As noted here and on Townhall.com following the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, the president has shown a disturbing (some call it frightening) tendency to overlook human tragedy until his political goals du jour have been met. We witnessed that tendency again yesterday in Pres. Barack Obama’s remarks concerning, eventually, the Fort Hood shooting:
… 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. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. …
Yes, after first carrying on with conference remarks as usual, complete with “shout-out,” as if nothing were out of the ordinary, the president then diverged into a rote, detached mouthing of sympathetic sentiments (here is a YouTube clip of the speech; Obama starts speaking at the 0:33 mark but doesn’t begin to address the massacre till the 2:31 mark).
Such an appalling lack of perspective and simple humanity is a lamentable by-product of a philosophy ? one shared by Obama and the statist Left ? that everything is political. So … there is no question that a massacre on a U.S. military base is a tragedy and yadda yadda, but that can be point B on my speech because first I have to give a shout-out to this guy and pledge my solidarity with this conference’s political goals and whatnot.
