Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

"It’s just when Obama says it, I don’t think he really means it."

Leave it to The Daily Show to point out the continuity between Obama and Bush. These guys will be fun to watch over the coming months, and may offer better analysis of what’s going on (satirists often do) that the MSM.

Hat tip: Jonah.

Discussions - 11 Comments

They're right. He doesn't mean it. Better start learning to speak Arab.

Yes, acknoledge they are the same when the Twonky says you can. By all means dismiss it until the mighty Twonky says its OK, as long as you laugh and then stop thinking about it right after.

That was a great sketch. Still, if you watch carefully, at the end you'll see that they're obviously not seeing those similarities as a promising, hopeful thing, so they're not mixing their humor with conservative commentary.

Personally, I look forward to FoxNews trying to revive their Half Hour News Hour (That great name let's you know right off it's a comedy show!!) so we can get all the same deep belly laughs but some conservative analysis of the days' events, too. Maybe they could even snag some writers from Powerline, NRO, and even NLT to really give it a comic boost. Plus, it'll give Jon Stewart even more to lampoon on his show. Everybody will win!

Hal, the election is over... Can you just go hide in a bunker or something until you're convinced the Muslims aren't invading?


Great video! I'm looking forward to new Stewart and Colbert material with new targets to go after. Eight years of Bush, despite his great many opportunities to be laughed at, was starting to get boring with TDS.

Sorry, but are the folks at TDS (and Craig, apparently) really lamenting that Obama thinks that America is special and worth defending, and that terrorism is wrong? Do they seriously want Obama to "apologize for our way of life"?

I saw it not so much as TDS saying that America is not worth defending, but more or less making fun of the fact that, after all the rhetoric of change, the rhetoric of the presidency is not changing too much between Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama.

Oh sure, John, I want Obama to come out (of his secret, I-knew-it-all-along "Islamofascist" closet?) and just say that terrorism is good and right. (How else to respond to silliness but with even more silliness?)

As for apologizing for "our way of life" - well, I've read plenty of lamentations here about how one trend or another in the U.S. is problematic in some way. Men aren't manly, women aren't feminine enough, people don't care enough about life (fetal forms, at least) or guns or traditions, etc. But "our way of life" is a pretty vague, general, broad thing. Are we talking about Americans going to church or Americans watching dirty movies on their cellphones? Are we talking about an American military invasion of a sovereign country based on false and "sexed-up" pretenses or are we talking about Americans protesting such an invasion? If it's worth apologizing for, I think the more important thing might be to just change that aspect of our way of life, rather than fret about the apologizing, in any case. But the arrogant Right - nicely made incarnate in Cheney during his last few interviews - just doesn't care; when you feel that you and your country (at least the Bush/Cheney-led USA) can quite literally do no wrong, then the whole apologizing thing becomes a moot point. If it's "merely" 10,000 civilians dead in Iraq or 1,000,000, the Right will proudly, boldly, nobly, stoically, majestically (trumpets blare, fireworks, blah, blah, blah) NEVER APOLOGIZE.

A typically hyperbolic, subject-changing non-response. This isn't about Iraq, or Guantanamo Bay, or any other matter of policy. We're talking about rhetoric--about the plain words of Obama's speech, which had some similarities to terms used by Bush (and, for that matter, just about any president in U.S. history). America is basically good, terrorism is evil, we intend to defend ourselves. You don't have to be uncritical of every aspect of American society in order to believe those things. For most Americans--Democrats and Republicans alike--they sound like common sense. For Jon Stewart and Craig Scanlon, such words are cause for discomfort.

Now I've already too often broken my self-imposed rule of not posting on NLT. See you in another six months or so.

John, I didn't change the subject. I dismissed the first part, where you tried to paint me, in Limbaugh/O'Reilly fashion, as someone who would all but welcome terrorists.

I then attempted to show how the 2nd part of your query, regarding Obama apologizing for "our way of life," is probably not as simple as you appear to take it to be. Since "our way of life" can hardly be seen as a specific, unitary, monolithic whole, I would at least like to know what aspect of "our way of life" is at issue, before I decide if any apology should be considered. For example, in the wake of the mortgage crisis it wasn't difficult to find conservatives of various stripes adopting scolding tones and tut-tutting the reckless and irresponsible behaviors of Americans who got in over their heads (I have at least one specific essay by an NLT blogger in mind here).

Further, who is Obama (or was Bush) referring to when he insists that we won't apologize? Who has ASKED us for one, or more specifically, who has asked us for an apology for "our way of life"?

I was trying to extract some greater clarity from your question, not changing the subject.

Ultimately, I think TDS built that entire sketch around the correspondent's fine joke regarding putting cheese on Chinese food, and that was their main goal. But you should know that "rhetoric" is typically pretty far from "plain words," yet you use the two as synonyms in one sentence. I think Stewart and co. were talking about a certain tone, a certain vibe that they would prefer to see go back to Texas with Bush, even if they (and I) are easily comfortable with Obama being ready and willing to defend the U.S. (in a reasonable manner) if/when we are attacked again, as we were on Bush's watch. And Obama's God talk can be an irksome reminder of GWB, even if Obama, pleasantly mentioned non-believers as Americans - something George H.W. Bush had a distinct problem with, and presumably W did, too.

Who has asked us to apologize for our way of life?

1) Noam Chomsky, and every idiot bookstore owner that ever put up a big display of his post 9-11 bestsellers.

2) Michael Moore, whose movie was implicity endorsed by Terry McAuffile and Jimmy Carter.

3)A.N.S.W.E.R., the unrepentantly communist organization that organized the first big anti-Iraq invasion rallies.

4) CAIR

Juan Cole, and most professors of Middle-East studies.

Shall I go on with the post-9-11 hit parade of people (many European ones) who essentially said, "America as it is deserved it"? who essentially said, "no America as it is, no Islamic Terrorism"?

GREAT skit! As W. would say, "I appreciate that."

But yes, they're right Hal that you need to chill out a bit.

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