiot, by the vile Nancy, and his other minders; any credit that he and his bumboy, Whisky Maggie, stole for themselves, regarding the Cold War, belongs properly to Gorbachev.
They have a long way to go, the Yanks, mr jgm2 and their path is lit largely by skymadeupnewsandfilth, I don't fancy their chances.
"Undead children", Mr Mongoose?
Yikes.
(The only gurd zombeh is a dayed zombeh.)
As for the plangent puddles of paradise, jesus fucking wept...if they have bloodbaths in Heaven, you can bet Obama, Blair & co are pencilled in as lifeguards.
I always wondered, ms agatha, how loving supermum, Imelda Blair, could urge Labour wives to urge their MP husbands to vote for the Iraq Inferno. These days, I'm not at all surprised by Supermum Michelle Obama or Supermum Skanky Sarah endorsing the fiery obliteration of wog school playgrounds as being the very minimum expected of the great democracies. It is one of the victories of the Greer consumerist generation, the debasement of childbirth, even among those who do it. Just imagine, Labour women, urging the annihilation of working class children, for the enrichment and advancement of their husbands. Rebuke me not, therefore, for my dirty pictures; these people are degenerates, anti-humans, and since I have none of their private photos, I will lampoon them by proxy.
Sometimes, one thinks, mr verge, that all the horror and fantasy one has read comes nowhere near the shocking reality of GlobaCorp and its servants; doesn't one?
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