Lest We Forget

Today I set myself the task of digging up the most fawning, worshipful, obsequious, asskissingest, knobgobblingest, dopiest thing about Obama ever published.

As David French pointed out recently, a real newspaper editor looked at this paragraph, and decided it was fit for the newspaper to publish:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Yes, I think we can all degree that's pretty much the dopiest thing about Obama that's ever been published. But all sorts of dumb stuff has been written about his wife. Here's the introductory paragraphs to WaPo columnist Sally Quinn's 2009 piece on Michelle Obama's arms:

"May I change the subject," said a prominent Washington theologian at a recent dinner. The conversation had been high-minded -- religion, philosophy, the nature of evil. "I'd like to talk about Michelle Obama's arms," he said.

He is a big fan of those arms. We then began a discussion about the significance of the first lady's arms. Actually, it turned out to be equally serious. Michelle Obama's arms, we determined, were transformational. Her arms are representative of a new kind of woman: young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing and, most of all, loving.

What if I wrote a piece for this blog called "Trump's Hair Is Making America Great Again"? You morons would all read it looking for the punchline, I'm sure. But if it turned out that I was *serious*, I'd guess most of you would be thinking that I had lost my mind. And you'd be right. What utter crap. I simply don't understand why these people aren't embarrassed to write the stuff that they do about Obama.

And now for something completely different, although very much in keeping with the 'Lest We Forget' theme:

Author Diana (American Betrayal) West has an interesting blog which I hadn't known about until recently. I was particularly impressed with Back by Popular Demand: The Right's Anti-Trump Lexicon, a collection of goofy, infuriating, ridiculously unhinged anti-Trump quotes from assorted GOPe apparatchiks and #NeverTrump-ers, but I suppose I'm repeating myself. It's a pretty extensive compendium, so it's one of those pages you dip into for a few minutes and then bookmark for future reference.

[Update] OK, Masturbatin' Pete came up with a doozy, one that I had forgotten. It's Ezra Klein being lifted up to the clouds in rapturous bliss:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Klein had to stop here and have a cigarette.

posted by OregonMuse at 06:26 PM

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