what many in the U.S. have discovered, that the supposedly oratorically gifted Obama is a windbag whose favorite subject is himself.
Reply 4—Posted by: muggy, 4/5/2009 7:42:43 PM
Can we swap the British press for ours? Why is it that all the hard-hitting, inquisitive, and thoughtful news items emanate from Britain?
Reply 6—Posted by: southron, 4/5/2009 7:48:46 PM
Love the comment: “His speeches are souffle-speeches.” Perfect! Light, friendly and infused with air.—Please, check his Visa! Please, give us one of YOURS and you can keep HIM.
Reply 7—Posted by: Photoonist, 4/5/2009 7:53:05 PM
The people commenting on 0bama largely seem to get it. Same old failing leftist ideas repackage in a front man even more ignorant than usual, that’s 0bama.
Reply 14—Posted by: JRToday, 4/5/2009 8:35:17 PM
Just asking—did O need a passport to travel overseas? Did anyone get a glimpse of his birth certificate?
Reply 16—Posted by: steveracer, 4/5/2009 8:46:16 PM
Bore and wind-bag hadn’t occurred to me, I was stuck on fraud and incompetent, thank you Mr. Iain Martin
Reply 21—Posted by: Mesa II, 4/5/2009 9:51:58 PM
Not to be a picker of nits BUT, how many times are they going to recycle that same, tired style on Michelle of the black dress tying at the waist over a light color under dress. It started with the Black Widow Spider dress. It’s the same style used in a different way every time.
Face it, the woman has a thick waist and humongous rump. There isn’t much anyone can do about it.
Reply 24—Posted by: Penney, 4/5/2009 10:23:30 PM
If 0 keeps over-staying his visits, who will ever want him to come back? Who knows, his vacation destination invitations may vanish. It may get so bad, he will have to stay couped up in the WH where at least the press still loves him. s/
Reply 28—Posted by: angrywhitedude, 4/6/2009 12:01:14 AM
Hey Euroweenies, you wanted him…you got him!
Reply 30—Posted by: Allie, 4/6/2009 12:35:59 AM
Kudos to the British and Canadian press for their correct and courageous commentary.
#11, I agree with your assessment of Obama’s presentation of history: it’s consistently shallow and defective. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard him give completely accurate information about anything. Here’s an example: When he spoke in Berlin last summer, he trumpeted the cooperative efforts of Western Allies/Europe to save Berlin during the Soviet blockade. WRONG, Mr. Obama! It was the AMERICAN AIRLIFT that saved the city by daring to bring in much-needed supplies.
Reply 31—Posted by: StuartL, 4/6/2009 3:06:16 AM
Are we, #30? Sadly, the majority of the U.S. population now consists of the born-yesterday types produced by the last two generations’ worth of government indoctrination.
Even the smart ones are stupid. Incapable of rational thought and devoid of factual historical knowledge, they gave us our country’s first tinpot despot. It’s up to the rest of us to right the ship. it won’t be easy… if it can be done at all.
Reply 32—Posted by: zeldafitzg, 4/6/2009 3:29:19 AM
Nice to see that someone else is waking up from the brain fog.
Regarding his wife::::: Would someone please give her a ten minute phonics lesson? There is no “sh” sound in the word “strong.” She consistently says shtrong, shtraight, etc. It’s driving me crazy. Tonight I was watching an otherwise excellent program on the Discovery channel, and the bass-voiced narrator was doing the same thing. Lord, save us.
Reply 33—Posted by: Joe Btfsplk, 4/6/2009 8:10:01 AM
#30: Comrade Cool Barry-O believes that history begins on the day he was born…. and not a moment sooner. [LA replies: excellent insight.]
Reply 39—Posted by: saucy, 4/6/2009 8:41:55 AM
The Windbag and the Worse-Dressed first lady return from their World Tour!
…yawn….
Reply 40—Posted by: beat the press, 4/6/2009 8:42:10 AM
Ian and a few others are like Toto, pulling back the curtain on this manufactured fraud. Of course the U.S. media sheep will keep believing in the empty suit. Just like children when they start to discover maybe Santa isn’t for real. If they refuse to acknowledge it perhaps the presents will keep appearing out of thin air. Yes, there is a Santa, Henrietta ~ the U.S. taxpayer.
Reply 43—Posted by: thelmalou, 4/6/2009 9:02:57 AM
RE: #32—I think it’s some sort of fad, like saying “prolly” for “probably”. I hear it from kids, from people doing the weather, you name it, and it drives me CRAZY. I always holler at the TV, “It’s ‘destroy’, not ‘deshtroy’”!
Reply 48—Posted by: loyal2luci, 4/6/2009 9:24:22 AM
Reply 49—Posted by: Felixcat, 4/6/2009 9:32:31 AM
So many of your fellow Brits supported him during the campaign then why don’t you just keep him over there? Since Iain, his fellow Brits and Europeans are so quick to claim Zero as their own when they continue to fail to diversify their own elected houses of government.
Reply 50—Posted by: Aggie57, 4/6/2009 9:35:35 AM
He belongs in Europe.
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to send you this Marshall Ganz stuff. This one will do as well as any.
Marshall Ganz was to Obama’s communication strategy what Saul Alinsky was to his field organization strategy. In many ways Ganz picks up where Alinsky left off, he crafted a communication strategy specifically to attract and shore up an Alinsky-style volunteer force. The amount that Obama talks about himself is an intentional and calculated element of this strategy:
“Public narrative is composed of three elements: a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now. A story of self communicates who I am—my values, my experience, why I do what I do. A story of us communicates who we are—our shared values, our shared experience, and why we do what we do. And a story of now transforms the present into a moment of challenge, hope, and choice.
“Telling one’s story of self is a way to share the values that define who you are—not as abstract principles, but as lived experience. We construct stories of self around choice points—moments when we faced a challenge, made a choice, experienced an outcome, and learned a moral. We communicate values that motivate us by selecting from among those choice points, and recounting what happened.
“In Sen. Obama’s ‘story of self’ he recounts three key choice points: his grandfather’s decision to send his son to America to study, his parent’s ‘improbable’ decision to marry, and his parent’s decision to name him Barack, blessing, an expression of faith in a tolerant and generous America. Each choice communicates courage, hope, and caring. He tells us nothing of his resume, preferring to introduce himself by telling us where he came from, and who made him the person that he is, so that we might have an idea of where he is going.”
—Marshall Ganz, What is Public Narrative?
Another element of this strategy is avoiding all talk of policy specifics.
“Analysis helps answer the ‘how question’—how do we use resources efficiently to detect opportunities, compare costs, etc. But to answer the ‘why question’—why does this matter, why do we care, why do we value one goal over another—we turn to narrative. The why question in not why we think we ought to act, but, rather why we do act, what moves us to act, our motivation, our values. Or, as St. Augustine put it, the difference between ‘knowing’ the good as an ought and ‘loving the good’ as a source of motivation.
“We also experience our values through our emotions. Our emotions provide us with vital information about how to live our lives, not in contrast to reasoned deliberation, but more as a precondition for it. Moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that because we experience value through emotion, trying to make moral choices without emotional information is futile. She supports her argument with research on people afflicted with lesions on the amygdale, a part of the brain central to our emotions. When faced with decisions, they can come up with one option after another, but cannot decide because decisions ultimately are based on judgments of value. And if we cannot experience emotion, we cannot experience values that orient us to the choices we must make.”
I had a couple of friends who worked on the Obama campaign in Philadelphia. They were trained never to answer a policy question. Instead, they were supposed to change the subject and talk about their “personal conversion experience”.