(Politico).The Washington Post's Al Kamen catches this nugget in President Obama's address to supporters yesterday in Chicago: “The first bill I signed — a bill that said that we’re going to have equal pay for equal work because I want my daughters treated the same way as my sons.”
It's not the first time that a rhetorical hypothetical has tripped up the president, as when a "Muslim faith" reference was taken wildly out of context.Read the full story here.
And According to a new book, Obama got sick of shaking the troops’ hands while on a trip to Baghdad. Via BuzzFeed:
“He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me.
“Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take fucking pictures with them?”
There is something strange about Obama's rhetorical hypotheticals -- if that is what these words are. At the least, they are too paternal or maybe a better description would be "too collectivist."
ReplyDeleteThe words "my Muslim faith" aren't paternal; that one was either a Freudian slip or Obama's way of connecting with people in a chameleon-like way. What gets under my skin is that he lacks empathy, so the chameleon behavior takes on a tinge of something unsettling.
I do get the distinct impression that Obama, at times, is an actor who doesn't believe his lines or who says his lines according to the effect that he wants to elicit from the audience. He often plays to the audience by using different "kinds" of voices.
If he wanted to use the word "sons" rhetorically, he should have said "our sons and daughters" or "America's sons and daughters."
ReplyDeleteI still can't get out of my mind that he said, in reference to our troops, "who serve on my behalf" a few weeks ago. "My"???
Those are great comments, AOW.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that there is a kind of collectivism evident in "my sons''. And, the chameleon collectivist quality of "my Muslim faith" is also evident.
Of course he would never show this kind of "empathy" for Christianity or Americans at large.