{"id":16942,"date":"2012-09-16T00:06:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T05:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16942"},"modified":"2012-09-15T12:22:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:22:36","slug":"benghazi-was-a-symptom-of-a-deeper-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/16\/benghazi-was-a-symptom-of-a-deeper-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Benghazi was a symptom of a deeper problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Steyn<\/a> almost forgets the humour in this week’s column:<\/p>\n

So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that\u2019s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.<\/p>\n

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming \u201cWe love you,\u201d too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.<\/p>\n

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: \u201cAnd obviously our hearts are broken…\u201d Yeah, it\u2019s totally obvious.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that\u2019s too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he\u2019s the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he\u2019s the greatest orator of his generation, so he\u2019s thought about what he\u2019s going to say, and it takes a few moments but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there\u2019s complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

But no, that would be an utterly fantastical America. In the real America, the president is too busy to attend the security briefing on the morning after a national debacle, but he does have time to do Letterman and appear on a hip-hop radio show hosted by \u201cThe Pimp with a Limp.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Steyn almost forgets the humour in this week’s column: So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that\u2019s too pat, too neat in its symbolic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,8,28,53,13],"tags":[158,432,760,687,101],"class_list":["post-16942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-bureaucracy","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-diplomacy","tag-lasvegas","tag-libya","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4pg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16945,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16942\/revisions\/16945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}