Actually, I Think He's More Like M*A*S*H's Capt. Tuttle

“Listen, kid, we’re all in it together.”

— Robert DeNiro as Harry Tuttle in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil, in a line that became a catchphrase from the film’s dystopian socialistic world.

“But we’re not going to be able to do it when we’re pitted against each other. And I’m actually confident that once we get through some of the political posturing and shenanigans that we’ve been seeing over the last several years, people are going to step back and say, you know what, the lesson we needed to learn out of hardship is, we’re all in this thing together. We are all in this thing together.”

— Barack Obama, at the start of the month, speaking to his supporters at the AFL-CIO Executive Council, uttering a phrase that’s quoted in the headline of the MSNBC piece currently linked to by Drudge.

Curiously though, for a president sold to the American public as being post-racial and post-partisan, who says “we’re not going to be able to do it when we’re pitted against each other,” President Obama “tells NBC News he ignored Glenn Beck’s ‘Restoring Honor’ rally on the National Mall,” MSNBC-owned Breaking News reports.

Which, while illustrating the president’s customary hauteur and aloofness, isn’t entirely true, of course. Presumably the president signed off, at least verbally, on Arne Duncan, his Secretary of Education, speaking at Al Sharpton’s counter-protest next door yesterday.

So much for putting behind political posturing and shenanigans.