“self-indulgent, anachronistic and adolescent?”
Aren’t those words appropriate descriptions of anything to do with Maobama?
Compare the occasion of Obama’s gratuitous speech with the events that compelled Kennedy and Reagan to address the German people.
Kennedy’s Ich Bin ein Berliner speech was made just months after the Khruschev’s ratcheting up of the cold war when he ordered the construction of the wall. Reagan’s demand that Gorbechev to “tear down this wall” was made as the mounting economic weakness of the USSR and East Germany was bringing about an end to Communist domination of East Europe.
Obama’s Berlin speeches were gratuitous. To Berliners, he must have seemed like an old wino babbling on a street corner.