Last week I wrote that Barack Obama will be regarded as a pol who stitches together two (sometimes more) contradictory views and conveys these impossibilities with profound, pseudo-thoughtful pauses.
Since then, we have had the priceless Caroline Kennedy interview with 310 “you knows” sprinkled through a statement in less than 10 minutes—sometimes with two “you knows” in a sentence. Next to her, Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric…which liberals ridiculed…was like the famed Greek orator and statesman Demosthenes [384-322 B.C.]. It occurred to me that both Obama and Kennedy have one thing in common. They emit cotton candy political words that taste sweet but have no nutritional content.
After I wrote this, a friend and reader of this website contacted me with a brilliant example of political talk where the rhetoric is cotton candy but the nutrition is zilch. It is an obscure but brilliant Irish song from a political reporter who, after many years of covering politicians with doublespeak, finds he has contracted the same malady. It is known as “The Politician’s Song” by one Mickey Connell—and here it is in its entirety:
Well for twenty frantic, fruitless years, I worked in Dublin town
Reporting for newspapers I was busy writing down
All the words of politicians in my endless quest for truth
Twas at such a wasted exercise I squandered all my youth
That’s the cause of my misfortune as I’ll explain to you
For I find myself talking like politicians do
And if anyone should ask me, do I take sugar in my tae
I grasp them firmly by the hand and this is what I say…
Chorus:
“Well, I’m very glad you asked me that for at this point in time
In the circumstances that prevail there is in the pipeline
Infrastructural implications interfaced with lines of thought
Which lead to grass roots viabilities which at this time I’d rather not
Annunciate in ambiguities but rather seek to find
Negotiated compromises which are at the bottom line
For full and frank discussion which would serve to integrate
With basic fundamental principles to which we all relate
Not in doctrinaire philosophy which any fool can see
An inescapable hypothesis confronting you and me
So in the interest of the common good now you need never fear
For I’ve got the matter well in hand and I’m glad I made things clear.
“Now as you can imagine this has greatly changed my life
An example was the fateful day on which I wed my wife
All went well until the moment the priest asked me with a smile
`Do you take this woman for your wife?’ and swiftly I replied:
Chorus:
“Well, I’m very glad you asked me that…”
Now I’m lying on my death bed and I’m filled with mortal dread
For I know that very shortly I will certainly be dead
And when Saint Peter asks me if I’d like to come on in
I’m sure to face damnation for I know I’ll say to him:
Chorus:
“Well, I’m very glad you asked me that…”
Caroline, of course, is no match for Obama since her “you knows” is nothing less than an intellectual stammer. She has nothing whatsoever to say. Obama does but he contradicts himself as when he said first that he would meet all the world’s leaders including its dictators without preliminaries…and then said he would do it of course but his staff would do the preliminaries—and then insisted he had not contradicted himself.
It’s my view that we will see the end of the Caroline Kennedy attempted media love-match very soon. No one this vapid can last for long, not even a Kennedy. The liberal media are falling out with her with the exception of Pinch Sulzberger…but that again is another story…uncovered by the media of course but another story nevertheless.
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