About that Obama speech - I won't even address the question of why this memorial service was deemed necessary - doesn't it amount to at least in some way a confirmation of the narrative liberals tried to falsely graft onto the crime? Isn't Obama being way too clever here, having pie and eating too, and the press is simply letting him get away with it - hell, encouraging it? But why would I be surprised by that - idiot. Anyway, this bloody speech - why is it people inflate these things so monstrously out of proportion? Yes, giving nice speeches is part of the job and I guess all the lofty prettiness is important in its own way - but, c'mon - the two most important duties by far of any POTUS are making sure he gets his foreign policy right and his economic policy right and Obama is failing badly on one of those and at best, at best barely passing in the other - so how does a nice speech change that? Reporters and pundits are constantly going on about how superficial politics is or has become and yet they mindlessly, reflexively inflate these speeches to an acclaim and relevance they can't possibly reasonably deserve - they're nice speeches for christ sake! That's it - not policy, not action, not results, not even plans for anything that eventually might look like results - a few nice, fluffy sentences strung together to... to do I don't know what the fuck they do! Country's going to war, ok, I get that - but this? C'mon.
Maybe I find it all so risible and annoying because I've actually read extensively the masters of periodic English prose - so I know what good, inventive, rhythmical, well balanced yet unique writing sounds like and Obama ain't got it, not even close, not even in the conversation - but I suppose the rationalization here is for a politician etc etc - I find him somewhat hackneyed and affected, actually, although in a pretty, church going sort of way I guess - and his attempts at grandiose appeal are so obvious as to verge on being clumsy or clichéd - definitely far too aware of just how perfectly grandiose he's sounding - he's no Lincoln, although even Lincoln was not as good as advertised - better than Obama, sure - but you catch Lincoln often trying too hard to sound wonderful - his prose becomes quite tortured at that point - still when he get's it right he's not bad.
But regardless of all that - I'll allow Obama his fancy speechifyin' skills - my point remains: why do people act as if a nice speech changes in some miraculous way the fundamental calculus of things and events when even a cursory examination reveals there's absolutely no logical connection whatsoever? Or let me put it this way: my wife catches me cheating on her; I write a floridly apologetic love letter pleading forgiveness; she consents and is appeased for a week or two - but she's an idiot if she imagines I'm somehow no longer a lying prick, right? So when we go gaga over these political speeches that are quite obviously intended to manipulate and appease, isn't the real message being sent and received here simply that we're all just a bunch of idiots?
