With only a week to go before the donkeys kick up their heels in
Denver, the powers that be at the New York Times, acting
in their unofficial capacity as mouth organ for the Democratic
Party, have published what amounts to the playbook for the
presentation of Barack Obama at the convention. And as usual, it is
in tonally perfect accord with the liberal mindset and its overall
game plan. The title of the
piece, “For Convention, Obama’s Image Is All-American,” gives
the game away. Most people in possession of a dictionary would see
the use of the word “image” as the desire to present an illusion
rather than an actuality; kind of like they do in Hollywood.
And indeed, following a trend that began with Bill Clinton and
his buds Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason — who, not
coincidentally, are producing the video that will precede Hillary’s
convention address — the Dems have tapped Davis Guggenheim to
create a film that seeks to address what the Times calls
Obama’s “otherness.” Mr. Guggenheim, as you may remember, was the
director and producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth,
so he is no stranger to the art of truth-defying imagery.
But he and the rest of the gang at the DNC have their work cut
out for them. The problem, as the Times so helpfully
points out in its piece, is that liberals and the rest of the
country have two decidedly different ideas of what is meant by the
term “all-American.” For example, a great many folks in this
country take exception to the Obama campaign using what appears to be an upside down American flag on
the back of their INVESCO Field tickets. A spokesman said, “”The
DNCC community credentials incorporate patriotic design elements.
They do not depict an actual American flag.” Perish the
thought.
In their last attempt at morphing a liberal elitist into a
“regular” guy, Democrat operatives sent their man to the mountains
of Sun Valley before he reported for duty at the 2004 convention.
As I observed at the time:
John F. Kerry descended this week from the mountaintops
and pleasure palaces of Idaho, doffed his designer ski duds,
boarded his private jet and resumed his quest to be elected
president on the “common man” ticket…From surfing to bicycling to
Camelot-like football tossing, this JFK is out to prove he’s no
wonkish wimp.
This time however, they are stuck with a man who really does come
off as a wonkish wimp; messianic comparisons aside. One can
understand the effort to soften the image of a rich patrician like
Kerry or bring a little beige into the comparatively colorless
world of Al Gore. These are attempts at marketing the candidate to
one segment of society or another. But why in the world would a
candidate for the presidency need to be sold as an American?
“Because,” the
Times explains, “of his race and questions
about his patriotism, values and faith that Republicans have
already vigorously sought to raise and exploit.”
What a surprise, that the dastardly GOP is responsible for the
shortcomings of the great Barack; as if they advised him not to
reverence the National Anthem or wear a flag pin; as if they
created Jeremiah Wright and told Obama to attend his church for 20
years and listen to his bizarre ramblings. But of course, to the
left, the motivation behind this all comes down to race:
“I’m asking a lot of the American people, and I know
that,” Mr. Obama said in an interview last month, acknowledging
that his burden to win over many voters was greater because he is
black. “My biography is not typical of a modern American
president.”
It’s obvious that the left feels that this whole charade of
packaging Obama as a black Jack Armstrong is necessitated by the
ignorant prejudices of the vast majority of typical white bigots.
And so, we’ll be treated to a convention of a party that will
hypocritically wrap itself in the American flag for a few days in
the hopes of reaching the majority of Americans who are not ashamed
of that flag the rest of the year.
You’d think that their last failed attempt at making their
candidate seem presidential by sending him overseas would have
taught them something about the American people, but thankfully, it
has not.
