I can’t improve on an article by Mark Hemingway that appeared in The Federalist, which considers the “celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire” and salon-Bolshevik, Marxist determinist, who believes that it’s important to get “on the right side of history” (anyone who opposes him is, of course, “on the wrong side of history”), our former President Barack Hussein Obama. Obama liked to use, as if it were his own, a line he took from Martin Luther King, and that MLK himself had lifted, without attribution, from the celebrated abolitionist Rev. Theodore Parker: “The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.” No, it doesn’t. There was probably more injustice, with more than 150 million victims of war, genocide, and deliberate starvation across the globe, in the twentieth century than at any time before. And while he likes to prate about history, Obama is not himself a student of history. Consider his speech in Cairo, in 2009, in which, to flatter his Muslim audience, he ascribed so many achievements to Islamic civilization, almost all of them originating, in fact, with non-Muslims. More of Mark Hemingway’s examination of “Obama’s Fraudulent Legacy” can be found here: “Obama’s Fraudulent Legacy Is Being Exposed, And It’s On The Wrong Side Of History,” by Mark Hemingway, The Federalist, August 9, 2023:
Barack Obama’s crumbling public image is more Louis Farrakhan, less MLK.
Barack Obama is often hailed as one of the greatest orators in modern politics. While he had undeniable gifts in that department, as someone who attended a number of his speeches in person, I never quite understood all the praise. Setting aside his career-making “red states, blue states” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — a plea for political moderation he spent his time in office repudiating — the only memorable things Obama said were either campaign pablum such as “hope and change,” or remarks that were unintentionally revealing.
In the latter category, my personal favorite remark was this comment about congressional Republicans from 2013: “We’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country,” he said.
“Permission structure” is a phrase that’s been used by marketing executives for many years, and was apparently in common usage at the Obama White House. The idea is “based on an understanding that radically changing a deeply held belief and/or entrenched behavior will often challenge a person’s self-identity and perhaps even leave them feeling humiliated about being wrong. … Permission Structures serve as scaffolding for someone to embrace change that they might otherwise reject.”
While there’s more overlap between politics and marketing than anyone would like to admit, the naked use of jargon that comes from the world of consumer manipulation betrays a remarkably egotistical approach to politics. There was no need to address honorable disagreement to Obama’s policies, which were politically extreme and consistently opposed by voters. The White House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that could help people admit they were wrong and come around to his way of thinking.
Ironically enough, I thought of the “permission structure” remark reading David Samuels’ interview in Tablet with Obama biographer David Garrow, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism of the year. That’s because the entire article is a really effective “permission structure” for a lot of Obama voters and moderates to finally admit he’s an entirely overrated, largely failed president who was far more radical than he ever let on. He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way….
In Obama’s ballyhooed first memoir, Dreams of My Father, Samuels summarizes his description of the breakup between Obama and Sheila Miyoshi Jager, one of his serious girlfriends before he married Michelle Obama: “In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism.”
But Garrow, who started writing his Obama biography well into Obama’s second term as president, tracked down Jager — now a professor at Oberlin with a formidable academic reputation — and asked her about her relationship with Obama. (That the credulous journalistic establishment was totally incurious about digging into Obama’s inconsistent and self-serving life story is a thread running throughout the interview.) According to her, what really happened was this:
In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
While it’s hard to land firmly on one side of a he said/she said account of a romantic break-up, Jager has an outstanding reputation; she’s a professor at Oberlin college. She hasn’t been outspoken about Obama on much of anything, much less publicly critical of him. She doesn’t seem bitter about a relationship that ended decades ago, where Obama asked her to marry him twice and she rejected him.
If Jager is to be believed — and I think she is, as the rest of the Samuels-Garrow interview is full of criticism of episodes where Obama has obviously fictionalized aspects of his memoirs and life story — then this just really puts an exclamation point on the narrative established by this landmark interview. Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not explicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, a man who, in Garrow’s considered words, “did not buy into identity politics.” Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan’s vision of race in America.
Being a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures as a matter of the content of your character and judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming… well, it seems hard to believe Obama would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there’s ample evidence that Obama and his defenders do dodge accountability by blaming a more socially acceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists and Republicans. (On the other hand, if Obama is hoping for favorable assessments of his famously antagonistic relationship with Israel, he’s not helped by Jager’s anecdote or the fact that he had his kids baptized at a church run by a guy who even Ta-Nehisi Coates admits spews “crude conspiratorial antisemitism.”)
That “guy” is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church Obama attended for twenty years, where sermons were full of Farrakhan-inflected anti-white sentiments, and Wright himself, after Obama’s election, let loose with a volley of antisemitic sentiments that likely were variations on what Obama had been hearing, intermittently, over two decades.
For those of you who may think this is a little too harsh and/or a Manichean take on Obama’s nuanced worldview, I have good news. The interview is also a springboard to debate Obama’s sexuality. And large portions of the interview are also consumed with discussions of whether Obama is a “celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or … a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society.”…
But it’s been seven years since the guy was in the White House, and the judgment of history is starting to come in. I think we at least have permission to say he was a bad president.
Not just a “bad president.” One of the very worst.
FYI says
I think allah will be having the last word with Obama{koran 3:106}when… he sees his face.
“Then taste the punishment for that ye disbelieved”
somehistory says
As bo’s brother Malik said about bo, “he thinks he’s god.”
DazzleMe says
I agree, somehistory! AND as much as he thinks so, he is NOT God.
notoislam says
BHO is always being the one who dishes out the shit and in reality it is BHO who hates mostly and points the finger of hate at the opposition — If BHO decided to change his state of mind and cracked a smile instead of remaining a GRUMP ( TO PUT IT NICELY) LIFE FOR THIS worst president whoud become more positive God knows and allah does not !
Hoi Polloi says
It’s past time for a more realistic and accurate depiction of BHO to emerge. Thanks to all who have worked to make that happen.
Wellington says
Aside from the fact that Obama was arguably the single most destructive person in American history, he also doesn’t know too much (though he thinks he does). For instance, he thinks “Austrian” is a language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1diNthezRk
Additionally, he didn’t know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and why he said to a group of American veterans listening to him on Memorial Day that the day honors them. No, all veterans are honored on Veterans Day but Memorial Day is only for deceased veterans. (The look of surprise by many veterans when Obama said what he did was quite obvious.)
Yet another example was when Obama averred that Abraham Lincoln was one of the founders of the Republican Party. No he wasn’t. Lincoln remained a Whig for about two years after the founding of the Republican Party in 1854. He had nothing to do with its founding.
Again I assert that Obama would get my vote for the most overrated intellect in the Western world. There are other contenders but Obama is the “winner” here I think.
somehistory says
What a thing to “win.” Wouldn’t want to be him….for all the tea in China.
Hoi Polloi says
Never understood the compliments that rained down on him for his speaking style. But then I never trusted his denials of being a muslim or his choice of Biden.
Anna says
He didn’t write his speeches – beautiful prose no action
DazzleMe says
Hoi Polloi
I always thought he was illegitimate American as well as a mozlum. Never ever voted for him and always believed he was -and is a very destructive part of American society. He is EVIL.
Peter J Pothier says
I’ve only witnessed “mealy mouth” pronouncements from Obama. He is their community organizer shill to further their agenda.
Blougeoisie says
Oh come on! He didn’t do nothing.
joanofark06 says
Well, if being gay is nothing, then he and Satan should get along, REAL WELL!
Let me know if you need proof/evidence. Or just go to either one of these two links….
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/newsweeks-next-cover-obama-first-gay-president
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/newsweek-obama-gay-marriage-cover_n_1512794
So now, you don’t have to think everyone was crazy, when they all told everyone, and the word spread, that he/she, Michelle, was actually Michael, the WHOLE TIME!
And to THINK, that there is word going around, that she/he, will be our next president. That’s when I’ll be screaming “Stop this planet, I want to get off!”, and maybe screaming that, for so MANY times, and for SO MANY YEARS, that MAYBE, just maybe, it WILL STOP, THIS TIME!
Mo says
“Barack Obama is often hailed as one of the greatest orators in modern politics.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, how can anyone make such a claim?! He was unbearable! Not only did his hatred for America, his condescension toward Americans, his insufferable arrogance, and his racism always show through, but he was always, stammering! “Uh, uh. Uh. Um.” He was UNBEARABLE to listen to! I had to turn on captions or read a transcript if I wanted to know anything he said!
joanofark06 says
Sounds pretty much of what I say about OBiden! Practically every time that he stands at the podium, and relates worthless news or facts to reporters, he sounds just like a grade school kid, reading from a telaprompter, trying SO HARD to not mess up his words, or forgetting what he JUST said, and with ALL OF THAT, we can’t see or hear, an ounce of feeling or emotion, in what was said! Or intelligence, for THAT matter!
DazzleMe says
Mo, very well said!!!
Mo says
I spent 8 years being baffled by all the praised heaped on this guy.
somehistory says
One other thing; It is difficult to believe that anyone could think bo is any good at public speaking. His um’s and ah’s and the boring way he speaks…the “i” this and that.
To each his own; but I never could listen to him for more than a sentence or two.
Mo says
For real! I just made a similar comment. Not sure if it posted yet. But, yes, he was unbearable. I am especially sensitive to that sort of thing because I do transcription for my work. I can’t tell you how it grates on me to hear and then have to type that, “uh”, “um”, crap. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. For the life of me, I don’t understand why people still say he was such a great speaker. It’s like I lived a different reality for 8 years than everyone else did.
somehistory says
They grate on my nerves too. I took several years of public speaking. those things are called word whiskers…and are used by people who don’t really know what they are going to say. They…in the mind of the speaker…fill in the gaps between thoughts.
Those of us who recognized his speaking inability needed a platform to say so….the media had theirs to praise him. It was disgusting to hear. Like chris mathews telling us about the thrill and the chill up his leg.
Mo says
“word whiskers”
Ha! Thanks for teaching me a new term!
somehistory says
You are welcome, Mo.
Hoi Polloi says
Thanks SH. Love that term.
somehistory says
You’re welcome, HP. Glad you like it; I can’t take any credit for it.
Wellington says
Many, somehistory, when Obama was President regularly counted how many times he used “I” in his speeches. It was a ton load in speech after speech. The man is in love with himself and thinks he’s God’s—make that Allah’s—gift to America and the world at large.
somehistory says
Thank you, Wellington. I have to agree. A good public speaker relates and empathizes with his audience. bo is incapable of doing that.
I cannot stand to listen to him or look at him.
mike says
I hate Obama and everything he stands for
Kepha says
I’m an “it’s the view, not the hue” Obama critic.
I firmly believe that a lot of America voted for the O to prove “non-racist” bonafides, espcially the kine of Bashan (Amos 4:1–for the benefit who cry up the prophets’ message of “social justice”), oops, soccer moms and white teachers.
Obama an orator? I watched a snippet of his debate with Sen. McCain. While McCain was pouring out facts figures, and logic, Obama seemed to be saying nothing but, “Hope…Change…Hope…Change…”, as if he were a mechanical dummy with a windup key in his back. Then the media pundits were gushing over his “brilliance”,and I simply could not watch any longer. It gave me great pleasure to see Joe the Plumber trip up the supposedly “most intelligent presidential candidate ever”.
Then again, Obama’s advocacy of abortion to the moment of birth (like Shrillary Shrooooo’s view) meant that I would never give him my vote–not even for city dog catcher.
As for the association with Jeremiah Wright, it’s another big minus. The original Jeremiah told the Jewish exiles in Babylonia to pray for the peace (shalom) of the place wherein they dwelt, and persevere in ordinary life. Wright seems to await with pleasure the sort of violence that accompanies the collapse of a major power–and blissfully unaware that people like him may well be among the first victims of such violence.
A press secretary who admired Chairman Mao? For Pete’s sake, I’d served in a China where ordinary people might speak disparagingly of “the Gang of Four” and hold up five fingers; and where cabbies, on learning that my wife was Taiwanese, would say bitterly, “You know, the wrong side won our civil war” (it was not long after the Tiananmen massacre).
I’ve held a very jaundiced view of the major American media ever since I was RIF’ed from the Foreign Service back in the ’90’s. I’d been looking at refugee and migration affairs in Asia reported on religious freedom issues and dissent in China, alien smuggling, and also got whiff of an actual guerrilla war for the independence of Sharki Turkestan (Islamic militancy, ethnic separatism, totalitarian decay, and the fate of a nuclear proving ground). I chewed up, digested, and served up in palatable chunks for bigger boys the mess in Rwanda in 1994, and a multistate war across the middle of Africa which, it seemed, only _The Economist_ covered. Our own media was too interested in Madonnna’s love life and the infidelities of sports figures.
But, in my new life as a high school teacher of social studies and English for speakers of other languages, it has been my pleasure to explain to some of my African kids who were shocked at the O’s support of abortion and SSM, that they now understood why it wasn’t just race that led people to vote against the O.
Wellington says
An informed and shrewd assessment, Kepha.
somehistory says
Agreed. And the baby-killing thing is enough to count him out, completely.
Hoi Polloi says
Thanks, K. Please post more of this fascinating background.
Aum says
He does not know when to stop – I always compared his speeches to Neil Kinnock (UK Labour Politician).
OLD GUY says
Obama is a BULLSHIT artist, lier.
A David Darman says
Will Trump be similarly vilified if he is convicted of the criminal charges filed against him in Georgia?
Hoi Polloi says
Was anyone in O’s party criminally charged for election denial or inciting violence? Have any Trump-appointed judges with a history of partisanship tried them? How many connected to these election issues have been prosecuted? Or those who’ve illegally destroyed records, including HRC? Did O or his staff pay any price for contempt, such as with Eric Holder? When do Joe and Hunter pay? Or any of those who installed Joe? Russia hoaxers, all, and no punishment, either. Ukraine $$$$$ while Maui burns, no investigation or action.
Vilification is not the issue. If only. It’s criminality.
somehistory says
I recall the “election denial” that the dems carried on when bush beat gore and all that hanging chad business…counting and re-counting and whether the chad was for bush, for gore, a “pregnant chad,” or a “fat chad,”
gore was not arrested for challenging the votes. as you say, hc was not arrested for her claims that Trump stole the election, nor for her part in the fake steele dossier.
Denial is okay when the cheating dems can’t quite pull it off, but not okay when anyone else challenges the cheaters.
Hoi Polloi says
Libs of TikTok regularly posts that great compilation of Dems in denial. It’s a great counter. And, as you note, Gore/Bush. Good one that I missed.
somehistory says
Since I am a Florida native, anything to do with the State is of interest to me. Everyone wanted to blame Florida for the problem gore insisted had stolen what was rightfully his and called Floridians ‘stupid’, making so many jokes about the ‘chads.’
.
that’s why it sticks in my head when other instances might not.
Kepha says
Were either Janet Yellen or the O indicted for weaponizing the IRS against the Tea Party?
somehistory says
How about when the reporter had her computer and phone taken? Or when the FOX reporter had similar actions taken against him?
How about when the guy who had a bumper sticker opposing bo was arrested?
Or when the video maker was arrested for his “vile”…according to h. clinton…representation of the fake prophet of islam?
Too many crimes that have been left to dry in the dust of the dems backyard. Who could name them all?
Bull Herman says
This is Obummer.
Catering to Shiite Islamist Iran. Pretending to be Christian. Nobody claiming to be Christian has a preacher that stands at a pulpit in church and takes God’s Name in vain 3x like Jeremiah Wright did.
Obummer never criticized Islam; he never left Islam. He just lied (taqqiya) to US dhimmis. That was his duty.
Now that it’s come up that he made antisemitic comments while at the museum exhibit of the Eichman trial says more about his character and the obvious lack thereof.
Look how stupid morons like Jesse Jackson and others appear after bawling at Obummer’s speech in front of the fake Greek columns during his campaign vs McCain.
As for drag queens? Well, since Obummer fantasizes daily about making love to men, perhaps the drag queens are a real life manifestation of his desires. And perhaps those urges Obummer has rests on 5 year olds.
That’s rotten food for thought.
somehistory says
He went to a “church” supposedly Christian, but when he spoke at harvard, he had a painting representing Jesus Christ covered so no one could see…including bo.
bo is a pathological liar.
somehistory says
A person who is Truly a Christian, knows full well that faith is very important to spiritual health. And prayer is one very important way of gaining more faith.
Jesus said to pray for “more faith” if one is lacking.
The Bible says that God…the God of the Jews and the God of Christians, i a “Hearer of prayer.” He answer the prayers of those who seek His help.
One other thing that shows bo is not Christian and has no idea what being a Christian is all about is his lack of trust in prayers being heard. And not just a “lack” but a mocking attack on the power of prayer.
Not just his own, but that of other people. If his are not, I don’t have to wonder why. The Bible says what prayers go unheard.
“Barack Obama Attacks America for Offering ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ on Maui Tragedy”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/barack-obama-attacks-america-for-offering-thoughts-and-prayers-on-maui-tragedy/ar-AA1foZbK?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=333b354384e446c69fb60d264b94ed47&ei=50