David Axelrod: again with the message
It’s not the message, stupid!
But the New York Times, a goodly portion of Obama’s remaining supporters, and the Obama administration itself seem to continue to think (or to pretend?) that it is.
This Times piece focuses on how David Axelrod has somehow failed to help the great communicator Obama get his message across. It also draws a portrait of the Obama aide as a beleaguered and long-suffering idealist who’s too soft for the rough and tumble world of Washington.
This is rather humorous, actually, to anyone who knows much about the tough-minded Chicago-based Mr. Axelrod. But it’s not the only unintentionally funny thing in the article. Here are a few choice items:
In a lengthy interview in his office on Wednesday, Mr. Axelrod was often defiant, saying he did not give a “flying” expletive “about what the peanut gallery thinks” and did not live for the approval “of the political community.”…
“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
There’s another mildly comic but strange bit in the middle of the piece that includes what appears to be a gaffe by President Obama, unremarked upon by either Axelrod or the article’s author, Mark Leibovich. First, here’s Axelrod, making an intentional funny:
Sitting at his desk next door to the Oval Office last week, he was tearing into a five-inch corned beef sandwich on rye with a Flintstone-size turkey drumstick waiting on deck. “I am the poster child for the president’s obesity program,” he said.
Then Obama enters and tries another witticism:
Mr. Obama surveyed the spread on Mr. Axelrod’s desk with a slight smirk.
“What is this, King Arthur’s court?” he asked, then pulled Mr. Axelrod aside to talk about a health care speech he was about to deliver.
King Arthur’s court? I believe Obama must have meant to refer to King Henry VIII, who was often pictured as a glutton holding a drumstick:
This is a small matter, but it’s another example of the peculiar lacunae in Obama’s experience. The reference—Henry VIII chomping on a drumstick—is a fairly common one, not an arcane association. King Arthur’s court (correct me if I’m wrong) doesn’t conjure up any epicurean associations of the culinary sort; it’s about idealism and chivalry and courtly love, as well as a bit of sexual fooling-around.
The fact that Obama got it wrong is more evidence of his disconnect. And speaking of disconnect, take the end of that same sentence—Obama and overeating gourmand (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Axelrod are about to consult on the president’s health care speech, in promotion of a policy that, among other things, is supposed to stress preventative medicine and good health habits.
Pingback:Instapundit » Blog Archive » HENRY VIII, KING ARTHUR, whatever….
“The country is in the very best of hands.”
And those hands are covered in gravy.
Wow. Two Instalanches in less than twenty-four hours!
It is weird how much Obama doesn’t know. Likewise the people around Obama and those who write about him.
Or if they do know, they never correct him. I suspect this goes way back with Obama.
…Obama is so intelligent, well educated, well spoken, accomplished…
“What is this, Camelot?” I guess he’s no Jack Kennedy.
Camelot is a silly place…
> “Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
This is another one of those things they just don’t get. We, and everyone, *should* be skeptical and cynical about government, no matter what party is in power. That’s the American system, and it’s why we have checks and balances built into the Constitution: because power is dangerous and corrupting, and it is the responsibility of the people to be skeptical, suspicious, cynical, and oppositional to those who wish to hold power over us. I was skeptical and cynical about Bush, and I’m skeptical and cynical about Obama. You should be too. If you’re not, you’re a fool.
This is OT, but is another example of Obama’s disconnect from reality in managing a team of rivals: nuclear weapons. Thank God we have Gates. Who knows where Obama’s dreams might lead us without someone to rein him in. I’ve always suspected that those correct decisions on foreign policy that Obama is praised for are not his natural stance, but the result of being hit over the head by better-informed, reality-based Bush holdovers.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34010.html
Private Life of Henry VIII, and that was Charles Laughton. That’s an entertaining movie.
“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
Which trend? The one that started in 2008 or the one that started in 1776? Cause Obama has contributed to (not reversed) the former a great deal.
WHAT a doofus. Seriously.
But on the other hand, one has to ask “what are they teaching them in these schools?” Western civilization is a real bore, you know.
I once witnessed a near-brawl whilst working at a downtown D.C. publishing establishment. One young woman had the misfortune of scoffing at another African-American college-educated (English major) woman for never having heard of Jane Austen. The woman who had never heard of Jane Austen gave a lecture to the former woman on the superiority of African literature.
And it amused me a years later, while visiting those shrines to Bronte and Austen while in England, to learn that some of the most popular tourist groups were Japanese. There was a busload of them coming in just then.
Given that a substantial portion of the O’Bumbler’s upbringing was very, very far from the English-speaking world, his ignorance on this and other topics should not be surprising. His utter and complete ignorance of economics is another matter.
A small point but important, I think.
“I am the poster child for the president’s obesity program,” he said. (Axlerod)
So Mr Obama is pushing the anti message to Mrs. Obama? I wonder what that says about the dynamics in the White House?
King Arthur, King Henry VIII, Don King, somebody.
The woman who had never heard of Jane Austen gave a lecture to the former woman on the superiority of African literature.
What African literature would that be?
Nigel Ray: Very good.
“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
Yes! Take us back to 1980, to the end of the Carter Administration when we all believed in the government’s ability to solve any problem!
“What is this, King Arthur’s court?”
“Was it ‘over’ when te Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!”
Occam’s Beard beat me to it. Heh.
The lacunae in Obama’s education seem to be taking up more room than the wisdom he learned from Frank Marshall Davis .
king authur’s court was…. Camelot….. The President’s mocking disbelief may be a freudian slip on his part, but tracks my thoughts exactly.
King Arthur’s Court is in the 57th state.
I believe the King Arthur he is referring to is the one at Round Table Pizza.
Obama hates Great Britain; surely it’s easy enough to understand why he’d get their history wrong.
And using an Idi Amin reference might be a bit much.
What African lit? Well, you could try that Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. My kids had to read his “The Burden of Memory The Muse of Forgiveness” in high school in the International Baccalaureate program, an anti-American, pro-Third World indoctrination program masquerading as an advanced, accelerated public school program. Soyinka’s writing is impenetrable. I guess that makes his work superior.
The IB history course used Howard Zinn’s “People’s History”. It was so laughably biased that even high schoolers knew it was a waste of time.
I wonder if Barry had the advantage of exposure to Zinn and Soyinka?
Yes, it is a laugh that Obama’s mind confuses the mythical King Arthur with the real (but mythically portrayed?) King Henry VIII. He has a knowledge of history learned from movies, and confuses the movies as well.
But, it is frightening that his economic advisors confuse myth and reality, and strongly support the myth. They think all of their spending just HAS TO improve the economy, just HAS TO prime the pump (as if the population is like an ancient water pump) or stimulate wealth production (as if the population were a hungry prize fighter who just needs a good steak to get up again and fight).
Obama’s team believes (with Paul Krugman) that all the money he is borrowing and spending is going to make us all rich, that he is sending $trillions out into the world, and will see a 50% return on this spending investment. That is a larger return than almost all successful businesses! It is called the Keynesian Multiplier. Obama’s team thinks the multiplier is 1.5 ($100 of government spending produces $150 of wealth).
In all seriousness, and also for a laugh, if that were true, then the government could license counterfeiting and we would all become rich. Actually, the government attitude toward printing money is very close to counterfeiting.
Let’s Counterfeit Our Way to Wealth
Our future is entrusted to a man, a team, and a majority in Congress who reason in random analogies, and are willing to dedicate our freedom and future to applying those analogies as if they were detailed, verified, thought.
Where is the policy paper, Obama’s/Congress’s research on healthcare reform?
The woman who had never heard of Jane Austen gave a lecture to the former woman on the superiority of African literature.
Maybe she was thinking of Tookie Williams’ parum opus. He died for his art!
> Akatsukami Says: And those hands are covered in gravy.
PORK gravy…
I think have very effectively communicated their vision of socialism. That is why the public is scared $#;+13$$.
> What African literature would that be?
Indeed. Don’t you have to be literate to have literature?
The other thing is, of course, the notion that, even IF African literature were superior, if you don’t know who Jane Austen even is, then how can you possibly know enough of English literature to make such a judgment call?
.
Q.E.D. — The woman was an arrogant and ignorant parrot, spouting words she’d been told were the truth.
.
For good order’s sake, I believe that the emerging consensus about King Arthur is that he, too, was quite real. Now, there is a fair amount of myth that has sprung up around him.
> the mythical King Arthur with the real (but mythically portrayed?) King Henry VIII.
Not to seem hypercritical or anything but I believe the term “legendary” is more appropriate to Arthur. It’s almost certain that there was a King Arthur, that there was a Camelot, and that at least some aspects of the stories about him are true.
How much of that is the stuff of legend and myth, but the term mythical is more applied to pure fictions — the mythical unicorn, the mythical cyclops, the gods of Norse/Greek/Egyptian myth…
Certainly far more truth is known today of Henry than Arthur, but neither is pure fiction.
Anyone consider that Obama has visited a Medieval Times or Renaissance fair? Perhaps the confusion is from there. Perhaps Obama is a LARPer!
> What African literature would that be?
>Indeed. Don’t you have to be literate to have literature?
Come on, some excellent English language literature comes out of Africa. Check out Nigeria’s CHINUA ACHEBE. His classic novel is “THINGS FALL APART,” is about an African Chieftain watching his family fall apart. The lead character’s name is “OKONKWO,” but he’ll remind you of your own Dad.
Also, the Obama Turkey leg line was obviously a Renaissance Fair joke. He says enough stupid stuff without having to make up a gaffe…
I live in Obama’s old IL state senate district and know some of the poeple around him, and many others who were somewhat instrumental in his rise.
They are not especially intelligent… not stupid, of course, but as such things go, neither smarter nor stupider than the average bear in hi-level politics.
But where they really fall down is that they are incredibly parochial. They associate only with people like themselves in outlook, income, sources of income, education, on and on. They travel a lot, but when out of the country they still only asssociate with people like themselves. They think themselves cosmopolitan and intelligent, but for the tasks they have before them they are parochial and dim. They have no curiosity about anyone or anything beyond that narrow circle, because they are convinced they already know everything and everybody worth knowing.
Come on, some excellent English language literature comes out of Africa.
Right, and don’t forget Willie Shakespeare’s immortal play Othello, which details the travails of an interracial couple fighting against The Man until the brother was framed for domestic violence.
Come on, some excellent English language literature comes out of Africa.
Why of course!
It’s one of my hobbies! Along with:
Eskimo brewing and distilling techniques; pre-columbian wheels in South America; traditional Jewish tattooing techniques and bedouin astronauts.
It’s almost certain that there was a King Arthur, that there was a Camelot, and that at least some aspects of the stories about him are true.
Geez. Don’t we have enough trouble with actual history that we should quibble about King Arthur?
Rally, I think you’d be hard pressed to find even one professional historian (ie historians with reputations to protect) would would attach the phrase “almost certain” to anything Arthurian, except perhaps as in “almost certain folklore”
Suppositions, speculations and plausible scenarios are not the stuff of history.
I think Gray wins this thread.
Someone should send Obama a copy of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.
Someone should send Obama a copy of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.
Is it available for the Kindle? That kind of like a small teleprompter.
And just who fails to recognise that a name like Shakespeare is most certainly African? They just made up the William part.
And just who fails to recognise that a name like Shakespeare is most certainly African?
That was just his slave name. His real surname was …well…you know. Back off to Oslo for the Nobel literature prize!
Actually Neal Scroggs, historians have been chasing Arthur for some time. If memory serves they have it down to a warlord that lived around 450 to 500. Arguments have even been made for Camelot.
You can tell whose a history buff here.
To a child with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And give that child a chainsaw and he’ll try to drive nails with it.
Axelrod deals in messages. So to him, everything must be related to the message somehow or he doesn’t know what to do with it.
I think the article left out the part where President Obama told Axelrod that they can talk about the health care speech after “I have a smoke.”
@Bob from VA
Being a history buff and an historian are different, aren’t they? The pursuit of Arthur and his Camelot is an activity for dilettantes and cranks.
History consists of what one can demonstrate by evidence. There is no evidence at all that anybody called Arthur or Arturius or whatever — king, chieftain or whatever existed in the 5th century CE.
Yes, there is a site in Cornwall which local tradition calls Tintagel Castle, but the tradition is unknown before the 11th century.
Tintagel has produced some early Celtic material, mostly bronze items like cloak pins. Then there are some Roman period inscriptions, but nothing to suggest that Tintagel was anything but a trading post, not the seat of royal power. In 1998 the so-called Arthur Stone was unearthed near Tintagel. Inscribed in Latin it appears to be a memorial stone to someone called Colus or Father Colus (he may have been an abbot) erected by a descendant called Artognou. The stone dates to ca 700 CE. Nobody who knows the period believes this is the famous King Arthur.
Before Geoffrey of Monmouth there is no evidence for Arthur at all. The Dark Age Celtic monks of Wales and Ireland were an enterprising bunch. Besides copying Gospels many of them collected stories, poetry and such and committed them to writing for the first time. Everything we know about Ireland and Wales from the Fall of Rome until the Conquest we owe to them and to archeology. These monks recorded tales about Merlin, who is a genuine figure from ancient Celtic folklore, but they say nothing about Arthur.
The evidence is the Geoffrey of Monmouth made it up. That is the cold, hard conclusion based on the contemporary record and archeology. Even Geoffrey’s colleagues in the Church thought it was BS. Let me quote just one contemporary critic, William of Newbury, on the subject: “Only a person ignorant of ancient history would have any doubt about how shamelessly and impudently he lies in almost everything,” and further: “It is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors from Vortigern onwards, was made up, partly by himself and partly by others, either from an inordinate love of lying, or for the sake of pleasing the Britons.” (by Britons he means the Welsh, who at that time had their own independent state)
“You can tell whose a history buff here.”
You can also tell who’s a grammar buff. And it’s not you.
“The peanut gallery.” I believe that refers to the voters. The people who put Axelrod’s boss in office, and whom he allegedly serves. His constituents. Nice to know that he doesn’t give a damn what they think.
I can think of no better example of cynicism than a high-ranking White House operative who has only contempt for the voters and is not interested in whether they approve of what his administration is doing.
There was a King Arthur like figure in history, only he was called Alfred the Great. He saved Saxon England from being over-run by the Danes in the 9th century.
Obama is no King Arthur and certainly no King Alfred.
Sundog, What’s wrong with my grammaring?
About Arthur, given the times and conditions of dark age Britain I would be surprised if there were not a great number of warlords who could have appeared Arthur-like in some way.
The Arthur story could be an amalgamation of different personalities, legends and oral histories.
Well, we know that Arthur was a legend within fifty years or so of when he is supposed to have died, since he is referenced in several early poems.
Castleden, Rodney. King Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend. New York: Routledge, 2000. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 2001.
Castleden actually makes a fairly tight argument not only for the existence of King Arthur, but that a fair amount about his life and death can be reasonably conjectured, based on known practice. Quite a facinating book – the best and most carefully researched book on the subject that I have ever read. There was no Camelot, he suggests, because like many early kings Arthur moved constantly. He also suggests that Arthur was not killed on the battlefield, but was mortally wounded or crippled and retired to a monastary – an “island” either figuaritively or possibly literally – and his fall was kept secret. This, again, has parallels in known practice – see Bede for examples.
Neal Scroggs,
What about Nennius, the reference to Arthur in the 6th century poem Y Gododdin, the mutiple place-names, Gildas, etc.? Geoffrey of Monmouth was a late-comer.
To change the subject slightly; this from Ace of Spades HQ re: Obmessiah “The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building.”
“The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building.”
So this experience was more or less of a piece with his editing of the HLR? Color me surprised.
“‘Come on, some excellent English language literature comes out of Africa.’ Why of course! It’s one of my hobbies! Along with: Eskimo brewing and distilling….”
Unfair: Good literature is being written in Africa, both in English and in various local languages. Just because you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Please don’t let your (entirely reasonable) dislike for afro-centric assh*les blind you to the existence of quality literature in Africa or elsewhere.
As for that militantly Afrocentric woman who “gave a lecture…on the superiority of African literature”: Not only is it silly on political grounds (part of the pathology of thinking everything African is superior) but it’s also extremely unlikely even on mere statistical grounds: Far, far fewer books are published in Africa than in the West–orders of magnitude fewer (not only in absolute numbers, but as a percentage of population.)
We are truly in the hands of the Yahoos.
Re Arthur: I’d always heard there was a dux bellorum ca. 500-something involved in the battle of Mount Baden who is a candidate for the Arthur figure. Or do I have that all wrong?
Austen is a genius. The woman who didn’t even know who she was is appallingly ignorant of one of the gems of Western civilization.
And hell yes, symphonies are superior to folk music.
“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
This administration has done the impossible. It has outdone the Clinton presidency in alarming the people about reckless spending and disregard for their concerns. Whatever his message may have been, Obama’s actions have shown a desire to dispense with representing the people in order to achieve a big step toward a more European socialism.
As for the gaffe about Henry VIII, it’s a minor mix up. What really demonstrates an intellectual shortcoming is the continued reminder that nationalized health care has been proposed repeatedly by progressives for 100 years as a reason for passing it now. Of all the non-sequiturs! I would think that the correct conclusion is that Americans don’t trust such big government schemes and don’t want the federal government inserting itself into their relationship with their health care providers. It’s THEIR money and THEY need it and don’t want it being spent by the federal government!
Pingback:Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obamateurism of the Day
Hot Air: Obamateurism of the Day
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/10/obamateurism-of-the-day-226/