Category Archives: Media Criticism

Obama’s Glory Was Inevitable

says Obama.

He is remarkably unself-aware.

[Update a few minutes later]

It really is a personality disorder:

Examination of the symptoms should give pause. I’m not saying he might be the only politician with this problem or that he’d even be diagnosed with NPD. I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV (although I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express before). However, there are so many examples of similar behavior in his past that it is hard to ignore what is right in front of your eyes. And while he may not personally do everything (this probably being an example) he has a staff which knows their President and does what he would approve. That’s why they’re where they are. They play into the personality and feed it.

They’re riding for a hard fall in November.

Phil Klein says he should get over himself:

Obviously, as president, Obama can use the tools of the White House to advance his goals. But at the same time, all presidents are to some extent guardians of the institution. Sure, a lot of the White House website is naturally going to be used to promote Obama, but there are some areas that should be considered neutral ground — one of them being the history sections. White House presidential biographies are the type of thing that school kids read and they should be able to do so without being bombarded by propaganda for whoever is in power. I’m sure that during the Social Security debate in 2005, if President Bush had updated the biographical page to say that he was trying to preserve FDR’s original vision for Social Security, liberals would have been up in arms. And if Mitt Romney wins in November, I’m sure liberals won’t want him to use the presidential biographies for self-promotion, either.

Obama should get beyond his own narcissism and realize that, win or lose in November, he’s just a temporary part of something that’s bigger than himself.

He can’t. It’s who he is. It’s what he does.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, this was inevitable: Obama in history.

Another Spy Outed By Democrats

First Valerie Plame, and now this:

Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain.

As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.”

It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

Of course, this one was much worse than the Plame slip. I’ll bet there are a lot of people in the British government who can’t wait for November, either.

Geert Wilders

Some meditations on him, and the troubled Netherlands, from Mark Steyn:

…in the end the quiet life isn’t an option. It’s not necessary to agree with everything Mr. Wilders says in this book — or, in fact, anything he says — to recognize that, when the leader of the third-biggest party in one of the oldest democratic legislatures on earth has to live under constant threat of murder and be forced to live in “safe houses” for almost a decade, something is badly wrong in “the most tolerant country in Europe” — and that we have a responsibility to address it honestly, before it gets worse.

A decade ago, in the run-up to the toppling of Saddam, many media pundits had a standard line on Iraq: It’s an artificial entity cobbled together from parties who don’t belong in the same state. And I used to joke that anyone who thinks Iraq’s various components are incompatible ought to take a look at the Netherlands. If Sunni and Shia, Kurds and Arabs can’t be expected to have enough in common to make a functioning state, what do you call a jurisdiction split between post-Christian bi-swinging stoners and anti-whoring anti-sodomite anti-everything-you-dig Muslims? If Kurdistan’s an awkward fit in Iraq, how well does Pornostan fit in the Islamic Republic of the Netherlands?

It’s long, but read the whole thing.