I have never seen a performance worse than Obama’s, distracted, his head dipped into the podium as if avoiding the smell of something rotten, acting above the very idea that a debate does provide a pivotal referendum on his first term as it has for all incumbent presidents, whipsawed by the legion of usual advisers telling him to play defense when his own intuition should have told him that he needed to go on the offensive as Romney slapped him around.
But there was more than the entitlement of entitlement. He struck me as burnt out, tired of selling his message although he has always been terrible at selling his message when it veers from idealism into the practical.
By instinct I still cling to my Democrat roots. But I admit that as I get older, on the cusp of 58, I am moving more to the center or even tweaking right, or at least not tied to any ideology. Those making more than $250,000 should pay more taxes, and that does include me. But I also am tired of Obama’s constant demonization, of those he spits out as “millionaires and billionaires,” as pariahs. Romney’s comments at a fundraiser were stupid, but 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income taxes. Yes, a majority are poor and seniors. But millions do not pay such taxes with incomes of more than $50,000, and whether it’s as little as $10, every American should contribute both as a patriotic obligation and skin in the game. This is our country, not our country club.
Come to think of it, Buzz here probably does have a long and glorious future career as rich white dude scolding the rest of us lazy schlubs over at the NY Times or Washington Post, I would imagine. Look, if any part of your "middle-aged crisis conversion to Republican" speech involved your belief that President Obama is acting privileged and entitled, and that Mitt Romney is a regular Joe Moderate, I call bullshit on you ever being a liberal in the first place.
He even uses the odious phrase "skin in the game", which is Villager 101 for "screw you poor people, it's time for you to suffer. You've had it too easy." If your train of thought involves you coming around to "toss a few of those folks into the volcano to please the island gods" you were never, ever a liberal. You're just an asshole.
Buzz's article is so intellectually bankrupt, I swear it's recycled Bobo Angst and Friedman's Mustache, but the entire argument is too sophomoric for even that level of effort. It's Bobo and Friedman's Mustache phoning it in after an all-night bender of NCIS episodes, unsweetened iced tea and boneless teriyaki wings, and by "all-night" I mean 11 PM.
Like I said, he'll fit in fine over there.
No comments:
Post a Comment