Posted on 08/01/2012 7:55:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
What drives Barack Obama's "doubters and haters"?
So asks Obama biographer David Maraniss in a recent op-ed article for the Washington Post. By doubters and haters he means the people who think Obama wasn't born in the U.S., that he's a secret Muslim or that he's a closet socialist.
He has an answer: "Some of it can be attributed to the give-and-take of today's harsh ideological divide. Some of it can be explained by the way misinformation spreads virally to millions of like-minded people, reinforcing preconceptions. And some of it, I believe, arises out of fears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism."
True enough! Some people are no doubt driven by such motivations and anxieties; "some" is a gloriously accommodating word.
But that hardly settles things. For an essay titled "What Drives the Obama Doubters and Haters," Maraniss offers no explanation until the last paragraph (the quote above). And even then he offers no evidence, just assertions.
I think Maraniss is a great reporter, and I don't believe for a moment he is in on a cover-up of Obama's "real" place of birth or his secret Muslim faith. (Nor do I think either allegation is true.)
As to Obama's closet socialism, I've never found it unreasonable (never mind racist or paranoid) to think Obama's more comfortable with European-style social democracy (aka socialism).
Still, let me add two culprits to Maraniss' list: The first is Barack Obama. The second is the journalistic establishment that worked so hard to get him elected.
As Maraniss demonstrates quite effectively in his book, "Barack Obama: The Story," Obama's identity has long been a cultivated political project. Much of the poetic license -- to use a kind phrase -- Obama deploys to tell his own story is plausible only to those eager to take him at his word.
Maraniss couldn't authenticate Obama's tales of racial hardship as a young man. His grandfather being tortured by the British, the bigotry of his high school basketball coach? Untrue.
Moreover, Obama's explanations about the aspects of his past that have managed to become controversies have always seemed insufficient to people not disposed to root for him. Bill Ayers -- a former domestic terrorist -- was "just a guy living in my neighborhood." Obama's word that he wasn't a member of the radical New Party was enough for the press corps to stop digging for evidence that he was (as reported by my National Review Online colleague Stanley Kurtz). Jeremiah Wright? Only right-wing crazies care about him.
Even Obama's more recent embellishments about, for instance, being outspent and outgunned in his previous political races strike many people as the sorts of fibs that would create journalistic frenzies if uttered by a Republican.
And then there's the huge divergence between the president Obama said he would be and the president he's actually been. In 2008, Obama insisted that he was a unifier, a pragmatist and a non-ideologue. You don't have to be a birther or a secret-Muslim conspiracy theorist to feel like that was all a big con job. That's politics and not deceit (a subtle distinction!), but dismay at how Obama has governed doesn't amount to racial panic either. And blame for the widespread feeling that we were sold a bill of goods by a cheering press does, in fact, belong to the press.
Yes, Obama also signaled to his base that he intended to be a "transformative" president, a progressive Ronald Reagan. But that message was intended only for his base. Whenever conservatives picked up on those notes -- when he said he wanted to "spread the wealth around," etc. -- the immediate response from the Sunday talk show crowd was that conservatives were being paranoid for misreading Obama, the pragmatist.
It's fine to beat up on conspiracy theorists, but journalistic muckety-mucks who are mystified by their ever-shrinking credibility -- and profitability -- might wonder what they've done to fuel a climate of distrust. There's a reason why ABC's Jake Tapper is one of the few nonconservative reporters respected on the right: He's stayed as skeptical of Obama as he was of George W. Bush.
Meanwhile, it's fascinating how much attention the conspiracy theorists get. It's almost as if some journalists want to use them as bogeymen to discredit all criticism of Obama. That's some journalists, not all.
I would not say that I hate Obama. In many ways I pity him.
He was raised by perhaps the most dysfunctional mother this side of the Jerry Springer Show. We are about the same age, and we were fed all of the same leftist claptrap in school about a post-American world after the Fall of Saigon.
The difference is all these years later and Obama still believes it. Truly shocking to see someone on this earth for half a century and yet so lacking in in wisdom. I wish him a long life, but he has absolutely no business being anywhere near the Oval Office.
His hatred of America, the fact that he’s been given a free ride, his Socialist Marxist background, his institution of class warfare, his embrace of Islam, his deliberate efforts to cripple the US economy.....and on and on.
Hated more perhaps than Mussolini and wife epoo.
What’s to hate about a lying, Marxist, phoney that thinks he is King or God depending on the day.
I don’t hate the playuh, I hate his game....
He is one lucky mother...
Who is Obama — that’s the question.
Why are our congresscritters, on either side of the aisle, and the MSM not interested in pursuing the answer?
It is becoming ever more obvious that there is a conspiracy going on and that they are hiding something.
Do not fall for the premise, my FRiends.
The Left wants you to “Hate” Obama. It justifies their actions against us.
In their worldview, we are the haters; never them.
No, their opposition, no matter how vilely expressed, is never hate. Theirs is a righteous anger. Heat of passion and all, because they MEAN well.
Their attacks over the years against all things conservative, moral, and Christian are all okay because we on the right are the REAL demons; not them.
How they hated and vilified George Bush. Forget it! Did David Maraniss have anything to say about that? Course not!
Sarah Palin was mentioned, but she's not the only one the Left hates. No, they really hate.... Wait for it...
YOU!
Yes, you peaceful, American loving, non-cussing, non-fooling around, non-other people's money coveting, non-big government, heterosexual, marrying, child rearing, gun loving bible-clinging Christians—you are the world's bully, racist, hater! Bush, Palin, et al, they just represent YOU, so the Left focus their bitter anger at them, but they mean you.
Nathan Bedford (last Defender of the lovely city of Selma in my fair state), you are correct. However, it is not Sarah who is Billy Budd, rather it is all of us and what we represent.
Every day I'm more convinced we cannot go on as a single nation with them. If Obama wins, I would vote for my state to secede (again).
Obama isn’t real. The lying, effeminate fag is fake from top to bottom, a plastic, Marxist ideologue, stretched around a PC fantasy, wrapped together by Chicago thugs and rabble rousers, and presented to the American people as a moderate intellectual, one who thinks as an extension of his teleprompter. And he whines when he speaks, when he isn’t inflecting every other sentence, or stuttering in bumbling incoherence. And did I mention, I’m a racist now, and proud of it, if that is what it means to dislike this lying, race-baiting, poverty pimping, queer pushing, gang bang pandering putz. But don’t get me started.
Libtards are context droppers and they ignored his lack of accomplishments and therefore were for O mainly because of his race and their collectivist mentality which makes race an important criterion. So, they can't do anything else but continue to ignore his destructive policies and project their mentality on their opponents and call them racist haters.
He’s black ... </liberal mode>
I don’t hate the SOB, I just think he’s an assh*le.
Simple: Because Obama hates and seeks to destroy all that I love.
One can actually ride a horse; the other is just a horse’s ass.
“I think Maraniss is a great reporter, and I don’t believe for a moment he is in on a cover-up of Obama’s “real” place of birth or his secret Muslim faith. (Nor do I think either allegation is true.)”
Jonah Goldberg, get your head out of your butt and see the light.
I know he must have a really nice computer with a big screen at work. Just look at the damn birth certificate on line and see for yourself.
Agreed!
bttt!
Another FReeper, far more clever and witty than I (whose handle I, most regrettably, cannot recall), came up with the perfect answer to this question:
I do not hate Obama because of the color of his skin;
I loathe Obama because of the content of his character!
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