Posted on 12/22/2012 7:09:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Barack Obama flew to Hawaii this week after fiscal-cliff negotiations stalled, in part for a Christmas vacation, and in part to attend the memorial service for the late Senator Daniel Inouye. Obama offered a eulogy for Inouye, which usually means offering insights into the deceased’s life and character. Instead, as is Obama’s wont, he talked more about himself than the man whose life was supposed to be the center of attention.
Even Slate noticed the problem, and blasted Obama for his narcissistic streak:
Someone needs to tell Barack Obamait must get particularly confusing this time of yearthat his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who served in Congress for half a century representing Obamas birth state of Hawaii.
Inouye was a Japanese-American war hero (he lost an arm in World War II, destroying his dream of becoming a surgeon), and as a senator he served on the Watergate committee, helped rewrite our intelligence charter after scandals, and was chairman of the Senate committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair. Its the kind of material any eulogist could use to give a moving sense of the man and his accomplishment. But President Barack Obamas remarks at Inouyes funeral service were a bizarre twirl around his own personal Kodak carousel.
This comes as no surprise to readers of Hot Air; it was a recurring theme in the Obamateurism series. For that matter, so is Obama’s odd concept of math:
Obama likes to see events through the lens of his own lifes chronology. Thus we learn that Inouye was elected to the Senate when Obama was 2 years old.
Er, that’s not true. Obama was born in August 1961, and Inouye won election to the Senate in November 1962, taking office in January 1963. Obama wasn’t two years old, not even when rounding the numbers; he was one year old when Inouye won his Senate election. (At least this isn’t as bad as Obama’s Selma math.)
Emily Yoffe continues:
Obama acknowledges that as a young person he was unaware of politics, and thus Inouye. But then something important happened that made young Obama pay attention to the first man to be elected to Congress from Hawaii after it joined the union. When Obama was 11 years old he went on vacation with his family, and those paying their respects to Inouye got to hear a long description of this amazing trip, from Seattle to Kansas, from Disneyland to Yellowstone. They heard of the young Obamas happiness whenever the motel had a pool or an ice machine. And finally, as the people must have been twitching in the pews wondering where this was all going, we get back to the late senator.
It turns out the Watergate hearings were taking place at that time, too, and Obamas mother watched them in their various hotel rooms. It surprised young Obama to see that a man of Japanese descent was a senator. Little did most people know that the most important thing to come out of the Watergate hearings was that Obama, with his mixed-race background, saw in Inouye a hint of what might be possible in my own life. That Obama in some way may have been inspired to a political career by a man who overcame prejudice and later became Obamas colleague is a fine point to make. But it is an incidental one to the life being celebrated.
It’s fine to relate personal stories during eulogies, but they should have the deceased as the focal point, not the eulogist. As Yoffe notes, this is a constant theme for Obama, whose speeches contain more self-referential pronouns than any of his predecessors of recent memory. Even the President who earned the monicker “The Big Me,” Bill Clinton, looks positively humble in comparison.
We’ll include this one in the OOTY polls next week, to be sure.
Add? More likely he'll have it re-carved so his is the one and only face on the monument.
As a general rule, any time Democrats accuse Republicans of doing something wrong, it is because they are already doing it themselves.
0bama doesn’t know any other subject than himself.
Even the President who earned the monicker The Big Me, Bill Clinton,
And we'll celebrate Christmas in August...
It is interesting that everytime hussein makes an historical reference to his age, he's always older than that fake bc shows. Even his teahers say he was taller and looked older than he should have been. But nothing to see, move along because he WON.
Nicolai!
There won’t be enough rock on Rushmore to fit those big effing Dumbo Ears of his.
I don’t remember that one. IIRC however, Monica referred to B.J. as “the big he”.
Think of all the extra concrete that will have to be added to make the Great Father twice the size of the rest of the faces...
” There may be a LOT of things he doesn’t really know for sure about himself. “
You mean like who his REAL father is. Stuff like that! He’s probably scared to have his DNA done. The truth might hurt! Shoot, it’s likely his mother didn’t know either.
“There wont be enough rock on Rushmore to fit those big effing Dumbo Ears of his.”
Rock? They are out trying to find a big lump of coal to haul out there and hoist up. “If it ain’t Black, it ain’t Barak”
In St. Louis (North), there’s a building with a large mural of Dear Leader, chin in air, like he’s about to reveal an “S” on his chest. Sickening.
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