Oh wow, this article is so Shakespearean! Remember the “Julius Caesar” speech by Mark Anthony: “friends, Romans, countrymen”! That was hilarious irony, and actor Charleton Heston was wonderful doing it in the 50s-60s era movie “Julius Caesar”! I think the next line was: “I came not to praise Caesar but to bury him”, then he proceeded to do exactly that, to praise him, and turned the sentiment of the Roman people against Brutus!
The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious: So are they all, all honorable men, — Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, —
For Brutus is an honorable man.
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
Et tu Brutus! :~)
Yes, I had eerily similar feeling reading it. The article was simultaneously fawning to Obama in tone and dripping with poison of deep irony in substance.
And let's not forget another classic line from the same play, for we seem to be fast approaching it:
Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.
Something that's currently better known as Wag the Dog strategy, courtesy of [recently reformed and converted to conservative thinking] David Mamet.