Most of you have probably already seen it, but the President saluted two marines with a cup of coffee in his hand as he exited Marine One. The media as a whole has covered it, and FOX is (unsurprisingly) especially offended. Jon Stewart's commentary on this is very good. If you haven't seen the segment, it is well worth watching
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/b7hxzd/the-way-we-war.
As Stewart points out, the media's reaction to the situation raises important issues about what the media chooses to cover and why, as well as the hypocrisy of FOX in their coverage of this. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to dissect the comments made by Karl Rove.
http://youtu.be/XSoohXNq1a0 (I can't figure out how to embed the video, so if somebody would like to fix that for me, I would appreciate it).
Hannity: Would President Bush ever have done this?
Rove: Are we suprised? I mean, after all, we got a Chai swilling, golf-playing, basketball trash-talking, leading from behind, I got no strategy, Osama Bin laden is dead, GM is alive, community organizing Commander-in-Chief. I mean, how disrespectful was that!?
Let's really look at that statement.
Let's throw out "chai-swilling" and "community organizing," because neither have any particular bearing on his leadership abilities. Leadership skills are probably important to a community organizer, but whatever.
"Golf-playing" is a particularly funny thing for him to add, considering the context of the question was a comparison of the last two Presidents. Who remembers this:
http://youtu.be/Z3p9y_OEAdc"Basketball trash-talking." This is the one that really gets me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'm pretty sure that he only chose these words because it would have been socially unacceptable to just say "n****r," which is what he meant.
"Leading from behind, I got no strategy." Let's set aside the debate over whether or not this is a fair criticism, because it misses the point. It's the fact that a senior adviser to President Bush is making the critique when comparing Obama unfavorably to Bush.
"Osama bin Laden is dead, GM is alive." Aren't these good things? Seriously, what am I missing here? Six months after 9/11, President Bush did say that he
"wasn't that concerned" about bin Laden, but even if he's not much of a threat, the world is probably better off without him, right? I'm also inclined to believe that the United States having an automotive industry is probably important, not just to the economy, but to national security. I don't think it's particularly likely, but if we were put into a total war scenario, those are the people who would be best-equipped to mass-produce tanks for us.
"How disrespectful was that!?" You know what, maybe it was a bit rude. Kind of like calling the Commander-in-Chief a "Chai swilling, golf-playing, basketball trash-talking, leading from behind, I got no strategy, Osama Bin laden is dead, GM is alive, community organizing Commander-in-Chief." Except without the extremely thinly-veiled racism.