The sophomoric administration
Bizarre Marie Harf, State Department spokesperson, tackles the Bergdahl prisoner swap and its aftermath:
Some people commenting on the video at YouTube say the clip looks like a Saturday Night Live skit. But that doesn’t quite capture it for me. There’s something much more profoundly disturbing about her, as though she’s a bad actress miscast in a role for which she’s learned only some of the lines. The director has given her poor advice on how to play it, how to dress and wear her hair, and what voice quality would be suitable. To say that she lacks gravitas it to say the obvious. But she lacks even the appearance of gravitas; there’s no attempt at gravitas, except perhaps the glasses.
And this is real. This is one of the people leading our country—an eager and snarky high school student giving a school report, or trying to think on her feet as a member of the debating society.
Harf is quite young—she’s 32—and although that’s hardly the whole problem it’s some small part of it. The fault lies in an administration that would place her in such a position and expose her inadequacies. But those inadequacies are congruent with those of the administration itself, an administration too lacking in judgment to even recognize what’s missing here, or to even recognize that there is anything missing here. Or, if they do, they see it as a feature, not a bug.
I’ve been focusing on Harf’s manner and style, but of course a much larger problem is her message. That, too, is congruent with that of the administration and so many of its other spokespeople. Dude, that was five years ago [minute 1:41]! And who are you going to believe, those lying soldiers who knew him and saw him leave, or us?
Fact pattern? Do actual facts need a pattern. Spin needs a pattern.
Fact Pattern:
John Kerry (formerly Hillary Clinton), Jen Psaki, Marie Harf, but they have yet to figure out just why everything they touch turns sour.
We’re in the best of hands!
Chronologically they are adults, but mentally they are still adolescents. She probably works out every night on the anti-gravitas machine.
She must be someone’s squeeze or relative. How else could her voice or mannerisms be ignored?
neo-neocon said:
“Harf is quite young–she’s 32–and although that’s hardly the whole problem it’s some small part of it.”
At 32 she is nearly twice as old as the 17 and 18 year olds in whose hands I could confidently place my life when I was in the Navy.
Obama and his crew can’t be trusted to, to…
I can’t come up with an analogy that isn’t an insult to anybody. I can respect somebody working the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. To compare the “Dude, that was like two years ago” to somebody working the customer service window at Mickey D’s is an insult to teenagers.
We have a winner!
This should be on the Twitterverse.
Nothing more exposes what’s wrong with the world than to witness those affirmatively actioned and immersed to steep in self-esteem, demonstrate consummate confidence in their utter incompetence. I expect the present generation being impressed in our schools of their inestimable self-worth will be worse.
The movie Idiocracy is starting to seem dated.
Neo, my wife who is not political at all saw this yesterday, while I was ranting, and made the exact same comment about it being like an SNL skit. She didn’t know who this woman was, but that was her only comment.
The Obama administration as a parody of itself.
Anyway I share the same feeling about this administration’s choice of people for important positions. They surround themselves with snotty, grossly unqualified adolescents who have no business being in positions of responsibility.
But this is Obama at his core – he is a case of arrested development in every way. It’s borne out in his foreign policy, which I’ve said before is based on the kind of naiive opinions you hear young (and not so young) liberal arts majors pontificating about at the quad.
These people he surrounds himself with are the same – immensely condescending and often staggeringly ignorant. Appointing people like this to such important positions would be the highest level of irresponsiblity, but Obama himself is unable to recognize that they’re unqualified. In his eyes, these are the people he loves, admires, and who love and adore him. People who stopped growing up somewhere in college, who never got beyond their youthful idealism or their sense of infallibility.
If we make it through the next few years without a serious crisis, our enemies will be kicking themselves for missing a golden opportunity to destroy us. There has never been a time in our history where we were so vulnerable to attack – these people, if faced with a serious threat, would have no idea what to do, or how to respond to seriously dangerous, tough, and smart leadership. If we were ever threatened by nuclear attack or something as serious, they would be giving smarmy press conferences about Fox News and the Republicans over-stating the threat as the missles rained down on their empty heads.
Hell, whenever Psaki speaks, I hear a thirteen year old bat mitzvah girl thanking her mom, her dad, her grandparents, her brother…. It’s adolescent sing-song speech pattern. Would we expect anything better from someone more junior?
I feel the same way whenever State Dept. spokesperson Jen Psaki makes an appearance. She recently commented that Obama “doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world”:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/30/states-jen-psaki-obama-doesnt-give-himself-enough-/
And she was snarky with a reporter on the Bergdahl issue also:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/06/03/jen-psaki-picks-up-where-susan-rice-left-off-on-bergdahl/
And of course there’s the now infamous “dude! That was five years ago” on Benghazi.
The Human Events article on the Bergdahl scandal (linked earlier by Neo) said this:
“…. It never occurred to any of the teenagers who run this White House to do a little research in advance on the man they were proposing to trade five deadly terror masterminds for?”
That’s it in a nutshell. Where are the grown-ups in this administration?
And we could have had Mitt Romney, for pete’s sake.
CV, I was just trying to remember whether it was here or somewhere else that I’d recently read “teenagers who run this White House.” That’s really it, all right.
Anyone check how much smoke and other drugs she used in her life history?
And I would add that’s it’s not necessarily an age thing. I’ve always been very impressed by Dana Perino,and she would have been around the same age as Harf when she served as press secretary for Bush (2005-2007). She was in her early 30s then.
But then and now, Perino presents herself with maturity and clarity and consistently treats people with respect.
You know, Dale Carnegie courses do amazing things for people to help with public speaking. Toastmasters, too. If someone has a job that is as a “spokesperson” it’s worth the investment of time ( and in the case of the Dale Carnegie, moolah.) One would think that being able to speak in public would be a prerequisite.
But then, i’m sure most of us here have seen the videos of that winning debating team…
Both Psaki and Harf worked on Obama’s reelection campaign so it’s no surprise that they were given choice jobs for all their hard work in the trenches.
Gravitas is both relative and in the eye of the beholder. Within her chain of command she is probably considered a real heavy weight. Of course that is the problem, isn’t it?
You’ve nailed it (again),N-Neo. WHEW..!! Ms.Harf + Duuude Boy + Jay(Lips are movin’, he’s lying for Obam-Bam) Carney + Susan Rice + Stuck-In-Adolescence-For-Decades John Boy Kerry & Shrillary Clinton=His Infantile Majesty’s Support Chorus. NOT ONE ADULT ABOARD.
Are we not blessed, America?
Two observations:
1. I now deeply hate the term “fact pattern”.
2. If someone wants to do a remake of Zappa’s “Valley Girl”, we have a perfect nominee to the title character narration.
I remember thinking, when Bush 43 came into office, that it was nice to have adults in charge again, but I would take the Clinton Administration over this crowd of clowns any day.
32 is not young. It is a reasonable amount of time to be educated, start a career, make some real progress in that career, and then be able to be an effective spokesperson for your superiors.
But in today’s world, too many 32-year-olds are still adolescents, and we all know that Obama is deathly afraid of hiring someone smarter and more experienced than he is, which is why his administration is as clueless and bumbling as the Man-Child himself.
Somebody needs to tattoo the “fact pattern” on her forehead with a ball-peen hammer.
And Youtube commentor supplies us with her new job title: “Spokeskank.”
The mannerism that made me want to put my fist through her face (I’m a girl, so I get to) was when she dismissed the Fox News reporter’s questions even as she turned, snottily, to the next questioner. It was such a “tell.”
The link you have to the Krauthammer column has a bunch of leftwing excrescences leaving little deposits in the Comments. It’s all on display: all their various Approved Hatreds, naked bits dangling obscenely.
I might need to unplug from all this. It’s bad for my blood pressure.
She’s an evil and wicked person who lies to support a tyrant. That’s what’s profoundly disturbing. Eva Braun was a blond.
We are in some deep shit.
I might need to unplug from all this. It’s bad for my blood pressure.
What did you think I did between 2008-12. Communications wise, I might as well have been in a cave meditating on the meaning of Enlightenment.
When you believe in things that you don’t understand you make everyone suffer. The whole flock on the left (and a very few on the right) are ideological zombies. Thank you messiah & MSM for making this clear to any who are willing to open their eyes.
Thanks for the tip in Parker:
Very superstitious, wash your face and hands,
Rid me of the problem, do all that you can,
Keep me in a daydream, keep me goin’ strong,
You don’t wanna save me, sad is my song
When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way, yeh, yeh
“If we make it through the next few years without a serious crisis, our enemies will be kicking themselves for missing a golden opportunity to destroy us.”
Hell, southpaw, the serious crisis has been upon us for 10 years now. The old saw, “Don’t interfere when your adversary is committing suicide” applies to our foreign enemies. It is our passivity as Americans that facilitates the Democratic/Ruling Class destruction of the formerly great USA. The destruction of the Middle Class, a mind set as well as an economic grouping, is the major feature of our rendering.
The best versionof little stevies’ song by the late great Stevie Ray Vaugan:
http://tinyurl.com/khufyja
I hope this entire administration becomes unhinged in the next couple of years.
They’re doing more damage to liberalism than our side is.
…AND, ya’know what else..?
The Dems, the Lib-Left, the colleges & universities, the mainstream(cough)media.. ALL of those fools, louts, pinheads and Low-Info Voters cannot wait to extend The Boy King’s Infamy with a Hillary Clinton Administration. WITH—Dont’cha know—Billy Bubba fully aboard and sucking the ions out of all available air.
70-Years ago today: D-Day. And, today?? The active, deliberate, knowing dismantling of The Greatest Power for Good on the planet. From within.
They’ve got to be stopped, America.