The purple prose that is Obama's presidency

Tiny keeps her eye on the prize as we keep on keeping on our quest to capture on "film" the ever elusive "decisive moment" when she rises up to grab with both paws a rose from the Christmas centerpiece tossed in her direction.

"If the Obama presidency ends as poorly as it has begun, blame for this must be massively sheeted home* to the media," says reader David Elder in the comments of Melanie Phillips's must-read UK Spectator column, "America —What have you done?" [via Lucianne]. We'll excerpt Elder's comments in a moment, but first a taste of columnist Phillips's savory prose:

President Obama has had, by general consent, a torrid First Fortnight. To put it another way, it has taken precisely two weeks for the illusion that brought him to power to be exposed for the nonsense that it so obviously was. The transformational candidate who was going to sweep away pork-barrel politics, lobbyists and corruption has been up to his neck in sleaze, as eviscerated here by Charles Krauthammer. Despite the fact that he came to power promising to ‘ban all earmarks’, his ‘stimulus’ bill represents billions of dollars of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections — which have nothing to do with kick-starting the economy and everything to do with favouring pet Democrat causes.

Torrid, indeed. The perfect word to describe the purple prose — "writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response" — that is Obama's presidency. Now back to commenter David Elder's muscular prose in full:

They did not make even perfunctory routine inquiry into his dubious church and political connections over many years. They allowed Obama to escape accountability for his party's considerable culpability in the economic disaster of recent times. They misreported the Iraq WMD issue, and the links between Saddam and Islamist terrorist groups. They gleefully publicised every problem real or supposed in Iraq and ignored any positive developments. They did not hold Obama accountable when he opposed the surge that has now delivered victory over both Al-Qaeda and local insurgents. They did not give credit to the outgoing administration for these victories. They treated Obama like the Messiah and Bush like the Antichrist. They witch-hunted Palin, often stupidly — the one criticism of substance, inexperience in foreign affairs, also applied to Obama (or should have done). They measured environmental performance by whether the candidate would or would not sign some piece of paper called Kyoto — a policy rejection initiated not by Bush but by the Clinton-Gore team under Senate pressure which may well continue to apply to Obama. Bush's emission reduction scheme has worked better without Kyoto than the EU scheme with it — no hard questions to Obama on any of this from our environmentally aware media observers. Reporters repeatedly succumbed to Obama's undisputed [We'd dispute that word choice] skill with words and failed to note the vacuous content of so many of the words. Chris Matthews said Obama made him feel something running up his leg - a clear sign of messianic presence, brothers and sisters ... Yes, I am glad as a lifelong Martin Luther King fan to see a (part) black man in the White House. But King himself said to judge on individual merit, not race — advice the media forgot. Regardless of who you voted for (and I have no fixed affiliation in the American political system), the entire media performance was puerile, unprofessionalism incarnate, and deserves but probably will not get scathing scrutiny.

We've been scrutinizing their performance scathingly for decades, of course, way before the internet made the instant gratification of "sharing" our rants with the immediate world possible through blogging.

Power-napping between athletic forays, she catches a few rays in the early-morning light.

Let's give the final word to another insightful Phillips reader, Hugh Glass, who comments:

In two weeks, this Chicago political hack is already setting the stage for another 30 years of responsible conservative leadership. It took the peanut brain a couple years to foolishly expose the lunacy of tax and waste socialist cronyism. M T Suit has done it in a couple weeks. Jimmah 2.0!

We like the cut of your jib, sir.

Update: The muscular prose that is an Instalanche:

I blame the purple prose.

Thank you so, dear Professor!

*Sheet home [from Merriam-Webster Online] "1: to extend (a sail) and set as flat as possible by hauling upon the sheets  2: to fix the responsibility for : bring home to one." Note: A sheet in this (nautical) context is "a rope or chain that regulates the angle at which a sail is set in relation to the wind."

Comments

[goomp]

My fear is that the MSM will fail to acknowledge the truth of who and what Obama is and does.

[Insufficiently Sensitive]

My fear is that the MSM will fail to acknowledge the truth of who and what Obama is and does.

That's not just a fear. The MSM created two screen characters, for the specific purpose of hammers against the Bush administration. Cindy Sheehan was one, and Obama the other.

In a minimum of four years prior to the 2008 election, the MSM exploited these characters in the most extended negative political campaign this country has ever witnessed. Cindy Sheehan frequently gave speeches before more media cameras than actual spectators, but she was glib enough to occupy plenty of TV screens for attacks against President Bush. Obama, of course, is barely anything beyond glib, and had nearly zero executive experience (barring the squandering of $150,000,000 of Annenberg Foundation funds, which failed to improve education in Chicago one bit).

And after sufficient fawning media attention, Obama caught on with the public - despite his empty rhetoric - sufficiently to carry the election as a mere PC celebrity. Meanwhile, la Sheehan had been abandoned by the cameras and was left by the roadside like a punctured tire.

It's almost certain that the MSM will maintain slavish support of its pet candidate - until perhaps the passage of time, and still unpredictable events, wipe the scales from enough eyes that even the viciously biased editors realize they can't maintain their narrative at full strength. They'll have no good words for Republicans, of course, but The One may actually face some of the criticism - and research into his Alinskyite past - which should have been his since 2004.

[retriever]

The power napping photo is awesome!

Very good post.

[Donna B.]

In Obama's case, I'd call it pale lavender with purplish overtones signifying a unity of purpose with the world's collective angst.

[Gayle Miller]

Repeat after me: Barack H. Obama, POTUS 44, is a CHICAGO POLITICIAN and that's ALL he is. If you know that, you know all you need to know.

He is naive, untempered by experience and common sense, but wily and as crooked as they come and has not the solid teflon coating possessed by Bubba. Furthermore, he has absolutely zilch knowledge of history and thus, in his ignorance, is doomed to repeat it.

And 53 million Americans were duped by this poseur!

[Teresa]

While the media can take a huge hunk of responsibility for the "white washing" of everything Obama. Please let us not forget the nearly total incompetency of the Republican Party during the late campaign.

It was painful to watch for the most part. Ineffectual. And thus we are left with a person of no substance running the country.

This will not change unless the Republican party can (unlikely but always possible) finally finally learn from Ronald Reagan how to use the media to their own advantage even when said media is completely hostile to them.

To date they've shown zero ability in this area. However, we shall see. I always have hope for the future - possibly misplaced - but always hope.

[Gayle Miller]

Pray for all you're worth, friends. Pray!

[quiller]

Most troubling is how George Soros recently said he was making money during the present crisis...which was entirely aggravated by two factors. (1) Soros put Obama into that job, and (2) Soros wants the U.S. to fail. Now, the Lightweight Hussein has forced out the General Motors chief, with even the state governor (a Dem but originally Canadian) termed "a sacrificial lamb."
George Soros would be this planet's richest man if he could break the back of American manufacturing. That's worth worrying about, looking at all these sudden and catastrophic decisions by this incredibly inept neophyte.