That is the headline of this entertaining, and accurate, assessment of Obama’s Ireland visit by James Delingpole, “O’Bama? Ph, Puh-lease!“. Many of us saw his visit there as overblown, but only someone in the UK could pull this off:
Ah Bejaysus and Begorrah! Oi’ll be swearin’ boi the auld shrine to the Vorgin with the shamrocks growin’ round it next to the hill where Cuchullain slew the Great Leprechaun of Kildare on St Patrick’s Day that Barack Seamus O’Toole Flaherty Joyce O’Bama is the most Irish US president that ever set foot on the Emerald Oisle, so he is, so he is.Except, when he’s in Africa, of course, when he disappears into the dry ice and re-emerges with a grass skirt and a bone through his nose and declares himself to be Mandingo, Prince of the Bloodline of the Bonga People, Drinker of Cattle Urine, Father of A Thousand Warrior Sons, Keeper of King Solomon’s Mines, Barehanded Slayer of Lions, Undaunted Victim of the Evil Colonial British Empire.
[...]
Tony Blair used to do this trick too, his accent mutating from broad Glaswegian to genteel Edinburgh to Mummerset to Estuary to Richard E Grant to Sarf London Grime – often in the course of one Downing Street reception – the better to persuade his target audience that he was their kind of guy. And it is, of course, the hallmark of an unutterable charlatan.
I’ve argued before that Tony Blair and Barack Obama have an awful lot in common. Both are lawyers; both are snake-oil-salesman; both claim to be post-partisan, and Third Way and consensual; both play the acceptable, moderate-seeming public face of a regime chock full of Communists, class warriors, single issue rabble rousers, malcontents, communitarians and eco-loons hell bent on destroying every last vestige of what once made their country great. And both do (or did) the things dodgy political leaders always do when the going gets tough at home and their domestic audience finally wises up to how totally useless they are: they hop on the plane and pose as international statesman instead.
No kidding. Is it any surprise that Obama went abroad given the very, very brief bump in his poll numbers, and the continued Spring of Discontent in this country? I am only surprised he didn’t go to the West Bank after his disastrous speech about Israel.
Perhaps he knew that Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was going to be better received than Obama’s was from the State Department. And that Netanyahu would get more standing ovations than Obama did for his State of the Union address. Ahem. Perhaps that is why he felt compelled to get the hell out of Dodge and to get some of that adoration he thrives on so much…
It is all about the spin, isn’t it? Like the spin the MSM is putting on the special election up in NY State. They are making it sound like the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, won by a landslide, and that it is a HUGE referendum on The Republicans’ position on Medicare.
There are two problems with this logic: 1. Hochul had all of 4% more votes than the Republican, Jane Corwin; and 2. the alleged Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, siphoned off 9% of the votes. Do the math.
And about Davis, I think it is safe to say that Davis, who has run a number of times as a Democrat in that region, was a spoiler, and a successful one at that.
The major spin here, though, as Dana Perino pointed out, is that The DEMOCRATS cut $500 million to Medicare in the DEMOCRATIC passage of Obamacare. How is it that they are now going to be the ones to save it from those evil Republicans? Good grief.
It is clear, though, that this is how the MSM is going to spin it – it is the primary headline for a number of outlets. Wow.
This kind of hoodwinking and bamboozling seems to be the stock and trade these days, and is certainly a hallmark of Obama’s. Along those lines, I will leave the conclusion to Mr. Delingpole, who sums up Obama’s trip to the UK, and his presidency in general, beautifully:
[snip] Obama can’t stand Britain (his wife likes us even less): he made that clear enough when he sent back Winston Churchill’s bust and dissed our Prime Minister with those dodgy DVDS. He blames us for what happened to his grandfather during Mau Mau. He doesn’t believe in the Special Relationship. Are we honestly supposed to believe in that during the subsequent year in office, Obama has since acquired such wisdom and insight that he suddenly realises how special we are?Of course he hasn’t. Obama is just doing now what all bullies and losers start doing when they realise how unpopular they are and that everyone is abandoning them. They suck up to anybody and everybody. They whore themselves piteously before enemies they once considered beneath their contempt. Fain will they fill their bellies with husks that swine eat – but which no man will give them: and serve them jolly well right, too!
By all means let us enjoy watching Obama smarm and grovel and ingratiate himself like seome presidential Uriah Heep. But for heaven’s sake let us never give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a cold fish and would certainly never show any mercy towards us were the roles to be reversed.
Amen to that…
