Free Speech For All! (Who Agree With Emperor Obama)
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Obama’s
Third World
Press Rant
By Wesley Pruden
October 23rd, 2009
WASHINGTONTIMES.COM
Throwing rotten eggs at
“them lyin’ newspapers”
has always been great
sport in America,
and sometimes even
effective politics.
But it has to be done
with wit and humor,
which may be above
Barack Obama’s pay grade.
Thomas Jefferson
despised newspapers,
with considerable justification.
They printed libels and
slanders about him that
persist to the present day.
Yet he famously said that
if he had to choose between
government without newspapers
and newspapers without
government,
he would cheerfully choose
to live in a land with newspapers
(even not very good ones)
and no government.
Harry Truman threatened
to demolish the manhood
of a newspaper music critic
who criticized his daughter’s
singing.
Richard Nixon compiled
an enemies list,
prominently including
newspapermen.
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I made Bill Clinton’s enemies
list and dined out on it for weeks.
George W. Bush confessed,
no doubt accurately,
that he never read newspapers.
The president’s media
environment is “target rich,”
but as any bombardier
could tell you,
there’s more to scoring a
bull’s-eye than opening the
bomb-bay doors.
In a fit of pique,
John F. Kennedy canceled
the White House subscription
to the New York Herald-Tribune
(may it R.I.P.)
because he thought it relished
stories about Democratic zits
and covered up
Republican pimples.
The ban didn’t last;
the White House soon
subscribed again,
and JFK poked a little fun
at his over-the-top pique.
Politicians who actually get their
revenge on press tormentors do so
with rapier thrusts of whimsy
and clever insult.
An early 20th-century governor
and U.S. senator from Arkansas
(from whom Mr. Clinton took pointers)
delighted in sharp thrust-and-parry
with the Arkansas Gazette
(may it R.I.P.),
the state’s leading newspaper.
“My wife and I have a little boy,
and we have great ambitions for him,”
he would tell audiences gathered
on courthouse lawns at the foot of
the monument to the
Confederate soldier.
“If it turns out that he’s as
intelligent as we think he is,
we hope to make a Baptist
preacher of him.
If he has just average intelligence,
that’s all right,
we’ll send him to law school.
But if it turns out he’s the village idiot,
we’ll just send him down to Little Rock
to edit the morning newspaper.”
Good fun.
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But something more sinister is
afoot in Mr. Obama’s carefully
plotted campaign to destroy his
perceived enemies in the press,
television and even business.
Rush Limbaugh is only
the face of the opposition,
and the ultimate target of the
White House scheme is to marginalize
and destroy the Republican Party first,
and then everyone else unwilling
to get in the lockstep parade toward
the hazy dream of Utopia.
Mr. Obama and his White House
can’t seem to get their brains around
the fact that the election of ’08 is over,
and he won.
A candidate feeds on red meat,
but a president is the president
of everyone,
and must set a different table.
Mr. Obama campaigned with promises
of a post-racial, post-partisan,
post-rancor administration,
and millions of Americans
responded with enthusiasm.
The candidate who said he took
inspiration from Abraham Lincoln
of Illinois now acts as if he takes
inspiration from the distinguished
statesmen of the Third World,
where press opposition to the
leader is usually a bloody no-no.
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The remarkable White House
attempt to define which news
organization is legitimate and
which is not began in August,
as Mr. Obama’s poll numbers
began a dramatic slide.
Suddenly the man who yearns to
be the permanent president of
the Student Body,
loved by all and adored by the
co-eds and their mamas,
is rendered human after all.
Anita Dunn,
the director of White House
communications,
says that when the administration
began planning for autumn
(with important gubernatorial
races in New Jersey and Virginia),
the president
“needed to be more aggressive
in defining what the choices are,
and in protecting and pushing
forward our agenda.”
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Rush Limbaugh,
Matt Drudge and Fox News
are big enough to take care
of themselves,
but the implications of what
the Obamanauts are trying
to do are scary,
indeed.
Brisk and even brutal opposition
is something every president
must endure;
it’s a pity that Mr. Obama skipped
school the day the class studied
American history.
The candidate insists that the
critics who scoff that he isn’t
really the messiah,
but another Chicago politician,
are just being cynical.
This week Ms. Dunn insisted that
the Obama image is intact.
“He’s who he has always been.”
So we are learning,
to widespread sorrow.
___Wesley Pruden
___is editor emeritus of
___The Washington Times.
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___“Pick the target,
______freeze it,
____personalize it,
___and polarize it.”
_____Saul Alinsky
___Rules for Radicals
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