The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘He Would Fain Have Had It’

Posted on | March 1, 2013 | 35 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

“I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither, ’twas one of these coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once — but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again, then he put it by again — but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time. He put it the third time by. And still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar — for he swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.”
— Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2

“President Obama sometimes feels strangely compelled to indicate that he is not the Master of America.”
— James Poulos, Forbes

We have come to expect these protestations of helpless impotence when Dear Leader does not get his way:

“Jessica, I am not a dictator, I’m the president,” he said while speaking to reporters in the White House Press Briefing Room. “Ultimately, if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say we need to go to catch a plane, I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway.”

The stenography pool known as the White House press corps is busy chiseling his immortal words into stone, even as Obama offends sci-fi fans by confusing the Vulcan mind-meld (Star Trek) with “Jedi mind tricks” (Star Wars). But of course, his apologists would plead Obama’s underprivileged Indonesian upbringing as an excuse.

Did I mention he once ate a dog?

This is how it is with a Cult of Personality: Everything must always be interpreted in favor of Dear Leader. His exotic background — the subject of his best-selling memoir, Dreams From My Father — can only be praised and celebrated. One is not allowed to interpret the same set of facts as potential evidence that Dear Leader is out of touch with the people he presumes to lead. Any such interpretation is raaaaacist, as is just about any other imaginable criticism of Dear Leader.

This week, Bob Woodward accidentally joined the hate-mob, and if he doesn’t straighten up, he might get listed on the SPLC map right next to the Family Research Council.

When Obama succeeds (and these are always political successes), his press-corps fanboys praise him as transcendent Lightworker — omniscient, super-human, his powers beyond the capacity of mere words to describe — but when Obama fails (and these are always policy failures) his media hagiographers attribute this to the infinite evil of his enemies. And on those rare occasions when Obama’s policy failures are also political failures, as with the allegedly cataclysmic “sequester” cuts that don’t really bother anyone, his journalistic idolators erupt in a fury of confusion.

“And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.”

 

 

UPDATE (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Barack Obama

Comments

35 Responses to “‘He Would Fain Have Had It’”

  1. jakee308
    March 1st, 2013 @ 6:40 pm

    Methinks he doth protest too much.

  2. JeffS
    March 1st, 2013 @ 7:03 pm

    $20 street walkers have more integrity than the vast majority of “journalists” these days.

  3. Becca Lower
    March 1st, 2013 @ 7:32 pm

    #ObamaAteDog just never gets old. 😉

  4. K-Bob
    March 1st, 2013 @ 7:54 pm

    Looks like that blue guy in Watchmen

  5. McGehee
    March 1st, 2013 @ 8:18 pm

    You should be spelling that journolist.

  6. A Nasty, Brutish [Hobbesian] Presidency | The Rio Norte Line
    March 1st, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    […] the Juice Box media would notice how quickly a rabid dog can turn and bite (did I forget to mention that Obama ate one – it may or may not have been rabid). They should remember how the left swooned when Woodward […]

  7. M. Thompson
    March 1st, 2013 @ 8:51 pm

    So why the heck couldn’t this have broken six months ago?

    Oh, yeah, it would have interrupted his re-coronation.

  8. M. Thompson
    March 1st, 2013 @ 8:52 pm

    At least you know what you’re getting (or diseases) with them.

  9. Bob Belvedere
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:01 pm

    …and we all knoweth what happened to old Julius…

  10. Hail Hail Threedonia
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:14 pm

    He is our Impotentate

  11. xbox361
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:34 pm

    Gaius Julius Caesar didn’t have the Joe Biden life insurance policy

  12. elkh1
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:36 pm

    Poor Woodward, watch out for the drones.

  13. xbox361
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:37 pm

    Yond Cassius Obama has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

  14. Anil Petra
    March 1st, 2013 @ 9:50 pm

    He’s a humiliated laughing stock.

    Unwilling to work with others, he took tax increases, then failed to give back spending cuts. He won’t be trusted again, he’s shot any good will he had.

    Lame duck, weak, meek and effete.

  15. Mmmm Dog
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:02 pm

    Didn’t he eat two dogs? (Or have dog to eat on two occasions?) I can understand that perhaps somehow there was a very strange chain of events that led to eating dog on one occasion. We all only live once, even my pet dog. But twice? Perhaps he knows how to cook it just right.

  16. Hey, The World Hasn’t Ended! | The Lonely Conservative
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:02 pm

    […] Linked by The Other McCain, and the sequester is now official yet the world hasn’t ended. […]

  17. ss396
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:06 pm

    I’ve long advocated that the proper response to an Obama speech is derisive laughter.

  18. Jennifer Melton
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:07 pm

    Past is prologue.

  19. Adjoran
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:12 pm

    Let’s just say Barry shouldn’t go knocking on the door at Blair House.

  20. James Jones
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:23 pm

    http://kxm.209.mwp.accessdomain.com/2013/03/01/he-would-fain-have-had-it/
    Read while listening to Living Colour. “I… am… the… cult.. of… per… so… nality…”

  21. John P. Squibob
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:28 pm

    “Did I mention he once ate a dog?”

    Not often enough R.S., not often enough.

  22. section9
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:36 pm

    Oh please, for a fictional comic book personality, Dr. Manhattan had character. Obama? Meh….

  23. section9
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:36 pm

    You can’t put on a condom when you are listening to a journalist.

  24. sablegsd
    March 1st, 2013 @ 10:57 pm

    I would add finger pointing.

  25. JeffS
    March 1st, 2013 @ 11:08 pm

    True dat!

  26. richard mcenroe
    March 1st, 2013 @ 11:19 pm

    Sing it, girlfriend! http://tinyurl.com/d2x9gqo

  27. Eric Poncho
    March 1st, 2013 @ 11:39 pm

    At the Friday night press conference the POTUS told CNN’s Jessica Yellin, “I’m not a dictator. I’m the president.” yeah right! smh

  28. Jeff Nuding
    March 1st, 2013 @ 11:47 pm

    Bravo, astute, with Shakespeare no less

  29. K-Bob
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 12:11 am

    Heh.

  30. Becca Lower
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 12:26 am

    Oh goodness gracious, Richard! heehee

  31. comatus
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 12:33 am

    ‘Twas Austrian to me.

  32. Red_Right_Returning
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 1:41 am

    I think you mean the Naval Observatory.

  33. K-Bob
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 3:04 am

    Wait, I found the original…

    Slublog’s Dr. Obama

  34. Dick Beninya
    March 2nd, 2013 @ 11:48 pm

    BO is an empty suit.

  35. Adjoran
    March 3rd, 2013 @ 12:31 am

    On several previous occasions, Obama has taken pains to point out he isn’t “king” or “emperor.” He once wistfully imagined how much easier it would be to be President of China. This isn’t an aberration, it’s a habit.

    The Julius Caesar passage is perfect.