October 16, 2009

• President Obama can’t even get a BLT vs Reflexive Obama Defenders

  People now are finally starting to speak up and declare what ought to have been obvious for months. That there are people, people with power, people with influence, who will simply always oppose everything that President Obama does or says. Some call them “the Republican party” others “the conservatives”. In truth it’s a small but influential subset of both. But the fact that it’s not everyone, does not make it any less important to bring it to people’s attention. Here’s how Representative Alan Grayson put it:

  “They [The American People] understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for over population. They understand that if Barack Obama could somehow bring about world peace, they’d blame him for destroying the defense industry. In fact they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow night, they will try to ban bacon.”

  The ever more eloquent Rachel Maddow put it in very different terms which discussing the Nobel Peace Prize. She quoted a Republican commentator who argued that liberals and Democrats were suffering from “Bush Derangement Syndrome” when they seemed, in that commentator’s mind, reflexively opposed to everything President Bush did. Rachel Maddow turned it around and suggested that maybe the Derangement Syndrome that exists now is apparent in opposition to President Obama. Here’s what she had to say:

  The phenonemnon she’s describing is unquestionably real. There are people out there who simply reflexively oppose President Obama. When they hear the President made a decision about something, the first thought in their mind is something along the lines of “how is this a BAD decision?” They assume it must be bad. And if they can’t immediately see why it is a BAD decision they either come up with a way to paint it as bad anyway or they simply ignore it. The idea that Obama might have made a good decision never occurs to them.

  Is there any real doubt that such people exist? Further, not only do they exist but they are influential. They have large massive audiences and entire news networks in their thrall. Take the obvious example of Rush Limbaugh. When asked in a recent interview if he could name one thing President Obama has done that he approves of, he could come up with nothing. This might not seem like a big deal were it not for the fact that this is a person whose entire life revolves around analysis of news and politics and who spends three hours every day preaching to his base. You’d think in that time you could come up with something you didn’t dislike. Especially when you consider how very similar to Bush’s policies so many of President Obama’s are.

  But on a deeper level is it surprising that Rush Limbaugh does not or is unwilling to admit to agreeing with any of President Obama’s choices? No of course not! Nor is it surprising for Glenn Beck to be forever against Obama or a host of his other critics. Part of this just has to do with the nature of politics for these people. It’s a game to them. And to praise Obama, however rational that praise might be, would effectively be giving free points to the other side. They aren’t about to do that. So Obama advocates the Olympics in Chicago, and it’s a horrible failure of judgment. Bush advocated having the Olympics in Chicago and it’s a patriot doing his duty for America. Obama ramps up military intervention in Afghanistan and does a detailed review of American policy in Afghanistan and it’s a botched, feet dragging, effort that will result in US failure. Bush does a detailed review of American policy in Iraq leading to a ramp up of military intervention and it’s him saving the country and liberating the millions of people there. And so on for illegal detentions, wiretapping, the patriot act, etc. etc.

  Yes reflexive Obama critics are a very real phenomena and more and more often, the irrationality of them are being called out by the Press.  People are even adopting Grayson-style exaggerated language to describe it. Take this article by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post.

  “The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn’t possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they’d accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they’d complain it was getting chilly. If he got Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu to join him around the campfire in a chorus of “Kumbaya,” the rejectionists would claim that his singing was out of tune. “

  It’s easy to see why this language is effective. It’s amusing and memorable and when people compare it to the rhetoric coming out of the reflexive critics I described above it rings with a hint of truth to it, even though hypothetical claims like these are impossible to prove and largely just silly.

  But if you read that article closely you might have noticed a hint of a deeper and perhaps more serious problem than the masses of overly loud and obnoxious Reflexive Obama Critics. That is, the emergence in the press of the equally dangerous Reflexive Obama Defenders.

  Reflexive Obama Defenders do exactly as the critics do. When a criticism is aired against Obama, they immediately defend him, without pause to rationally consider whether or not that criticism is justified. Defending Obama who they see on their “team” or as their patriotic duty is more important to them than a rational analysis of what’s true and what’s false. And then to make matters worse, they attack the critics, not on the merit or lack thereof of the criticism, but on the fact that they dare to criticize Obama at all.

  There are numerous anecdotal accounts of encountering Reflexive Obama Defenders all over the place going back even to the primarys. Many writers have written about how they’ve encountered fans of Obama who let the sense of “hope” he inspired in his speeches interfere with their rational analysis of the policies he was advocating. So people who described themselves as anti-war suddenly seemed to have NO problem with Obama’s steadfast and unapologetic determination to escalate the war in Afghanistan. And worse, they’d vehemently defend Obama’s position of Afghanistan as IF it were an anti-war position. Though Obama himself was wholly honest during his entire campaign about his intention to continue and ramp up our aggression in that country.

  The Nobel Peace Prize controversy though I think brought out the very worst in the Reflexive Obama Defenders.

  Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a writer for the Nation and has always been an ardent supporter of Obama and his administration. However, when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, she did not entirely agree. She even dared to crack some jokes about it on her twitter and facebook. Here is her description of what happened in an article in the Nation:

  “I was stunned by the swift and angry responses from dozens of readers, followers, and friends. Some suggested I was a “hater.” Others felt my jovial tone was disrespectful of the President. Several fretted that conservatives would justify further attacks on President Obama using my words. I have disagreed with and criticized Obama as both a candidate and president before, but I have never elicited this kind of anxiety from readers. “

  You can see her more direct and immediate reaction on her Twitter. She tweeted the following:

  “-Please unfollow me if you plan to be in my face about NPP jokes this AM. NO ONE who does not earn $ from Obama has been a bigger supporter!

  -No one has spent more uncompensated hours campaigning, writing, working for Obama as candidate and POTUS.

  -I try to be a fair arbiter of BHO’s work and accomplishments. But I think his record on war is too mixed to deserve a NPP. It is my opinion.

  -I spent this evening in a fundraiser for a boy whose mother was shot to death in front of him. Peace is personal.

  -The city where she was shot has one of the highest murder rates in NJ. Peace is political.

  -We have all watched too many civilians and soldiers die over the past 8 years. Peace is global.

  -I love my President. I believe in my President. But I want EVEN more leadership from him on Peace. Thrilled he sees NPP as a call to action.“

  I found it rather disturbing that Melissa Harris-Lacewell felt the need to prove her “Obama-credentials” against ardent Defenders who were ready to cast her out of the fold because she dared to criticize the fact of Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize in a joking manner. In her article, she attributed it and tried to link it to a much discussed phenomena of racial anxiety partially consequent of affirmative-action and then tried to show quite logically how such anxiety was unjustified, trying to calm some of those fears. However, I don’t think simple anxiety explains ALL of this reflexive Obama defense. And certainly not all of it is black-anxiety. Especially since a good chunk of it is coming from white defenders as well. But anxiety does explain some of it. There is real fear of falling back into another Bush-like era.

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t really care about some random, unnamed twitterers. I mean with EVERY popular figure you’re going to have people who reflexively defend them and reflexively oppose them. That’s a given. Just ask any famous actor or news personality. Sometimes people randomly get a grudge or fall in love with random symbolic figures. It’s not logical, but fandom is very human. It was that way with Bush, with Clinton, with Reagan, with ALL Presidents.  Still is. There’s a certain amount of it that we’re just going to have to accept.

  However, when things get too far I think is when trusted, influential sources of information, hyped by the media engage in obvious reflexive Obama Opposition or Defense. My problem with the Reflexive Obama Critics is NOT that they exist. It’s that they are given so much credence. If Rush Limbaugh had an audience of a couple thousand I wouldn’t give a crap about him. He can say what he wants. But his audience numbers in the millions. And a good number of those audience members trust him and listen to him. And when you are in a position of power and influence you have a responsibility to at least be minimally honest and fair minded. Reflexive reactions are anything but.

  So that’s why when I saw this video I was outraged:

  This is probably the worst attack video I’ve seen coming out of the left. And definitely the worst I’ve seen out of MediaMatters. The first three quarters of it, there’s nothing wrong with. But then it ends with the disgusting insinuation that those who are against Obama’s receiving the Nobel Peace Prize are somehow “siding with” the terrorists.

  Also on MediaMatters there was this by blogger Chris Harris:

  “That the domestic political opposition party would echo the sentiments of one of our nation’s fiercest enemies is truly striking.  The global community honoring the American President with one of the world’s top awards should be a cause for national celebration, not cheap political games.

  One could expect this reaction from our nation’s enemies, but it is unseemly and downright unpatriotic coming from American political leaders.”

  MediaMatters in case you didn’t know is a pretty popular left wing site. They do a lot of work documenting and recording all of the misleading, outrageous, untrue, or unfair statements in the right wing AND the mainstream media. They also do a lot of work compiling and popularizing statistics about media coverage over time. Likewise they track the spin being put on developing stories. Of course the bulk of what they document demonstrates what they perceive as a right-wing bias in the media.

  In addition to all this documenting work, MediaMatters also publsihes numerous opinion pieces and blogs like the Chris Harris piece above.

  And it’s not just, MediaMatters. The Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) spokesman Brad Woodhouse made the same kind of declaration:

  “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.

  Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize – an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride – unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.”

  To be fair, this quote needs to be taken in context. He was responding specifically to Michael Steele, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) statement about Obama’s win of the Nobel Peace Prize:

  “The real question Americans are asking is, “What has President Obama actually accomplished?” It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

  But even if you perceive this statement of Steele’s as crass and out of line (I actually thought it was rather tame for him compared to other things he’s said), does it make sense to say as Woodhouse did that Steele or worse the entire Republican party “has thrown in its lot with the terrorists”??? Of course not! You can well think Steele is a jerk. You may well disagree with the Republican party’s position on every single issue, but it’s a FAR cry from that to say that they are terrorists. It’s simply a twisted and immoral position to declare.

  And it’s not an isolated incident. These statements by a DNC spokesman and MediaMatters have real measurable influence. And we can see this disturbing idea that it’s “unpatriotic” and wrong to criticize the President’s award spread Note the previous piece quoted piece by Eugene Robinson. In it he also said:

  “Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world’s most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation’s leader — elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority — as unworthy of such recognition?
  Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?
  …
  Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they’re only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders — except RNC Chairman Michael Steele — are beginning to realize, “I’m With the Taliban Against America” is not likely to be a winning slogan.
  …
  The only reasonable response is McCain’s: Congratulations. “

  Likewise there’s this entry on DailyKos.  And even Rachel Maddow skirted dangerously close to this kind of unthinking patriotism when she ended the segment posted above by asserting: “The American President just won the Nobel Peace Prize. By any reasonable measure, all Americans should be proud.”

  The irony of all this is of course that this was exactly the kind of stuff that outraged Democrats and the Left when it was done against them during eight years of the Bush administration. And is STILL being done to them. Liz Cheney has suggested several times that Obama wants to “hold hands with the terrorists” and is “siding with the terrorists”.

  Fortunately there are a number of liberal voices who did not embrace the hypocrisy and spoke out against this kind of reflexive Obama Defense that justifies these kinds of statements. For example, Glenn Greenwald wrote an in depth piece about it in which he shows both how flawed the logic is and takes us back through a history lesson of all the times Democrats have been accused of being buddy buddy with the terrorists simply for daring to disagree with Bush.  Alex Koppleman scathingly critiqued MediaMatters coverage. And David Sirota wrote a piece for the HuffingtonPost expressing his disgust and disappointment in the DNC statement and words of some Democratic Talk radio hosts. He ended his piece with the following:

  “So the fact that the Democratic National Committee is calling everyone who opposes the Nobel committee’s decision a terrorist is, in a word, disgusting. I know the DNC is responding to Republicans (whose basis for opposing the Nobel prize to Obama I disagree with), but by saying all critics of the Nobel award and of Obama’s record (or lack thereof) are terrorists by virtue of their opposition is just sick and wrong.

  Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/yes-you-can-oppose-obamas_b_315496.html

  If we are going to build a real movement, we have to resist that kind of nonsense wherever it comes from. Disagreeing with, pressuring, and criticizing President Obama does not automatically make people GOP sympathizers or terrorists, just like disagreeing with, pressuring and criticizing President Bush did not automatically people Democratic sympathizers or terrorists. Those who say the opposite are exactly the people who have partisan-ized our politics to the point of destroying any social movement ethos. They, in short, are the real political terrorists in America – on both sides.”

  Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/yes-you-can-oppose-obamas_b_315496.html

  He’s right of course.  These people are seriously problematic on both sides. The Reflexive Obama Defenders and the Reflexive Obama Critics are both contributing to the promotion of a world view that sets citizen against citizen and makes politics into merely a popularity contest and not a debate over our future and well being.

  And I think right now the Reflexive Obama Defense is even more dangerous, if less common, than the Reflexive Obama Critiques. That’s the case simply because right now Obama is the one in charge. His party holds the reigns of power. So if you respond to unjustified and invalid criticisms of Obama by creating an ethos of never questioning and never criticizing the President at all then the end result will be to allow President Obama and all future Presidents to do whatever they want. If it becomes taboo, a sign of unpatriotic disrespect, a symbol of siding with the “enemy” or the “terrorists” to say anything bad about the President, you’ll create a world of passive meek followers who have no influence and no means of promoting the policies that serve their interests. Everyone will be too afraid of be discredited and cast out of the fold, scorned for daring to critique.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I understand very well why Reflexive Obama Defenders came out in force in reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize controversy.  Indeed, I feel much of the same disgust and outrage that they must have felt while watching the criticism of Obama aired across the news networks. I felt that EVEN though I’m one of those who doesn’t think the President really deserved the Nobel Prize. The critics were jsut that outrageous.

  I mean to hear all these smug well fed clearly elitest news anchors and personalities react with undisguised glee at the fact of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, not because they were happy for him, but because they thought it made such a great “joke” of a story, was sickening. It was an opportunity for them to laugh at the President and reveal their undisguised scorn for him and feel justified in doing so.  It was as if the media perceived the President as a joke and as if they saw winning the Nobel Peace Prize, unasked for,  as some kind of mistake Obama made. From listening to a lot of the coverage you’d think Obama had somehow done something wrong by winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

  But you have to understand that these criticisms are often coming from Reflexive Obama Critics in the media. That and unthinking shills that just uncritical repeat whatever the common wisdom of the day is according to other news outlets.  And indeed, you must also understand that just as annoyed and outraged you are at this kind of commentary out of the media being leveled at your prefered leader, there were people on the other side feeling precisely the same way when they heard the jokes and snarkish criticism of former President Bush.

  Still, though, in this case, the heart of the critique of the Reflexive Obama Critics is NOT a laughing matter. It’s very serious and should not simply be dismissed as mere raving or insanity. Whether or not President Obama actually deserved the Nobel Prize is a real serious question. But that’s not because of what it says about him but because of what it says about us.  Ideally, this wholly unexpected award would have opened up a serious and nuanced debate about United States foreign policy. How much ARE we a nation devoted to peace? If Obama has implemented policies that might lead us to say he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, what are those policies, why are they good, why do they help? If he hasn’t implemented policies that are deserving of the NPP, what SHOULD he be doing? What isn’t he doing?   And if he’s done things that ought to disqualify him outright from any kind of prize for Peace, what are those things? Why did he do them?  Why are we allowing him to do them? What can we do to make sure he, and our government are MORE deserving of a Peace Prize in the future?

  That SHOULD have been the discussion wrought from the Nobel Peace Prize. Then the prize would indeed have had meaning. Many smart people started to open up that kind of discussion.

  But they were quickly drowned out by the loud choruses of Reflexive Obama Critics AND Defenders that turned the entire discussion into a pathetic childish political show.  The entire discussion became:
  “Obama didn’t deserve it!”
  “Yes he did!”
  “No he didn’t!”
  “Yes he DID!”
  “He didn’t do anything!”
  “He did to do things!!”
  “Did not!!”
  “Do to!”

  And so on and so forth… It eventually of course winds down to everybody calling everybody else a terrorist or a Nazi.

  Does this sound familiar to you?  Gee, I wonder if it’s because that ‘s pretty much the tone and tenor of virtually ALL political arguments in the main stream media today.  The reason why most Americans don’t know a damn thing about Health Care reform in spite of most seeing it as an essentially important part of their life, is that all they get in the news media is the back and forth whining, finger pointing, childishness that comprises our national debate.

  If we’re going to move past this we’re going to have to stop listening to the Reflexive Critcs and Defenders who are just acting out their part in a great political show. We have to start praising people for sound arguments no matter which side of the aisle they come from, even when we disagree with them. Rather than simply latching on to the best soundbites or the cleverest rhetoric.

  But to do that we need to stifle our own instincts too to be reflexively for or opposed to certain public figures or political parties we happen to like or dislike. We need to focus on facts and data and cast a skeptical eye toward everyone and everything until we can find the truths that matter.

  Of course, my saying this is unlikely to actually change the way most people approach politics. Indeed, probably the deepest reason nothing will change is that my characterization throughout this piece is actually not correct for many of the people I’m describing.  Many of them aren’t really “reflexive”. IT isn’t really a “syndrome”. I fear that for a vast majority of the political pundits it is in fact very deliberate and calculated behavior. It’s not something they can’t control.  It’s something they do on purpose. They do it because it has influence and because they have an ideological goal they are trying to accomplish.

  And for Reflexive Obama Critics and Defenders, those goals do not entail your deep and nuanced understanding of the issues involved. No, some Reflexive Obama Critics don’t want you to simply understand so that you disapprove of the specifics of what the President is doing, they want you to HATE the President. Likewise some Reflexive Obama Defenders don’t want you to simply understand and approve of the President’s agenda, they want you to LOVE him.

  Neither emotion should have any place anywhere near politics where matters of life and death are decided every day. But for the politicians playing their endless game, these emotions are essential. Love and Hate drive elections. Passion is more important than fact or truth. That’s just the way it works.

  And yeah Alan Grayson WAS right about one thing in his diatribe above. Americans DON’T care about the bullshit going on in Washington. And Americsans DO understand. We have a much deeper understanding than  even Grayson himself does.

  We understand that politics has become a game played by infantile elites in suits and in this game, the commoners are nothing more than pawns. It doesn’t have anything to do with serving OUR interests. It just serves the egos of those involved.

  • 6:03 pm
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