Saturday, March 17, 2012

The U.S. a Hot Mess? Blame Oprah

A good argument could be made that America is in the pickle it's in because at some disastrous point in time She Who Must Be Obeyed decided Barack Obama was one of her "Favorite Things":
Wrapping up a full day of campaign fundraisers, President Obama paid tribute Friday to one of his earliest and most prominent supporters: Oprah Winfrey.
"Just like books and skin cream," Obama said to laughter, "when Oprah decides she likes you, then other people like you, too."
Winfrey, the former talk show host who now owns her own network, attended a fundraiser at the Atlanta area home of actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry.
"There is my good friend, Oprah," Obama said. "Who very early on, when I was still running, just decided that she would support this guy with a name that nobody could pronounce."
Both Obama and Winfrey call Chicago their hometown...
Update: Speaking of blame, Contentions' Peter Wehner says the Tom Hanks-narrated Obama re-election campaign flick indulges in plenty of it:
(S)ome of the claims in the documentary are (unintentionally) amusing, including that Obama, upon taking office, “would not dwell in blame.”
If there is one consistent theme to the Obama presidency, it’s that he’s sought to blame his failures on others: George W. Bush, earthquakes, tsunamis, Europe, the Arab Spring, ATMs, Wall Street, Republicans, the Tea Party, Fox News, millioinaires, billionaires, conservative talk radio, and so forth and so on.
Wehner goes on to lay blame where it's due--squarely on Obama's shoulders:
What’s most striking, though, is how little Obama has to show for his efforts. The documentary focuses almost exclusively on inputs, not outputs; on legislation passed, not successes attained; on narrative, not empirical progress.
In the film we don’t hear anything about the deficit or the debt, the unemployment rate, economic growth, our standard of living, the housing crisis, bending the health care cost curve down, poverty, America’s credit rating, et cetera. That is because on these crucial measures, Obama has no story to tell, no successes to cite, nothing to look back to with pride or forward to with hope.
Obama’s tenure has been, by any reasonable standard, a failure. Not even a Tom Hanks-narrated documentary can change that.
 Tom Hanks? Not even Oprah can change that.

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