Barack Obama is obviously in distress and he should be. A majority of the country seem to think he is doing a poor job as president and I strongly suspect a greater number actually believe this is so and don’t want to admit it to themselves and others.
How could it be otherwise? Modern liberalism – the ideology Obama exemplifies – relies on two reactionary pillars: the welfare state, which is currently bankrupting economies world wide, and identity politics, which is inherently racist. The former is unsustainable and the latter breeds hatred and division. If I were in his shoes, I’d be depressed too. I might even be looking inwards for a solution or real change.
Obama, unfortunately, has instead chosen to kill the messenger who brought some of the bad news. In a speech at Virginia’s Hampton University Sunday he has attacked the iPod and iPad – devices on which you can listen to Mozart and read Tolstoy – as the source of our problems.
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.
He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
Let’s leave aside the little lie here – you can “know how to work” an iPod and and iPad literally by turning them on and Obama is a known Blackberry user in the first place – and examine the disinformation cum self-pity inherent in his statement. Yes, “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” but they can be more easily debunked than ever before. Of considerably more significance, in depth information on all issues of public policy are more quickly accessible to the average citizen than ever in history.
Take only one example, which will be of importance in the coming weeks. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman (alas) are moving forward with some new version of cap-and-trade legislation. The enemy of this proposal is knowledge, now accessible to all on the Internet. We can find out details, actual facts, on the science of global warming, or what purports to be the science, in minutes and begin to analyze those facts for ourselves. The iPad is just another device that makes this easy.
Obama, however, comes from a top-down, hierarchical political tradition where elites make policy for the common people, while pretending to themselves they are doing it for the benefit of the downtrodden. No wonder he is threatened by information technology, except where it can be turned to his advantage (as in fund-raising for his recent campaign).
Obama gives himself away when he says of these devices “information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.” Emancipation for what or for whom? No doubt he wouldn’t approve of people organizing for the growing Tea Party movement on their iPads. That would be a “distraction” or a “diversion,” whereas organizing for government healthcare would be emancipating. I guess it depends on whose ox is gored.
It is also interesting that Obama chose to make his statements at a black university. Perhaps he secretly fears that the students may be accessing the works of Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell and Joe Hicks on their iPads. That would be even worse than improving their vocabularies playing Scrabble or studying the piano.
I have repeatedly warned that Barack Obama will not “grow” while in office. He’s too far behind the curve. The man has never done any serious reading and lacks the ability to think and follow a logical argument. We must focus on marginalizing him.
I wonder how long Steve Jobs will stand for being dissed by the leader of the party he stood behind?
What’s that that Edgar Brofman, Jr. said the other day: “‘No-one’s gotten very rich betting against Steve Jobs,’”?
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/no-ones-gotten-very-rich-betting-against-steve-jobs-says-warner-music-boss-2010-5#ixzz0nSRLbKoY .
Whatever one thinks of the iPad, the iPhone/iPad/iPod complex is the wave of the future. The waves that follow will only get bigger. How exquisitely righteous: a new-age capitalist will be agent of the destruction of the old liberalism.
Go back two years to another college speech, this one given by Michelle Obama at UCLA when she said “Barack Obama will require you to work.” It goes hand-in-hand with Obama’s statement on Saturday at Hampton, and goes to what the Obamas and their key advisers thought would happen with the youth vote both because of and in the aftermath of the 2008 election.
Obama & Co. thought that because he got a large turnout of young voters in 2008, those same college-age and just-out-of college voters would be at his beck and call forever, and they would robotically do his bidding, like some sort of local SEIU chapter on speed-dial, if he called them out to protest for passage of national health care, or to counter-protest against the Tea Parties, or just for a good photo-op whenever he showed up to deliver another speech. They were supposed to be his to command, in a softer-yet-still-really-creepy echo of what another world leader thought the youth would do for him 75 years ago.
But young people haven’t seen much of all that Hope and Change stuff they were promised, and — being young people — have better things to do with their time than await marching orders from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In Obama’s mind video games and other electronic gadgets are taking college-age voters attention away from what’s really important, which is helping Barack Obama control the narrative and pass his agenda. That’s why he’s railing against Xboxes, PlayStations and iPads, because they’re seen as the enemy to the administration’s control of the narrative among young voters, in the same way they see talk radio, blogs, conservative publications and Fox News as the enemy of controlling the narrative among older voters.
Concerning political commentary, truer words have never been spoken than:
Obama has been incredibly successful in my book. Obama is the consummate mandated compassion proponent and creator of hate and division.
I don’t remember a time in my life of 50 years America more bankrupt or more divided. Let’s give the man his due!
Yes! I agree, and I miss James Earl Carter Jr. more and more.
Every dictator throughout the 20th century, and every totalitarian government (dictatorship by committee), acted to profoundly limit information dissemination to the masses. North Korea, at present, has only one radio station. “State” radio. If you buy a radio in a shop, it only receives one station. The ability to receive other radio channels is an offense punishable by internment in the gulag.
Obama is staying true to his Stalinist form. And he would object to my making that ‘crazy’ characterization. In fact, he’d oppress me into being UNABLE to publicly make it.
1. So much for Obama’s vaunted appeal to the youth of America. He can’t work these basic devices? Even Betty White figured out Facebook. Gee, to be an old fogie at such a young age. That quote should be played over & over. It certainly would if it were Bushitler.
2. Didn’t he give Queen Elizabeth his speeches on an iPod or something like that? I didn’t think the choice of gift could look any worse than it did at the time but…
He’s lying. Obama is no less tech-savvy than the average American (believe me, average Americans are plenty savvy, or there would not be the appetite for gadgets every time a new technology pops up). But Obama believes the average American is ignorant, if not outright stupid, and easily swayed by whatever he says. That bit about iPads and iPhones is all part of his phoney “I’m one of the people” shtick. The contempt is simply infuriating, and that’s why the man is in trouble.
In short: Know your place, serf.
You are completely correct Mr. Simon, Obama, and the greater left, fear the fracturing of the “top down model”.
The whole of liberalism seems to have become a series of rules. They are the ones that decide what you can: eat, drive, drink, smoke, shoot, use for medical treatment, and now read.
This is all precepted on the idea that the common person cannot run their lives well enough. That they need government help and regulation in every little detail. Whether it’s for their own good or for the “greater” good, the message is “Shut up and do what your betters tell you to do.”
What Barry and the Liberals want is a modern equivalent for keeping ‘em “Barefoot, Pregnant, and Scared”. In other words under control.
Religion (substitute ipods, ipads, xboxes, playstations) are the opiate of the masses.
Change are to is.
The Minority Quota president is a slacker in the math department and calculus does not lie. The Internet (invented by FORTRAN mathematicians) is very democratic as it has made knowledge universally available. Now Obama (there is evidence that Obama does not know how to do math) wants to dumb-down research skills by issuing FTC restrictions on internet usage which in effect would amount to socializing the WWW for everyone concerned. Maybe if everyone just ignored this fool he would go away.
His math inability must explain why he has so much trouble with History – it’s those pesky numbers that delineate time.
Ignoring what Obama was is what got us into this mess. It is very, very dangerous to ignore someone like him, hoping he’ll go away. He’ll never go away, and he’ll continue to do as much damage as he can, until we force him out (for the liberals in the audience, this means voting his cohorts out in November, and himself out in 2012).
The community organizer only likes sunshine when he is controlling the light.
And now that the sun isn’t global warmin’ enuffz for his all seein’, all knowin’ all bowin’ self, he wants to ‘reign’ on our parade. It’s not that the sun is any less bright, it’s that Michelle keeps moonin’ him and blockin’ out da sun. Ouch?
I watched this speech and was stunned to hear him dredge up a story after story about American racism. Whether discussing the origins of Hampton, or the legacy of a recently passed Dorothy Height who, in the 1920s, fought to be admitted into University, rather than discussing these stories as American triumphs, they were portrayed as examples of the ongoing racism incipient in America. This brittle man poisons America daily with his anti-American race-mongering and his antidiluvian mindset. I felt bad for those students listening to him – the speech cloaked itself in the now tiresome cadences of Obama’s Hope-N-Change platitudes, but came off as a backward looking litany of grievance mongering and complaints about the very process that elevated him: Democracy and Free Speech in the Free Republic of America. He is, without doubt, the most heinous, incompetent, and bitter man that has ever been elevated to this position, and proves himself unworthy of the post in nearly every word uttered and every action taken.
I wonder how long it will be before that source of information that is “distracting” called the Drudge Report which is a conduit for quick dissemination of all sorts of “crazy claims” is subjected to some new “neutrality” or “fairness doctrine” type of legislation? I’ll bet the Administration doesn’t worry about what the NT Times is disseminating.
This comment will 1. never be published, 2. be published and used as an example of how messed up the left is and then I will be banned. In fact, you people are racist and this comes from a white women born before most of you learned to spell ( actually, from the placards you carry, most of you STILL don’t know how to spell. Get over your sorry little selves and go volunteer for those less fortunate than some of you may be.I am thrilled to have President Obama as my Head of State and still shudder at the thought of those bellicose misguided men that tried to destroy my country for eight years.
Some of us were born in countries that were turned into sh*tholes by the same policies being peddled by 0bama. In fact, some of these very countries are trying to ABANDON their Socialist or social-democratic past, and people there ask me why the USA is now embracing the policies that they themselves are abandoning.
At the rate 0bama is going, he is not just making Bush 43 look good, but he may actually end up making Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan look good.
“You people are racist”
*Yawn*
Susan claimed:
In fact, you people are racist . . .
Racism is a crude form of collectivism that consists of impugning a man’s character or attacking the validity of his ideas and arguments based on his membership in a race. Logically, it is the fallacy of ad hominem.
If someone asserted, “Obama is a black man, therefore he must be immoral“ or: “Obama is a black man, therefore his argument in favor of a government takeover of healthcare is invalid“ — that would be an example of racism.
But where on earth in these comments — or in anything Roger or any other member of Pajamas Media has written — do you see any evidence of such an argument being made? Where is the evidence that any of us have such an attitude?
The majority of the American people now want “Obamacare” repealed. The notion that this majority opposing Obama is racist is refuted by the facts:
1) Obama got elected.
2) Obama took office with a 65% approval rating.
3) Obama was just as black then as he is now.
The fact of the matter is that the American people gave Obama the benefit of the doubt — they believed him when he promised in a Presidential debate that “every dollar of new spending must be balanced by cutting a dollar of old spending” — they believed him when he promised transparency and an end to special deals for special interests — they believed him when he promised that his healthcare reform bill would not include a mandate forcing people to buy government-approved insurance.
The opposition to Obama surged only after it became obvious that all of this was a lie — only after it became clear that Obama was nothing but a power-lusting leftist hell-bent on looting the American taxpayers and extinguishing individual liberty for the sake of expanding government power over our lives. THAT’s when the majority turned against this dissembling and duplicitous statist.
The accusation that we are racist is simply a symptom of your own intellectual bankruptcy — it’s a confession that you have no actual arguments to offer to justify what Obama is doing and instead must resort to lame fallacies like ad hominem.
Susan,
Here are a few things you might want to consider:
Two of your predictions have evidently failed. Do you consider this evidence of fallibility on your part, and accept that other opinions you may hold may also be in error?
“You people are racist” simply drips irony, doesn’t it. Isn’t the very soul of racism the act of collectively ascribing negative qualities to an entire class of people?
I see you take issue with conservatives’ spelling ability. I applaud this. I certainly believe that good command of the English language is essential for communications. I’m glad you agree. Can I assume, then, that at least as regards the issue of English, you are fully in the conservative camp and support such things as English being our national language? Or do you believe we should be “tolerant” of people who use English to varying degrees of less than perfect acumen, or, heaven forbid, not at all? If so, that would make you one of those nasty, horrible people who employ radically different sets of standards for different people based on your political mood, would it not?
Sadly, I do note several grammatical errors in your post, but being of better nature than yourself I shall not make the error of assuming that these somehow impugn the intellect of all liberal-kind. Separate sentences with a period and two spaces, please.
And what about the men that tried to destroy your country? Which men would that be? Those that set up the Fannie-Mae Freddie-Mac scenario that primed the fuse on the sub-prime mortgage bomb? That would be people like Barnie Frank, dear.
First of all, Susan, you must feel foolish by predicting that your comment would not be published, and that you would be banned, since the moderators obviously have not cooperated with your desire to be a victim. Over the years, I have run into a nauseatingly large number of well-meaning white people who think they are showing everybody how caring and non-racist they are by pointing the “racism” stick at all criticism of some black people, no matter how justified some of it might be. This kind of attitude excuses the race-baiting excesses of an Al Sharpton, the criminal behavior of a William Jefferson or a Charles Rangel, and the monomaniacal grab for power of a Barack Obama. If Barack Obama were a white man (and he is half, you know), would you still be so enthusiastic about the insurance mandate, the looming high taxes, the nationalization of ever-larger swaths of the economy? What excuse would you use then, to castigate people like us who object to all that?
So. Racism? Right back atcha, honey.
“…this comes from a white women born before most of you learned to spell ( actually, from the placards you carry, most of you STILL don’t know how to spell.”
Proving once again that it is imposssible to correct spelling and grammar on the internet without making a mistakes.
The quickest way to try and kill dissent is to repeat something that will not allow for dissent. Repeat, “You’re a racist!” enough times and the dissenters will shut up because they don’t want to be branded as a racist. Unfortunately, the dissenters have a powerful tool. It’s called “reality”. I believe the commenters (sic) here have aptly used this tool against you, Susan. Calling people racists without proof is not going to help the Left, which is probably why the Left wants to regulate the internet so badly.
Now come on, Mr. Simon, not everything he says is untrue. You have quoted one of the gems of his wisdom above: “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction.”
If you are honest you have to admit that’s true. After all, the idea that that empty suit was ever qualified to be President of the United States was crazy but it gained enough traction to put him there.
What Obama still enjoys the allegiance of a sycophantic media establishment (no matter how badly he and his press secretary treats them) fewer and fewer people are reading these outlets any more, and many of those who do have less trust in them than ever before. The failure to fully vet Obama during the election means the media has failed in its primary function of providing information, not propaganda. Users of new technology could find this out for themselves before the election, and more are seeking it out now. It’s increasingly impossible to spin out of the messes he creates.
Obama isn’t really upset at the technological change at hand, but rather at how technology makes it impossible to control the message.
Well said, Roger.
I have another point about this speech to make that I haven’t seen fully addressed yet.
Imagine that you are a businessman or a CEO, or even a rank-and-file employee, and the President of the U.S. is blaming society’s problems on your products!
I can say that I wouldn’t take it too kindly. He did it to the city of Las Vegas a few months ago, too.
George Bush senior caught flak from farmers just for saying that he didn’t like broccoli. These companies should call Obama out on this.
“…reactionary pillars…”
Nice to see the word “reactionary,” so automatically associated with the right, linked to the left.
Obama’s complaint should encourage us. It is suicidally directed against what remains of the most powerful part of his “base” –liberal industrialists in the infotainment world. They will see that he wants to control their products and services, and they won’t be happy about that. Hardly a breakthrough admission (his agenda and temperament have been clear to most of us for a long time) but a telling one that adds to the very long list. His complaint also reveals his appalling lack of self-knowledge. His words show him to be obsessed with controlling how others think and act, frustrated when they won’t do his bidding, and always ready to revert to self-pity and anger. As somebody above said, “brittle.” He is under enormous stress and it shows. Faster, please.
Hi Susan,
As you can see, your post has been published and there is no indication that you have been banned. It is also unclear in what sense your post should be construed as a qualitative indictment of the liberal Left. It does, however, suggest that you are superior, thin-skinned, and paranoid. To the extent that those qualities describe Leftists, perhaps you should be congratulated for your perspicacity.
The four industries that provided the most support for Obama: Trial Lawyers; Entertainment; Wall Street (specifically Goldman Sachs) and Silicon Valley. Watching this guy operate is reminiscent of the French Revolution — the guillotine fell on Robspierre and his friends after it fell on his enemies. The good news is that he is working hard to alienate everyone who supported him.
I can’t wait for this noble experiment to end…..
Obama is president of a third-world community colonized by socialism: American liberal arts academia and the American intelligensia. Of course he can’t work these new-fangled devices designed in California and manufactured in China.
He is correct that iPods with Mozart and iPads with Locke, Mill, and Hobbes will distract students from “empowerment.”
Yes some of the “craziest claims can quickly gain traction”
Such as the completely debunked claim that tea partiers hurled racial slurs at members of the CBC.
I think it was that irresponsible blogger named “McClatchy” who was responsible for that one. We need to regulate McClatchy.
You know, President Obama has to be a little frightened when more people approve of the job Steve Jobs is doing as Apple CEO than approve of his Presidency!
D
(Proudly typed on my iPad … Go Steve!)
@ 14 Susan,
You may know how to spell, but you don’t know when to close a parenthetical phrase. Your arrogance is typical of the “intellectual” Left. Get over yourself.
BHO’s presidency reminds me of a couple of book titles: Eats, shoots and leaves (hole in foot, one termer); Will the boat sink the water (seems the answer is yes).
“some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” -like “climate change”?
Barry: Get off your crackberry and Start listening to real Americans. We hate the change to Socialism: You’re fired!
Mr. Obama has officially jumped the shark.
Yes, some of the “craziest claims” can now quickly “claim traction,” like the idea that the health reform bill is actually going to make our budget situation worse, that the stimulus hasn’t really saved or created close to two million jobs, and that all those people with their tea bags out protesting trillion-dollar-a-year deficits as far as the eye can see aren’t really dangerous domestic extremists who threaten the very fabric of our society. Such crazy distractions!
Watching Mr. Obama continue to channel Mayor Daley is really quite amusing. Mr. Obama really does need to learn that America is larger than Chicago!
That said, I believe Mr. Obama is quite sincere in claiming not to know how to work an Ipod, Ipads. Xboxes and Playstations. It is his claim to know how to work a Blackberry or PC I would dispute. Does anyone think that someone who is as proud of his ignorance as Mr. Obama clearly is would not indeed be quite ignorant? ^o^
The worse thing for the pigs running the Animal Farm was the invention of the internet. With the internet, the other animals were able to read and analyze facts on the outside world and many began to realize that what their elite pigs were telling them was not only false, but in many cases was downright made up. They began to use this information to educate other animals on the farm and to challenge the belief that all animals are created equal because some of the animals were treating themselves are the betters of the animals they purported to be serving.
What? That didn’t happen in Animal Farm? You mean to tell me that the pigs actually succeeded in transforming common falsehoods into truths and truths into falsehoods? Well, it would’ve been nice if my version was the accepted ending to Animal Farm.
In then end, it matters not whether your betters are black, white, or green with polka dots, as long as they believe themselves to be doing things for the “common good” they don’t want you to question them or to seek out information. If you seek out information you already begin to know way more than your betters even know.
But I thought the One was the guy who refused to give up his personal Blackberry in spite of the increased security/hacking threat…
Hi,what a beautiful ipad,thanks for sharing.I will get one like that.bill