11/6/09 - More Fallout From Obama's "Shout Out"
President Obama's shout out during his Fort Hood speech is coming under scrutiny as the world contemplates just how detached and insensitive the leader of the free world really is:
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the President's thoughts on the attack at Fort Hood. . .
Except, Barack Obama did not seem to realise the news networks were relaying his remarks live to the nation. Before moving on to the shooting, he offered his thanks to the people organising the event and offered a "shout out" to someone in the audience.
Source: Times Online ("An Obama 'shout out' too far?)
Er, there is no way Obama and his handlers were caught off guard. If they didn't think his remarks were going out live across the nation, why did he bother to bring up the Fort Hood shootings at all? See NBC-Chicago's take at the bottom of this post - it debunks the "Obama didn't know it was nationally televised" nonsense.
How a president responds to a crisis defines him. President Obama has shown how upset he was after the murder of abortion Dr. George Tiller and after the attack on the Holocaust Museum. But when it came to the Ft. Hood shootings, the president twice gave the incident a limited response – devoting little more than 4 minutes over two separate appearances to the 13 dead and 30 wounded.
In the Tiller case, the president was “shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning.” In the case of the museum attack, Obama was “shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.”
But when it came to the horrendous Ft. Hood shootings, the term “shocked” was nowhere to be found. Instead, the initial response was shoehorned into comments he made opening the White House Tribal Nations Conference. First there were a couple applause lines to Native Americans and Obama’s “shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner,” who appears not to have won the medal. (Joe Medicine Crow won the Medal of Freedom -- the nation's highest civilian honor.)
Source: FoxNews (Obama on Ft. Hood - Not Even 'Shocked')
Nice sleuthing by FoxNews on the medal issue. Score that as a mini-fail for President Obama. Typical...
The quotation says it all: our commander-in-chief feels there is no event so serious that it cannot be prefaced by a moment of glib hipness, no solemn loss so sacred he will deny himself a moment of wry self-indulgence. Soldiers were killed? Let’s say hi to Joe first. An entire theater of war needs a plan to defeat the terrorists who struck America on 9/11? No reason I can’t go golfing, shoot some hoops, and hit the town with Michelle.
President Bush used to break into tears when addressing soldiers and was reviled as a stone-hearted warmonger; Donald Rumsfeld was demonized for using a machine to sign notification letters to fallen soldiers’s next-of-kin. President Obama gives out rounds of virtual fist-bumps to his buds before even mentioning a slaughter of American soldiers, perpetrated by Americans, in mid-America.
We desperately need an adult in the White House. Sadly, today’s press conference proves we do not have one.
Source: NewsRealBlog (Huge Military Slaughter - But First a "Shout Out" to Obama's Bud
Well said...
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned.
Source: NBC Chicago (Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting)
