Obama gets transparency award on hope for potential transparency
Well, here’s another Obama first, ladies and gents. Like the Peace Prize awarded on the wings of hope in Obama’s ethereal glow, now various open-government organizations have given the One an award for — hold your breath and count slowly to ten — hoped for “transparency.” A mere week after the most transparent administration in the history of the world was trying to explain why a Biden advance team would confine a lone reporter to a storage room to keep him from mingling with Party fat-cats in Florida, the glorious bastion of open-government moguls decide to preemptively award President Obama with the “transparency” award.
But that’s not the juiciest bit of this. The award was supposed to be given at a public ceremony at the White House with press pool and photographers, but the president decided to cancel all that “transparency” and go with a closed-door, private meeting without a single member of the press in attendance to receive his “transparency” award.
Politico has the whole story here.
Steve Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, gave Politico the best quote:
“And in that sense, one could say it resembles the award at the Nobel Peace Prize,” Aftergood said. “It’s not because Obama brought peace to anyone but because people hoped he would be a force for good in the world, and maybe that’s the way to understand this award.”
So, here’s the Obama Standard applied in little Johnny’s world: Darling Johnny, following the example set by the President of the U.S., we’re not going to wait for you to learn your lessons or take your tests before giving you your report card. You look so swell, talk so brightly and sit up so straight and tall at your desk. So, we’re putting all our hope in you and giving you all A’s right this minute in the hope that you’ll be so overjoyed that you’ll actually earn them at some point in the future.
Then, we can apply the Obama Standard to earning salaries and give glowing book reviews before the books are written. Hope is such an amazing thing, isn’t it?
What a load of poppycock. The world has gone nuts.
Somewhere, Orwell is standing with his mouth agape.
Ah, yes, the Transparency award presented in a closed meeting … how fitting.
Dare we hope the award was a tongue-in-check gesture, one that says, “Mr. O, you’re so transparent we can see right through you?”
Since Obie’s still polling in the 40% range, I’m guessing the answer is, “not so much.”
In related news, after Manager Clint Hurdle’s fiery pep talk during the last day of Spring Training, the Pittsburgh Pirates were granted the World Series trophy after 17 years of losing seasons. Congrats, all!