Obama and Va Tech
By horaceox Posted in Archived — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I'll admit it: I've been a little bothered by both sides of the gun control divide trying to make hay out of the Va Tech murders. But Barack Obama has taken this to a whole new level. You see, in Obama's world, this isn't about a screwed-up, violent kid. It's about larger societal problems:
"There's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways," he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of "violence."There's the "verbal violence" of Imus.
There's "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country."
There's "the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored,"
And so, Obama says, "there's a lot of different forms of violence in our society, and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other."
Ben Smith notes that "Many politicians would avoid, I think, suggesting that outsourcing and mass-murder belong in the same category." There's a good reason for this: Most Americans are smart enough to recognize the difference between the two . . . indeed most Americans would hesistate to define outsourcing as "violence," which most understand to involve some type of rough or injurious physical force.
But one of the Democratic frontrunners disagrees, and sees Imus and outsourcing and angry gunmen as parts of the same set of societal problems. This is not a small thing.
Please take the time to listen or read Obama's entire speech.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/barack_obama_on_virgin...
It's really convient how the Politico engaged in selective quotation to make it appear that Obama actually equated the VT massacre to Imus' ill-made comments. Obama did no such thing, and I imagine many of you know this. At the worst, Obama was careless in that he provided the media with an opportunity to cast his statements in the most negative and vile light. But that's a tactical mistake, not a character flaw. We have plenty of legit ammunition with which to go after BHO--resorting to this kind of gotcha politics is pathetic, immature, and petty.
You may think that mentioning Imus is the same breath at the VT incident is in bad taste. But that hardly amounts to suggesting some equivalency between the two.
Obama goes from Va Tech, to Bobby Kennedy's 1968 speech about violence's relation to guns and poverty and television. He then tuurns to talking about forthcoming discussions about the assault weapons bans, and then says he hopes this causes us to stop accepting and glorifying various forms of violence in our society, including the ones I list above. His solution is his politics of hope and turning down the "politics of disengagement," and giving power to the people. He then explicitly notes that this won't bring back the kids at Va Tech, but that it might help address the other forms of violence that he talked about.
Clearly he is indicating that this is all part of the same problem, and that they fall into the same basic category. I think its bad enough that he considers outsourcing and Imus's comments "violence," but to consider them "violence" in the same breath as Cho's murders is really bothersome.
Obama was talking about a host of problems that he thinks plauge our society. So what if we bounces from one problem to the other and identifies a central theme that he thinks is common to each of these problems. Like I said, you can take issue with him even mentioning these other problems in the same breath at the VT tradegy.
But some people are suggesting that Obama equated the two--that somehow the other problems he mentioned were as tragic as what occured at VT. This, he clearly did not do. Look its easy for society to reflect on things in the wake of tradegy---Obama just wants people to think and reflect on certain things even in the absence of "tradegy." In bad taste so soon after the events of this week? Perhaps...but that's about as bad as it gets.
Once again, we can take issue with the substance of Obama's comments, but it's a dishonest stretch to suggest that he equated the VT massacre with Imus' comments. I realize that it's politically convenient for us to spin his remarks that way, but it's simply not true.
Obama's thesis relies on the redefinition of 'violence' into a generic transitive verb. As such, he does intolerable violence to the language.
(Note the difference between redefinition and metaphor)
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See the Academy
How dare you equate the violence Obama visited upon the English language with the violence perpetrated against the students at Virginia Teach!!!!
We need to quit these feigned, contrived, substanceless displays of outrage.
Bad news for you. You've attracted the attention of a moderator with access to your posting and commenting history. It reveals that you exist here solely to:
1. Chastise people for attacks on Barack Obama, and
2. Push hit pieces against Hillary Clinton.
This ain't exactly hard for anybody to interpret, so what say you drop the "we" word when referring to posters on RedState, okay?
No, that's not optional.
Thanks in advance for just being yourself,
Mgmt
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
Is this really such bad news? I call things like I see 'em. No apologies, and I'm glad that you appreciate me being myself.
I'm a gale of miasma.
Let's be clear on something: Given that your entire posting history is pro-Obama, anti-Hillary, there are precisely two reasonable conclusions we can draw.
(1) You are a Hillary! supporter, mobying as a conservative, for reasons I neither know nor about which do I care.
(2) You are a B. Hussein Obama supporter, mobying as a conservative, for reasons I neither know nor about which do I care.
Put differently, it would be the truly odd Republican or conservative who actually voted and will be voting that way who actually cares if we say bad things about the pretty empty suit the Dems have latched onto this time (the flirtation with Edwards apparently having ended).
Put even more directly, cut the insulting trolling. Now.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
If this is the best we can toss at Obama, I truly fear the prospect of him as the democratic nominee. This same goes for most of the attacks on Obama that I've seen on this site and from the RNC. Weak, pathetic, and hardly enough to galvanize conservatives or make swing-voters give a damn. If this guy gets past Hillary, he WILL be the next president of the United States.
Early days.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
He needs to get his hair cut the same place Edwards does. He has almost as much substance to his beliefs. What an opportunistic little prick.
"...and each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the
natural course of your only life;"
-Charles Buckowski