{"id":26789,"date":"2014-07-13T10:03:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26789"},"modified":"2014-07-13T10:03:15","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:03:15","slug":"a-handy-rule-of-thumb-when-obama-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/13\/a-handy-rule-of-thumb-when-obama-speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"A handy rule of thumb when Obama speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

From this week’s Goldberg File<\/em> email from Jonah Goldberg:<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve stumbled onto a handy heuristic \u2014 or, if that word makes you want to smash my guitar on the Delta House wall, rule of thumb \u2014 for listening to Obama. Whenever he talks about himself, immediately flip it around so he\u2019s saying the opposite. Think about it. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in photo-ops.\u201d Boom. Translation: \u201cI think photo-ops are really, really important. And that\u2019s why I\u2019m not going to have my picture taken with a bunch kids at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, sometimes, a literal reversal of meaning doesn\u2019t work. But the key is to look at any statement he offers about others as an insight into his own mental state.<\/p>\n

When Obama denounces cynicism, he\u2019s actually being cynical. What he\u2019s doing is expressing his frustration with people who are justifiably cynical about him. Why can\u2019t you people fall for what I am saying!?<\/em><\/p>\n

When he says he doesn\u2019t care about \u201cpolitics,\u201d just problem-solving, what he\u2019s really saying is he wants his political agenda to go unchallenged by other political agendas.<\/p>\n

[…] whenever he says ideology and ideologues are a problem, what he\u2019s actually saying is that competing ideologues and ideologies are the problem. That is, unless, you\u2019re the sort of person who actually thinks Obama isn\u2019t an ideologue, which is just adorable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not so much that he\u2019s lying<\/em>. Though if he were a Game of Thrones<\/em> character, \u201cObama the Deceiver, First of His Name\u201d would be a pretty apt formal title. No, he\u2019s projecting<\/em>. It\u2019s an ego thing. I am fond of pointing out Obama\u2019s insufficiently famous confession, \u201cI actually believe my own bullsh*t<\/a>.\u201d What I like about it is that\u2019s it\u2019s like a verbal Escher drawing. He believes his own b.s. but by calling it b.s. he acknowledges it\u2019s not believable. It\u2019s like sarcastically insisting that you\u2019re being serious. It\u2019s earnest irony or ironic earnestness. If you take the statement too seriously, you could end up like android #1<\/a> in \u201cI, Mudd.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Anyway, I don\u2019t take psychoanalysis, too seriously (\u201cIf you did, what would happen to me?\u201d \u2014 The Couch). But I think Obama\u2019s penchant for deriding his opponents as cynics and opportunists stems from the fact that he sees the world through precisely those sorts of prisms. But he tells himself he\u2019s different because he does it for good purposes and besides, he\u2019s so awesome his b.s. is true. No one knows if God can make a rock so heavy He can\u2019t lift it, but Obama can sling such exquisite b.s. even he can believe. And because he believes it, he can\u2019t tolerate the idea that others don\u2019t. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every President’s public image fades as his term of office runs down. It’s like the law of gravity … yet most of the media are still in love with the glamour of early-term Obama and keep hoping that somehow everyone else will believe hard enough with them that it will come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From this week’s Goldberg File email from Jonah Goldberg: I think I\u2019ve stumbled onto a handy heuristic \u2014 or, if that word makes you want to smash my guitar on the Delta House wall, rule of thumb \u2014 for listening to Obama. Whenever he talks about himself, immediately flip it around so he\u2019s saying the […]<\/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":[28,53,13],"tags":[158,477,213,101],"class_list":["post-26789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-magazines","tag-newspapers","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Y5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26789","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=26789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26790,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26789\/revisions\/26790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}