19 thoughts on “American Narcissus”

  1. Yes, but given the public fatigue with President Bush, who the Republicans offered up, John McCain, was never really an alternative. Oh, the bad, disorganized campaign Senator McCain ran, but John McCain is John McCain, and the bottom-ranked Annapolis grad who proved himself to be made of steel in prisoner-of-war camp, what you see is what you get, and the way Republicans run things and have always run things, it was “his turn” for the nomination. And what we got was John McCain.

    No, the choice was between Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton. Yes, as in “Hillary the Movie” — that hatchet film that brought the McCain-Feingold law down in the Supreme Court Citizen’s United case. What was “uniting” those “citizens”? It was “Hillary the Movie.”

    It is available on the Web, I encourage Rand’s fine readers to actually watch Hillary the Movie. So given the “turning of the worm” or the “swinging of the political pendulum”, it was not a Republican year, and it was really between Barack and Hillary.

    President Obama may be a lot of things, but he is not corrupt, certainly not in the way Hillary the Movie shows Secretary Clinton to be.

    On the other hand, maybe Mr. Obama is an “empty suit” or “all hat and no cattle”, but maybe what the country needed was Ms. Clinton to “take names and kick some backsides.” There was a meme spread somewhere on some warblog Web sites a couple years back, of someone writing a future-historical novel about “the aircraft carrier Hillary Clinton, named after this nation’s most effective wartime President.”

    I have said it before, but what did it for me was that debate where Mr. Obama was going to meet with whoever “without preconditions” and Ms. Clinton almost reflexively or having to think about it (is that Mike Kinsley’s Type-II Gaffe?) remarking “You give something up of value (having a meeting with an adversary of the U.S.) without first getting something in return.” Hillary was channeling her Inner Lawyer.

    For whatever her ethical limitations, if I were being sued in court or defending myself against criminal charges, something tells me I would want Hillary as my attorney and not Barack. Heck, if my back was against the wall, I would prefer a shyster attorney to some dignified, ethical, and credentialed worthy. I might even want someone who has “poked some holes in the legal envelope” before, you know, like hiding attorney billing records or some such thing.

    So, President Barack H. Obama is a bubble-headed narcicist who talks too darned much when a guest in foreign capitols. But you have to place this in the context of worse alternatives. Or are they?

  3. In case you’re keeping score at home, there was some confusion as to what book young Obama was writing. His publisher thought he was writing about race relations. His employer thought he was writing about voting rights law. But Obama seems to have never seriously considered either subject. Instead, he decided that his subject would be himself. The 32-year-old was writing a memoir.

    I have to concede that Obama may indeed have been a more interesting subject than what he knew about race relations or voting rights law. Plus people tend to write better when they write about something they’re enthusiastic about. Still I can’t help but wonder, if this spinning of two tales, neither which turned out to reflect what Obama really was doing, might be foreshadowing for what’s to come.

    On to page two.

  5. Brutal. Just brutal. Reading that piece I got the same feeling I get when I watch The Office (US version). I’m amused, entertained, it makes me laugh – but at the same time it gives me anxiety to the point that I must turn it off. It is too close to the reality I actually live.

  6. Obama has carried out many less than brilliant policies in his time as president, but could it be the Weekly Standard wrote a hit piece because Obama criticized the extension of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem?

    How valid was the author’s comparison of Obama to George Washington? Have you ever heard *any* executive in our egotistical time make a comparable statement to Washington’s?

    It is also ridiculous to assert that writing a memoir is a sign of vanity, unless one wishes to reject the maxim “know thyself”.

    Russian President Medvedev praised Obama’s personality, rather than criticizing his vanity; in Saudi Arabia, Obama’s traditional gesture of respect of kissing the King’s hand was hardly evidence of haughtiness, or incompetent self-absorption.

  7. “It is also ridiculous to assert that writing a memoir is a sign of vanity, unless one wishes to reject the maxim “know thyself”.”

    He wrote 2 before he was 50 and one of those while he was a Senator. Writing about himself instead of applying his “great intellect” to the People’s business. If you can’t see the disconnect between his results and his opinion of himself, you’re mainlining the Kool-Aid.

    Yes Gem, those Zionists are every where, immediately attacking anyone criticizing Israel. Better check under your bed. I’m sure you will find 2 or 3.

  8. All this article does is put in one place all the stuff we already knew. He’s way out, way over being just scary-self-centered. But aren’t ALL totalitarian nuts!?

    Here’s where I quit reading…

    “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”

    The bad part is this one IS the view of MANY people I talk to now. And as a Cold War veteran is PISSES ME OOOOFFFFFFF!!

    I’m guessing they think WWI and WWII ended because everybody just wanted to go home? Or, the Cold War wasn’t a real war because there weren’t weekly KIA Stats?

    I realized when I quit reading that it’s becoming a ‘thing’ for me to quit reading about these boobs. The more I read, the less I’m able to read. I’m guessing that after 2 years of the liberal ruling classes, acting like liberal ruling evil overlords, I can’t read anymore because my BS quotient is fully met.

    Too bad more people aren’t as full. Especially those on NorCal and Nevada.

  9. It’s one thing to write a diary or a blog — it’s another to write a memoir when you are 32 years old and you haven’t done anything of note yet. People act like Obama had this amazing, astounding life like no other human being, but as a matter of fact his life was upper-middle-class Boho ordinary. He reminds me of a lot of kids I went to school with (he’s two years older than I am so he’s in my “peer group”) who had liberal, non-traditional families, lived for a few years in a foreign country, could talk glibly about all sorts of things while always keeping a cool distance that attracted a certain sort of follower, and in general gave off the impression that thought they were all that (and you couldn’t say that they weren’t because they never let anyone get too close). Most of these people hung with the arty crowd, but ended up getting jobs like lawyer or work in a PR firm, because they had no actual artistic talent themselves.

  10. Schtumpy: somewhere deep inside every Overlord-admiring liberal is a masochist waiting to get out. They would lead a more honest existence if they could just have regular appointments with their local dominatrix and her collection of whips.

  11. “Most of these people hung with the arty crowd, but ended up getting jobs like lawyer or work in a PR firm, because they had no actual artistic talent themselves.”

    Like, the folks who shop at Whole Foods?

    How does a person get to be like a person who shops at Whole Foods, anyway? My wife drags me in there because they have really good bread, but I feel like a ghetto kid who has gotten off the Metro North in Scarsdale whenever I go there. Is this entirely a micro-social class thing, or can you take lessons?

    Or do you have to go in for brain surgery where they use a laser to remove the cortex that does price comparisons between supermarkets? Does that brain surgery change your affect as a side effect, making you look really phony? Kinda like the driver of a Prius with a “Love your Mother (Earth)” bumper sticker who did a zoom pass around me this morning because I was coasting up to a red light?

  12. How does a person get to be like a person who shops at Whole Foods, anyway?

    I would really like to see a reasoned answer to that. I’ve gone with the wife on occasion (she goes mostly out of curiosity, she rarely actually buys anything) and though I try to people-watch, I’m usually too busy looking at prices and laughing, and showing the more absurd ones to my wife. If there are lessons available they must be well hidden; I haven’t seen any ads.

  13. Andrea,
    the problem comes in between those visits when THEY want to wield the whip. They forget the safe word, hit to hard and think the whipee IS to blame for the failings of the whipper.

    (this is PSY 101 stuff…nothing worse than a flaky faux-dominant)

    They’ve shown their true colors this week concerning responsibility, cause and effect. Look at the clap trap that came from, and continues to come from, the Leaders of the LOSERS after last Tuesday’s voter safe word of ENOUGH!! The Troika (Ospenda, Bleed and Plunderosi) all said, “…we didn’t lose because of ME!” And all said after NOT listening to that miniscule 70% to 80% of the voters who said they did NOT want program X, Y or Z.

    And it doesn’t help when the resident voyeurs (in American politics that’s spelled MSM) become not only spokesmen, but assistant flagillators!

    If I have to hear one more time how we just didn’t “get it”, I might start that right wing terror campaign we’ve been accused of planning.

  14. That’s okay — most liberals are sissies so their whip-wielding is usually pretty weak. On the other hand, they are persistent and obsessed. The trick is to take the whip away.

    Anyway, you don’t have to start a terror campaign — it’s been my observation that letting slip the slightest hint that you don’t disapprove of all “right wing” ideas (most of which are what we used to think of as “normal”) and you’ll be gratified by such a display of fear and horror that you might as well have ripped open your shirt to show off your new Semtex underwear.

  16. How does a person get to be like a person who shops at Whole Foods, anyway?

    I would really like to see a reasoned answer to that.

    I’m surprised it isn’t obvious — you don’t get more SWPL than conspicuous consumption. Sure, luxury hybrid SUVs and overpriced homes in un-diverse neighborhoods constitute the bedrock of any hypocritical liberal lifestyle, but a grocery spending habit that would bankrupt the darkies and bitter-clingers shopping at (le sigh) Wal*Mart is even better. Plus, you can chat-up that cute pierced/tatted checkout girl over the latest Nabokov book your read or your purebred that’s named after an ancient civilization, and she’ll pretend to give a shit.

  17. Obama is merely the latest, and most egregious, data point on a narcissism curve that runs through the last four Dem presidential nominees. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry are also famously given to excessive self-regard. Even the second-stringers, like John Edwards, are mostly mirror-kissing twits. You’d have to go back to 1988 to find a Dem nominee (Dukakis) who wasn’t as obviously a preening schmuck as the nomination loser (Gary Hart). As the pattern is not only unmistakable but getting worse, it says nothing good about Democratic caucus and primary voters that they keep offering up these self-important bozos as candidates for the most consequential of offices.

  18. “How does a person get to be like a person who shops at Whole Foods, anyway?

    My ex-wife was on a whole foods kick there for a while and so I’ve had a pretty good sampling of the crowds. Over in the produce section and back by the meat counter you will often spot someone wearing a chefs outfit. I can see when your trying to charge $30 a plate for something that you will need some high quality meats and vegetables. But then you go over into the bulk bin aisle and that’s were most of the emaciated vegans who could pull of a pretty convincing role as a holocaust survivor like to hang out. They feebly cling to a hand basket full or simulated ground beef, Asian snack mix, and freshly churned peanut butter. Usually they have a bandanna tied around their head, black rimmed glasses, and a hemp skirt or black skin tight wife beater. Then, you go down to the beer section and that’s where you find the preppy college kids hanging out discussing which trendy import beer they are going to get hammered on at their nightly beer and brawl. Then, back by the cheese and wines you will find the professorial looking types with thin rimmed glasses on their noses, twill sweaters, and talking with slight lisps or aloof Mr. Howell accents.

    Then, there is me over there by the coffee. It was about the only thing in that place that I would say really sets it apart. Not only do they print the date on the bin of when they roasted the coffee. But often you can find a sale that makes it price competitive with coffee at a normal store. Coffee that has been roasted within the prior few days just blows away any other bag mass produced coffee that has been sitting out on the shelf for lord knows how long. But yes, the prices there are just insane. We walked out their one time with just 2 full sacks and it was over $100.

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