The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘He Would Fain Have Had It’

Posted on | March 1, 2013 | 35 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

“I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither, ’twas one of these coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once — but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again, then he put it by again — but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time. He put it the third time by. And still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar — for he swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.”
– Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2

“President Obama sometimes feels strangely compelled to indicate that he is not the Master of America.”
– James Poulos, Forbes

We have come to expect these protestations of helpless impotence when Dear Leader does not get his way:

“Jessica, I am not a dictator, I’m the president,” he said while speaking to reporters in the White House Press Briefing Room. “Ultimately, if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say we need to go to catch a plane, I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway.”

The stenography pool known as the White House press corps is busy chiseling his immortal words into stone, even as Obama offends sci-fi fans by confusing the Vulcan mind-meld (Star Trek) with “Jedi mind tricks” (Star Wars). But of course, his apologists would plead Obama’s underprivileged Indonesian upbringing as an excuse.

Did I mention he once ate a dog?

This is how it is with a Cult of Personality: Everything must always be interpreted in favor of Dear Leader. His exotic background — the subject of his best-selling memoir, Dreams From My Father — can only be praised and celebrated. One is not allowed to interpret the same set of facts as potential evidence that Dear Leader is out of touch with the people he presumes to lead. Any such interpretation is raaaaacist, as is just about any other imaginable criticism of Dear Leader.

This week, Bob Woodward accidentally joined the hate-mob, and if he doesn’t straighten up, he might get listed on the SPLC map right next to the Family Research Council.

When Obama succeeds (and these are always political successes), his press-corps fanboys praise him as transcendent Lightworker — omniscient, super-human, his powers beyond the capacity of mere words to describe — but when Obama fails (and these are always policy failures) his media hagiographers attribute this to the infinite evil of his enemies. And on those rare occasions when Obama’s policy failures are also political failures, as with the allegedly cataclysmic “sequester” cuts that don’t really bother anyone, his journalistic idolators erupt in a fury of confusion.

“And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.”

 

 

UPDATE (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

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Category: Barack Obama

Comments

  • jakee308

    Methinks he doth protest too much.

  • JeffS

    $20 street walkers have more integrity than the vast majority of “journalists” these days.

  • http://twitter.com/BeccaJLower Becca Lower

    #ObamaAteDog just never gets old. ;)

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Looks like that blue guy in Watchmen

  • http://opinion.ak4mc.us/ McGehee

    You should be spelling that journolist.

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  • M. Thompson

    So why the heck couldn’t this have broken six months ago?

    Oh, yeah, it would have interrupted his re-coronation.

  • M. Thompson

    At least you know what you’re getting (or diseases) with them.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    …and we all knoweth what happened to old Julius…

  • http://www.facebook.com/threedonia Hail Hail Threedonia

    He is our Impotentate

  • xbox361

    Gaius Julius Caesar didn’t have the Joe Biden life insurance policy

  • elkh1

    Poor Woodward, watch out for the drones.

  • xbox361

    Yond Cassius Obama has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

  • Anil Petra

    He’s a humiliated laughing stock.

    Unwilling to work with others, he took tax increases, then failed to give back spending cuts. He won’t be trusted again, he’s shot any good will he had.

    Lame duck, weak, meek and effete.

  • Mmmm Dog

    Didn’t he eat two dogs? (Or have dog to eat on two occasions?) I can understand that perhaps somehow there was a very strange chain of events that led to eating dog on one occasion. We all only live once, even my pet dog. But twice? Perhaps he knows how to cook it just right.

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  • ss396

    I’ve long advocated that the proper response to an Obama speech is derisive laughter.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jennifer.melton.9638 Jennifer Melton

    Past is prologue.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Let’s just say Barry shouldn’t go knocking on the door at Blair House.

  • http://twitter.com/JohnPSquibob John P. Squibob

    “Did I mention he once ate a dog?”

    Not often enough R.S., not often enough.

  • section9

    Oh please, for a fictional comic book personality, Dr. Manhattan had character. Obama? Meh….

  • section9

    You can’t put on a condom when you are listening to a journalist.

  • sablegsd

    I would add finger pointing.

  • JeffS

    True dat!

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    Sing it, girlfriend! http://tinyurl.com/d2x9gqo

  • http://www.facebook.com/jeff.nuding Jeff Nuding

    Bravo, astute, with Shakespeare no less

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Heh.

  • http://twitter.com/BeccaJLower Becca Lower

    Oh goodness gracious, Richard! heehee

  • comatus

    ‘Twas Austrian to me.

  • Red_Right_Returning

    I think you mean the Naval Observatory.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Wait, I found the original…

    Slublog’s Dr. Obama

  • Dick Beninya

    BO is an empty suit.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    On several previous occasions, Obama has taken pains to point out he isn’t “king” or “emperor.” He once wistfully imagined how much easier it would be to be President of China. This isn’t an aberration, it’s a habit.

    The Julius Caesar passage is perfect.

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