Posted on 04/14/2009 3:59:35 PM PDT by SJackson
Former White House political czar Karl Rove has a history of referring to Barack Obama as "arrogant."
As the race between the Democratic senator from Illinois and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain geared up last year, Rove went out of his way to attach the scarlet A for arrogance to Obama.
The man who managed George Bush into the White House -- with an assist from partisan Republicans on the Supreme Court -- said on Fox News last July: "I will say yes, I do think Barack Obama is arrogant."
ABC News reported that he had told a Republican gathering on Capitol Hill that the Democrat was "coolly arrogant."
"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove reportedly told the congressional Republicans. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette, that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone."
Rove's cynical "assessment" of Obama, and the word he uses to describe the man who swept the Republicans out of power, has not changed since Obama assumed the presidency.
Commenting on Fox News -- the network that describes Obama as the president "Europe anointed" -- after the latest White House press conference, Rove told Bill O'Reilly: "I've always said that I think he's sort of an arrogant guy (who says) things that are simply not true."
No challenge came from O'Reilly, who was more interested in recalling his interviewing style when he hosted Obama last year: "I was like a cougar ... I was right there."
Obama's defenders still got upset.
After the O'Reilly/Rove session Tuesday night, Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse griped, "If Karl Rove wants to call someone arrogant, perhaps he and Dick Cheney should look in the mirror. It was, after all, the administration he worked for and helped lead that left America entangled in two wars, tarnished our reputation abroad, squandered a budget surplus, and drove the American economy into the deepest economic crises since the Great Depression by insisting on their arrogant, 'our way or the highway' ideological approach to domestic and foreign policies. Arrogance was a staple of the Bush/Cheney/Rove approach to politics and policy -- eschewing accountability, blaming others and failing to level with the American people."
True enough.
But Rove, who never says anything casually, will keep inserting the word "arrogant" into any discussion about Obama -- not because the president is, in fact, arrogant, but because it is a word that the master of media manipulation knows is loaded.
The definition of arrogant generally goes something like this: "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance." The arrogant individual, dictionaries tell us, display "a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others."
As Rove well understands, the suggestion that the president is presumptuously arrogant -- as the word "uppity" is defined -- is a disempowering reference. It suggests that Obama is out of place in the White House, that the president perceives himself as important when he is not, and that, most damagingly, Obama presumes he is superior to the great mass of Americans.
What Rove is practicing is a sly variation on class politics:
Obama, who is trying to use the power of government to aid dislocated workers and families threatened with foreclosure, who is holding more press conferences and doing more interviews than Bush, who is answering questions e-mailed to the White House by citizens, is an "arrogant" elitist. He's the guy at the cocktail party making fun of the rest of us.
Bush, who used the power of government to remove restrictions on bankers and speculators and in so doing fostered a scorching recession, who avoided the tough questions, who distanced himself from the media and citizens, is a homey man of the people. He's the guy out fixing a fence on his ranchette, er, sorry, ranch.
Of course, it is a false construct.
But, as the man they called "Bush's brain" well understands, lies repeated frequently enough become potent political tools.
Karl Rove, who has no intention of remaining long on the sidelines of the political power game, is determined to damage Barack Obama by defining him as a leader who is out of touch with the people.
The word "arrogant" is essential to this endeavor, as is the platform that Fox and other news outlets lend to his partisan manipulations.
Hey, *sshole, the Supreme Court called it right, and all the major media recounts confirmed the original vote... and yes, he is both arrogant and uppity... thanks for providing the correct word to use.
Yep, yep and yep.
Ya know, for a socialist, this editor's got some good points. : )
""Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove reportedly told the congressional Republicans. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette, that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone."
The definition of arrogant generally goes something like this: "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance." The arrogant individual, dictionaries tell us, display "a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others."
Sounds like Karl Rove is spot on when he describes That One as 'arrogant', because he truly embodies the definition of the word.
If the author of the article thinks it's code for 'uppity', it must mean that the AUTHOR thinks that about That One.;o)
But he could not claim the title of "uppity" according to the DNC Propagand Machine.
He was a "monster."
Uppity to me is just another but not as strong way of saying someone is arrogant.
Uppity to me is someone pretending to be what they are not and behaving in a stroppy manner.
To use a very old fashion comment someone who is above their station and assume they are entitled.
Rove You magnificent bastard!!!!
“”Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove reportedly told the congressional Republicans. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette, that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone.”
Hahahahahaha...except, in Bammy’s case, he is with a date that looks like an NFL tight end in drag...no Bawney Fwank jokes, please...
John Nichols is a tool, ignorant of the partisan Florida Supreme Court's attempt to circumvent Florida law, and proud of it.
John Nichols is what happens to decent folks who fry their brains on college party drugs and to those who offer their backsides to any available hard ons.
Not at all.
And Rove is not the first to suggest it.
In his biography of Obama, which is generally positive, Chicago Tibune reporter David Mendell, noted:
"Managing Obama's healthy ego has been one of the more trying tasks for his staff and paid consultants. As Obama himself will acknowledge, his mother went to great lengths to shore up her son's confidence..."As a consequence, there was no shortage of self-esteem," Obama told me with a wry smile.
In a politician, a show of grandiose ego can be off-putting and cost support from all quarters -- media, colleagues, and, in particular, constituents -- and there were moments in the Senate campaign that when I found myself in the midst of the effort to reign in Obama's ego."
Richard Epstein, UofC law professor, widely respected Constitutional expert, and former colleague of Obama, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune:
"Obama, he says, is very good at listening respectfully and articulating all sides of an issue, but usually only as the lead-in to adopting a predictably liberal position. He describes his former colleague as an unreconstructed New Dealer who "has never met a mandate that he would vote against.So whatever free-market truth and wisdom Obama may have absorbed during his years on the University of Chicago campus, Epstein doubts we will be seeing much of it in the new Obama administration."
"Obama comes from the tradition that thinks you can get your way on social justice and economic issues without affecting productivity very much—and that's simply living in a dream world," he says. Obama and his economics team "are very smart, but the problem is these high-IQ guys always think they can square the circle; they always believe they can beat the system with a cleverer system, and they always fail."
Arrogance.
Well I think he’s arrogant. I wouldn’t have called him uppity because of potential racial overtones, but John Nichols is right, he uppity, our uppity President.
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You can have arrogant and uppity — I will take authoritarian, oppressive, ultra-radical, anti-Constitutional and fanatic. As witnessed beyond question with his recent directive to the DHS to alert law-enforcement agencies to ANYONE who opposes his position and actions as “right-wing extremist and potentially terrorist”. That of course was his very “American” response to the Tea Parties. It all speaks LOUDLY for itself.
He is a hateful, vindictive racist.
John, John--Hussein is arrogant.
You're shooting his colonoscopy as an homage.
I think the derogatory comments that Oshama made behind closed doors about people who cling to guns and religion show that he IS supremely arrogant.
Obama to Republican lawmakers objecting to the stimulus package: "I won."
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