Lovely speech. Nice touches referencing each person individually. Well done, Mr. President. You've proven to be an impressive speaker - again...
The speech was well deserved by those in attendance & those who, sadly, are no longer with us. But I submit the following: anybody w/ charisma & camera-friendly face can schmooze out somebody else's words. Anybody can be coached on how to feign 'appropriate' affect & somber tenor when delivering a rehearsed eulogy. My concern is not what this man did on a stage at a solemn event, where every move was prescribed. My concern is what he did/didn't do in response to a live-action terrorist attack.
A commenter to James tried to make this point, albeit with great gusto, & was dismissed as immature & a disgrace. The following was, & still is, my contention with that dismissal:
In the moment of discovery of the Fort Hood massacre (it was NOT a "tragedy," it was a TERRORIST act perpetrated by a self-proclaimed SOA - soldier of Allah), Mr. Obama took the stage at a Native American Conference. It took him 60 full seconds to even mention the massacre.
A full 60 seconds: wherein he casually thanked his staff, conference organizers, gave congratulations to attendees for their 'extremely productive conference' and also gave a "shout out" to a medal winner!! ---- NONE as critical as 12 DEAD soldiers, massacred in cold blood, perp'd by one of our own personnel, who, btw just happened to be muslim & happened to have SCREAMED 'Allahu Akbar' seconds before he blew his fellow soldiers away. (But never mind that.)
And though my friends @ the other blog were involved in congratulating BHO (& each other) on his eloquent speech, I emphasized that I frankly don't give a flip what Mr. O said at the Memorial Service. He could have sung "The Rainbow Connection" while doin' the Charleston, for all I care about his performance.
See, what the Left misses is that leadership, strength & compassion are defined by what a person does/says when they're operating out of their own spontaneous, raw character. That's what matters, not some eloquence dribbled into a microphone, read off a teleprompter.
Last Thursday we were scared, & were all replaying tapes of 9-11. We needed immediate, heartfelt Leadership. We needed what Martin Buber calls "the I/Thou" relationship moment; the basis for Fritz Perls' Gestalt Therapy . "The experience involves an appreciation of & a respect for the reality of the Other." It's based on being 'in the moment,' where one intimately identifies with another's circumstances to effect a reciprocal bond of trust, & to foster transformative healing.
And this guy, this guy showed himself in that moment to be a detached, cool, emotionless (even cavalier), unsympathetic (except to muslims), calculating Disconnect. Who but the same can trust or bond with THAT?
Mr. O gave a lovely speech 5 days later. All the families deserved it - as did the departed. But in his Gestalt, in his defining moment, Mr. O showed he cannot produce I/Thou. And when you're incapable of that, all you've got left is I/Me.
Who, again, is the disgrace?
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