He's not the Messiah! He's just the President!
I was reading my local paper yesterday and a column by Kathleen Parker (titled "Dueling Messiahs") leaped out to smack me in the eyes. After I managed to focus on it I read it.
The text of it can be found here, proving once again that although my local paper is a New York Times affiliate it can still feed the right-wing talking points.
(So can I, but that's another matter.)
What struck me was Parker asserting first that President Obama was the Messiah. Now that's wrong. Obama's no more a messiah than George Bush was to the thousands of screaming right wing fruitbats who worshiped the ground he walked on (recall the scene from the movie Jesus Camp where kids were encouraged to venerate his likeness). Extremism makes me nervous.
Another point was her assertion that maybe Rush Limbaugh was a Messiah.
I had to laugh. Limbaugh is a guy with a minimal education, a big mouth, a drug addiction and a predilection for taking sex vacations to the Dominican Republic. He's been trying for the past twenty years to be the reincarnation of Father Coughlin, not Jesus.
So Parker's wrong as Rick Santelli on two of the points in her ridiculous column.
The third wrong point is her metaphor of the rocking boat to illustrate the body politic. All of the opinion polling shows that Obama and his policies are still quite popular, and the majority of Americans are willing to wait to see how things pan out. The rocking boat is the Republican Party, being whipsawed between the remnants of the Party establishment and those adherent to Limbaugh.
She also repeated Limbaugh's screed at the CPAC convention that Obama was Stalin.
She had better hope not.
I know it's not fashionable for the Right to know or study history, but Iosif Stalin was notoriously unforgiving to anyone who disagreed with him on anything. If Obama were Stalin, every Republican in the Congress would be dead by now, along with all the public voices of the Party (including, I daresay, Parker, Limbaugh, Beck and Coulter). He wouldn't be ambivalent or resistant to the idea of a Truth Commission to explore the Bush Administration's treason; the trials would have been in full swing for a month, followed by the executions.
But we must remind ourselves that Obama is not Communist, nor (as the head of the Communist Party in the United States pointed out to Glenn Beck) is he a Socialist. He's a progressive liberal trying to navigate the proper course through the shoals and reefs piled up by his predecessor and his cronies.
The text of it can be found here, proving once again that although my local paper is a New York Times affiliate it can still feed the right-wing talking points.
(So can I, but that's another matter.)
What struck me was Parker asserting first that President Obama was the Messiah. Now that's wrong. Obama's no more a messiah than George Bush was to the thousands of screaming right wing fruitbats who worshiped the ground he walked on (recall the scene from the movie Jesus Camp where kids were encouraged to venerate his likeness). Extremism makes me nervous.
Another point was her assertion that maybe Rush Limbaugh was a Messiah.
I had to laugh. Limbaugh is a guy with a minimal education, a big mouth, a drug addiction and a predilection for taking sex vacations to the Dominican Republic. He's been trying for the past twenty years to be the reincarnation of Father Coughlin, not Jesus.
So Parker's wrong as Rick Santelli on two of the points in her ridiculous column.
The third wrong point is her metaphor of the rocking boat to illustrate the body politic. All of the opinion polling shows that Obama and his policies are still quite popular, and the majority of Americans are willing to wait to see how things pan out. The rocking boat is the Republican Party, being whipsawed between the remnants of the Party establishment and those adherent to Limbaugh.
She also repeated Limbaugh's screed at the CPAC convention that Obama was Stalin.
She had better hope not.
I know it's not fashionable for the Right to know or study history, but Iosif Stalin was notoriously unforgiving to anyone who disagreed with him on anything. If Obama were Stalin, every Republican in the Congress would be dead by now, along with all the public voices of the Party (including, I daresay, Parker, Limbaugh, Beck and Coulter). He wouldn't be ambivalent or resistant to the idea of a Truth Commission to explore the Bush Administration's treason; the trials would have been in full swing for a month, followed by the executions.
But we must remind ourselves that Obama is not Communist, nor (as the head of the Communist Party in the United States pointed out to Glenn Beck) is he a Socialist. He's a progressive liberal trying to navigate the proper course through the shoals and reefs piled up by his predecessor and his cronies.
posted by Walt at 6:13 AM
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