If you missed Fox News' primetime coverage of President Obama's inauguration, then you missed a theatre of the absurd that was perhaps peerless. The NY Times observed editorially that President Obama spoke "only obliquely of the persistent gridlock in Congress, where he will face right-wing Republicans whose bleak agenda would weaken civil rights, shred the social safety net and block important programs that could help put millions of jobless Americans back to work," but that was OK, because Fox had it covered--the bleakness, that is.
I rarely watch what Ailes, however it seemed acutely advisable last night, given that the nation awaits the Grand Old Party's incubating permutations of grimly odd pettiness. So it was with plucky resolve that, interspersed with my evening's immensely apt reading--Foucault's Madness and Civilization--I suffered through huge, hallucinatory chunks of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
Their division of labor was intriguing. While O'Reilly punctuated again and again the eschatology of debt, about which, according to the host, Obama is altogether oblivious--as was the host to the ideological history of the debt's true Lords of Creation--Hannity convulsed sentimentally over national joblessness, about which Obama, one gathered, is just as oblivious. Hannity gravely interviewed two House Republicans about the jobs crisis. They too were grave in agreeing with Sean that we have a grave crisis. We need more jobs. No recovery recommendations, however, were forthcoming.
Anyway so there we have it--a peek preview into how the pseudoconservative crime bosses intend to go after Obama for the next couple years. Wailing about the debt that they racked up and decrying a glacial reemployment pace of their own insistent making are of course nothing new; yet I detected not one dram of a more happily warring Republicanism, which is the fraudulent word on the streets.
I seldom watch it myself but one cannot help but admire the calm assurance with which these gentlemen peddle their nonsense, secure in the knowledge that no part of the demographic they have secured for their advertisers is likely to do anything but nod in agreement. And what a demographic gold mine it is! There is nothing that can't be sold to the determinedly gullible. They are a giant collection of pinatas, you hit them with a talking point and money falls out.
Posted by: Peter G | January 22, 2013 at 08:32 AM
Lately, I find watching Fox News and other conservative outlets more informative than any of the of the rest. I believe they see Obama more clearly. The inaugural speech is further confirmation that Obama will be aggressive and assertive. He has learned that he must fight, and he has learned how to fight. Yesterday, he struk me as a heavy weight boxing champ ready to beat his opponent bloody.
During the campaign, I wondered whether Obama would find a way to use the technology and organizing methods employed by the campaign to help govern. He has. It is Organizing for Action will be used to gin up public support for his intiatives.
Obama has been fighting back with great success for 18 months. He has his guy on the ropes, and doesn't intend to let up.
On Day 1 of his first administration, the GOP organized their counter-offensive and immediately deployed it. Obama was caught off guard by the pure cynicism of such a move with a free fall into a depression. This time he istriking the first as the GOP continues its grieving and loss process over an election they knew - they just KNEW - would be a landslide victory.
Organizing for Action gives him a ground game that will not only help him in the short term but stave off his lame duck status for a long time. The organization can be used to affect public opinion the districts and states od Demcratic congressmen and senators who try to undermine him - as well as GOP politicians in swing areas.
Of course the GOP will fight Obama.
He will make them.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | January 22, 2013 at 09:02 AM
Yeah but all the partisan Republicans didn't like Obama's partisan speech yesterday, especially Michael Gerson, now of the Post, but formerly partisan speechwriter for Dubya Bush.
Posted by: Bulworth | January 22, 2013 at 09:58 AM
I saw Megan McArdle wasn't impressed either, but her argument was that it wasn't specific enough on policy! Of course, that ignores the tradition that inaugural speeches shouldn't BE about policy (and we all know that, if he had included specifics, the right would be criticizing him for bucking tradition in that regard). And if he hadn't included either of these things, they would have been saying that it was a big load of nothing. We all know they would be criticizing the speech regardless of what he said, so they have made their opinions effectively irrelevant.
What I heard was a statement of the President's beliefs... of what will guide him in the coming four years. The only reason this could be thought of as political in any way is if the observer disagreed with those beliefs. I'm biased, but I thought he struck exactly the right tone.
And, Mr. Lipscomb, I hope you're right.
Posted by: JTL | January 22, 2013 at 10:38 AM
The GOP should not have liked the speech and should have been threatened by it. Obama laid out a vision for American government that is in opposion to Reaganism. Any Democtatic polition who advocated such a vision 20 or even 10 years ago would have been accused of political suicide.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | January 22, 2013 at 02:14 PM