Today We Are Gathered … To Hear More About Me (Obama the Narcissist)

Slate ^ | December 21, 2012 | Emily Yoffe

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Someone needs to tell Barack Obama—it must get particularly confusing this time of year—that 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 Obama’s 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. It’s the kind of material any eulogist could use to give a moving sense of the man and his accomplishment. But President Barack Obama’s remarks at Inouye’s funeral service were a bizarre twirl around his own personal Kodak carousel.

Obama likes to see events through the lens of his own life’s chronology. Thus we learn that Inouye was elected to the Senate when Obama was 2 years old. Now you could make this relevant by describing how Inouye worked to send federal dollars (you don’t have to call it “pork” at a funeral) to transform Hawaii’s roads and schools, for example, so that the Hawaii Obama grew up in had the kind of facilities people on the mainland had long taken for granted. But no, we simply learn that Inouye was Obama’s senator until he left the state to go to college—something apparently more momentous than anything Inouye did during his decades in office.

[MasterGunner01]

And we all should give a care because? Go pound sand, you bloody wanker Obummer.

[supremedoctrine]

I’m glad I read through this to the end, because the writer gets around to mentioning that Obama kept referring to him
as “Danny”, which made me positively YELP with pain when I heard it, and yelled to my wife in the kitchen, “NO! He just called him “Danny!”, just like he referred to Gabriel Giffords as “Gabby”, and worst of all, Neil Armstrong as
“Neil”-—not so much as if he were good buddies with all of them for a very long time,(NOBODY would accept that) but as a way of expropriating anyone else’s legitimate familiarity with these individuals
and suggest that he “got there first”, or was at least right alongside them. See, he’s Obama, the vehicle through which
we can channel our collective respect, just as he slyly back-channels respect for him through us.
The rancid depths of his insincerity are positively bottomless.
But, it was good to see, at least someone at SLATE gets it,
albeit waaaaaayy too late.

[rockinqsranch]

Good post.

[dagogo redux]

I must confess, I have a real weakness for listening to Obama talk about himself. Life’s far too short to bother spending time doing much of anything else, IMO.

I caught a few words of his about four years ago, and I was hooked. I just knew at that moment - like it was love at first sight, more powerful than the most hopeless, hormonally-driven crush of a teenage girl - no, more like an epiphany, a shattering religious conversion experience that brought me to my knees and left me consumed with an all-encompassing, burning hunger, a deep longing, a poignant yearning, to hear more.

I know in my heart that I simply MUST listen to him at least one more time again in this life. Maybe during his farewell address, if I’m lucky . . .

[Cvengr]

Inouye worked to send federal dollars (you don’t have to call it “pork” at a funeral) to transform Hawaii’s roads and schools...

Why wouldn't the US build interstate highways in Hawaii? Don't they build them in all the other states? /s

[xrmusn]

Why wouldn’t the US build interstate highways in Hawaii? Don’t they build them in all the other states? /
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
They had a problem with the bridge.
They consulted all the great engineers of the world and finally called on a genie who conveniently popped out of a bottle, leading off with the requisite ‘3 wishes granted’
the 3rd being “I want a bridge from here to Hawaii, as I am afraid to fly and get seasick”
The genie went on to explain what an engineering disaster it would bring and the mere impossibility of such a venture.
“Try something else”.
“OK, tell me about pResident BO’s childhood and early life through college”.
The genie thought for a moment and said “About that bridge did you want 4 or 6 lanes”?

[supremedoctrine]

Thanks.I worked on it for a good two minutes/ I post a lot
and it’s surprising that kinds of things,and the spontaneous turns of phrase that can come up
when you focus, and when you love Obama as much as I do.