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April 04, 2009

Your president is a sheik's obedient servant

The silence in the media about Pres. Obama bowing to the Saudi King is deafening; it reveals the complete and utter failure of journalists to fulfill the most basic function of their trade: Report the news, especially when the president does something noteworthy.

Lord knows, Pres. Bush couldn't screw up without the media gleefully repeating the gaffe non-stop at all hours. Remember when he tried to leave the stage at an event through locked doors, paused, and then walked to the other side of the stage?

It made for hours of hilarity on the cable news networks and the morning shows.

A president abasing himself before a foreign leader used to be news. The Anchoress notes:

Once upon a time, the American Press - in the form of the New York Times would take a president to task for making even a quasi-bow to another foreign head. This wasn’t that long ago. The president was Clinton.

If you don't feel like clicking through to the Times, this is what they had to say back in '94:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about? …

Guests invited to a white-tie state dinner at the White House (a Clinton Administration first) were instructed to address the Emperor as “Your Majesty,” not “Your Highness” or, worse, “King.” And in what one Administration aide called “some emperor thing,” an Army general was cautioned that he should not address the Emperor Akihito at all as he escorted him to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.

As Ed Morrisey points out, The New York Times body-slammed Bill Clinton for almost bowing to Japan's king, the figurehead ruler of a modern nation with a decent postwar human rights record; Obama's disgusting display of fealty to a medieval sheik?

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Because, of course, it is the mission of the press, as Chris Matthews so famously said, to ensure that Pres. Obama succeeds -- even if his success costs the nation dearly.

The Anchoress speaks for those who haven't drunk the Kool-Aid, haven't been seduced by the cult of The One:

We know next-to nothing about this man, Barack Obama, because the lapdog press would ask him nothing beyond, “what makes you so great?” We’ve never seen so much as a college transcript or a college essay. We only know who his friends were, and they…well, they were not great friends to America. And he bowed to the Saudi king. Deeply. And he is moving fast to control about 30% of the economy.

That, umm…almost doesn’t matter anymore. In his first 100 days, Obama will have dismantled our economy and our capitalist structure for the other model. I told you the coup would be nearly painless, and here we are.

Oh, and while Obama was in Europe, it was the 60th Anniversary of Truman signing The Marshall Plan. But no one mentioned that at the G20. The greatness and generosity of America went unremarked upon. “Submission Accomplished”. But boy, he sure does have a great smile.

Someone recently referred to this as Jimmy Carter's second term. I disagree. Obama has managed in less than 100 days to do far more damage to our nation than Carter accomplished in four years, more, I think, than Carter could have accomplished had he won a second term.

The mind boggles at what these next four years will bring.

Posted by Mike Lief at April 4, 2009 09:05 PM | TrackBack

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