Kicking colleagues’ rears and understanding terrorists: the Obama way
posted at 8:30 am on July 14, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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If the New Yorker article that accompanied its ill-considered satirical cover meant to help Barack Obama by humanizing him, they missed the mark. The Obama campaign quickly objected to the cover yesterday — and for good reason — but the cover may help distract people from the article and some of its revelations. As Time’s Mark Halperin notes, Obama threatened to assault a fellow legislator in 1997, and in response to the 9/11 attacks, evinced sympathy — for the attackers.
First, let’s hear what Obama had to say eight days after the mass murder of 3,000 Americans:
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores.
Poverty, ignorance, helplessness — actually, none of these describe the 9/11 attackers. The lead terrorists came from wealthy or upper-middle-class families, and even the “muscle” hijackers mostly came from comfortable settings. Osama bin Laden’s family is very wealthy, and Ayman al-Zawahiri came from enough wealth to put him through medical school. The impulse for these terrorists comes from their embrace of radical Islamist philosophy, not from poverty or ignorance.
Besides, as Drew at Ace o’ Spades asks, do we want a Commander in Chief who wants to wear hair shirts after a terrorist attack, or do we want one who will respond forcefully to defeat our enemies? Obama talks about our “rage” and warns against what he sees as our likelihood to start killing people indiscriminately, rather than the terrorists and their already-proven indiscriminate killing. He sees our primary mission in the days when the fires still raged at Ground Zero as some sort of touchy-feely crusade to “rais[e] the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe”.
That wasn’t our primary mission then, nor is it now. The primary mission of the American federal government is American national security and the protection of its citizens. Provide for the common defense outranks raising hopes and prospects of “embittered children” regardless of their location. A President should know the difference, and almost every American did know the difference on 9/19/01 — except Barack Obama.
On the question of temperament, the Democrats have tried painting John McCain as a dangerous, unstable ex-POW. However, as we noted in May, Obama has the history of physical threats in performance of his office. In 1997, he allegedly threatened to kick another state Senator’s ass for showing him up on the floor of the legislature:
Obama’s relations with some of his black colleagues from Chicago were dreadful from the beginning. On March 13, 1997, Obama introduced one of his first pieces of legislation, a modest bill to make a directory of community-college graduates available to local employers. There was a response from Rickey Hendon, a state senator from the West Side of Chicago who had been close to Alice Palmer. After Obama explained his bill, Hendon, who has dabbled in film and television work, earning him the nickname Hollywood, rose to ask a question, and the following exchange occurred:
HENDON: Senator, could you correctly pronounce your name for me? I’m having a little trouble with it.
OBAMA: Obama.
HENDON: Is that Irish?
OBAMA: It will be when I run countywide.
HENDON: That was a good joke, but this bill’s still going to die. This directory, would that have those 1-800 sex line numbers in this directory?
OBAMA: I apologize. I wasn’t paying Senator Hendon any attention.
HENDON: Well, clearly, as poorly as this legislation is drafted, you didn’t pay it much attention either. My question was: Are the 1-800 sex line numbers going to be in this directory?
OBAMA: Not—not—basically this idea comes out of the South Side community colleges. I don’t know what you’re doing on the West Side community colleges. But we probably won’t be including that in our directory for the students.
HENDON: . . . Let me just say this, and to the bill: I seem to remember a very lovely Senator by the name of Palmer—much easier to pronounce than Obama—and she always had cookies and nice things to say, and you don’t have anything to give us around your desk. How do you expect to get votes? And—and you don’t even wear nice perfume like Senator Palmer did. . . . I’m missing Senator Palmer because of these weak replacements with these tired bills that makes absolutely no sense. I . . . I definitely urge a No vote. Whatever your name is.
Although the exchange was part of a longstanding tradition of hazing new legislators, the tensions between Hendon and Obama were real. On another occasion, Obama voted—a parliamentary error, Obama says—to block funding for a child-welfare facility in Hendon’s district. Hendon rose and criticized Obama for the vote. The two men became embroiled in a yelling match on the Senate floor that looked as if it might become physical; they were separated by Courtney Nottage, then the chief of staff for Emil Jones. Nottage led Obama off the floor to a room that legislators used to make telephone calls. “It looked like two men that were having a serious disagreement and they had walked up to one another really close,” Nottage told me. “I didn’t think anything good could come of that.”Hendon told me, “He’s the one that got mad, because he said I embarrassed him on the Senate floor. That’s when he came over to my desk.” Before Nottage broke them up, Obama, who had learned to box from his Indonesian stepfather, supposedly told Hendon, “I’m going to kick your ass!” Hendon said, “He said something like that.” He added that more details will appear in a book that he’s written, entitled “Black Enough, White Enough: The Obama Dilemma.”
I wonder why Obama didn’t take the time to consider raising the hopes and dreams of an embittered Hendon before threatening to kick his ass…
The article paints a picture of a political dilettante — someone whose ambition outstripped his impulse to work. He got bored quickly of the state legislature and launched a disastrous run for Congress. He complained about politics but did nothing to change it. He ran for the Senate, and once there did almost nothing except prepare his run for the Presidency.
The cover is hardly the worst of the article for Obama. They had better pray that people buy this issue of the New Yorker strictly for the pictures.
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Note to Osama-bama: when you’re built like an effeminate twig, it’s probably best to let your wife do the ass kickin. With her jaw and man hands, she’s more suited for the job.
Alden Pyle on July 14, 2008 at 8:38 AM
It’s clearly a “parody” over Hill’s “terrorist fist jab” comment.
Not so satirical, considering they’ve done frontpage over a meager remark on - so it obviously went over most heads.
Leftists should stay away from complex humor and stick with The Daily Show kind of blant and silly jokes.
Aristotle on July 14, 2008 at 8:41 AM
Maybe he should’ve picked Webb for his running mate. Two a$$ kicking hotheads on one ticket!
p40tiger on July 14, 2008 at 8:41 AM
i still have No Idea how he got this far.
trailortrash on July 14, 2008 at 8:49 AM
Classy, Alden.
Ares on July 14, 2008 at 8:50 AM
Obama’s only real talent seems to be getting himself elected to positions for which he has no qualifications. It started in law school, when he was elected editor of the Law Review (as a compromise candidate, after 19 rounds of balloting), and then went on to be the only editor who never published an article of his own (writing an article probably seemed too much like real work, eh Obama?).
AZCoyote on July 14, 2008 at 8:50 AM
Not to mention when he:
wise_man on July 14, 2008 at 8:56 AM
The so-called “threat” against the fellow legislator was taken out of context and was borne from the Messiah’s momentary frustration at that bitter legislator who refused to believe in the audacity of hope. That child welfare facility was not the one Obama thought he knew!
As for the 9/11 attacks, I encountered leftist arguments about 9/11 while in law school at Harvard two business days after 9/11. I was in class (classes were canceled on 9/11 and the day after), and the professor and several students started prattling on about how American arrogance and intolerance abroad brought these horrific crimes to our shores, and how we should feel sorry for how much we’ve made the Islamic world suffer. The arguments were similar in substance, though very different in tone, than what Rev. Wright got excoriated for saying. And they say Obama isn’t a leftist!
Outlander on July 14, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Thanks Ed..more great posts. I am once gain sitting here breathless waiting for more…and not getting work done. :)
I better get busy tho lest I be called lazy again.
becki51758 on July 14, 2008 at 9:01 AM
After 9/11, President Bush adopts a quote from Jesus Christ–”You’re either for us or against us”.
After 9/11, Barack Obama seems to adopt a quote from Patty Murray–”You have to feel their pain…They’re good people, too”.
jgapinoy on July 14, 2008 at 9:02 AM
The truth isn’t always pretty.
Alden Pyle on July 14, 2008 at 9:03 AM
Oh, you’re so tough & manly, insulting the appearance of someone’s wife & someone’s mommy from behind a keyboard.
Leave the hate speech to the Left, will ya?
jgapinoy on July 14, 2008 at 9:06 AM
How does all this affect McCain? He’s starting to look better and better to me as every day goes by. I might even donate to his campaign.
We simply can’t let this guy Obama win. DD
Darvin Dowdy on July 14, 2008 at 9:11 AM
It’s real simple… white guilt, a smooth tongue, and the Iowa open outcry caucus where the “guilty white people” didn’t want to sound and look like a racist.
.
.
……More confirmation of this is the caucus in Texas… wherever the caucus goers where allowed to write down their vote, Hillary won something like ten (10) to Obama six (6).
On the other hand, in the precincts where the voters had to split into two sides of the room (which was most of them) to show their support and cry their support out loud, well in those.. you guessed it Obama won.
It’s the guilty white people “stupid”.
Mcguyver on July 14, 2008 at 9:17 AM
Obama’s fundamental lack of understanding about the true nature of the enemy we face in radical Islam is deeply disturbing. Maybe we could excuse his remarks from the days after 9/11 — before we really knew much about the terrorists — but Obama still seems to be laboring under the same misperceptions he expressed back then. How else can we explain Obama’s support for the Senate bill that would give away One Trillion U.S. tax dollars to the United Nations to combat “global poverty”? Obama still seems to believe that we can stop terrorism by being kinder and more compassionate to terrorists. That’s a foolish and extremely dangerous belief for any U.S. lawmaker — let alone one who might be our next Commander-in-Chief.
AZCoyote on July 14, 2008 at 9:21 AM
Don’t worry. It was just satire.
wise_man on July 14, 2008 at 9:23 AM
uh..yuh, next time you see me getting my bad-ass on while the taxpayers employ me to be conducting business on the Senate floor you can bring the lecture.
As for “wife and mommy” she is a dirty, America hating, marxist hag, one can only hope DSS intervenes in order to deprogram the socialist spawns she’s created.
Alden Pyle on July 14, 2008 at 9:24 AM
This is his 17th month as a presidential candidate. Why am I learning this now?
mymanpotsandpans on July 14, 2008 at 9:30 AM
Obama as the democrat nominee…bewilderment…
right2bright on July 14, 2008 at 9:35 AM
Weren’t at least a few of those slimebags living here in the US going to out Universities to learn how to fly those planes into those buildings?
At least he doesn’t think it was a controlled demolition, I guess.
benrand on July 14, 2008 at 9:40 AM
Ah yes, Obama’s comments right after September 11, 2001. I’ve been wondering about this for a while.
The New Yorker is the magazine we’ve been waiting for!
Urban Infidel on July 14, 2008 at 10:07 AM
Now lets review. Where in this world do parents brainwash their children from birth to hate the Great Satan known as America? Who straps bombs to the chests of their children and sends them off to kill hundreds of innocent people? Do tell Obama, just whose culture, religion and ethnicity were behind the attacks on 9/11? What culture decided to grab the world headlines and further their cause by killing innocent people sitting at their desks harming no one?
STFU, you non-presidential ignorant wuss.
fogw on July 14, 2008 at 10:07 AM
I just love that part of the exchange. Shows how little has changed with Obama.
4shoes on July 14, 2008 at 10:23 AM
Wait for it…wait for it…Yes, I see in my p.c. crystal ball the Koran-flushing conspiracy theorists getting their Uncle Sam effigies in order. Yes, there they are chartering their buses to drive down to the New Yorker offices. Yes, I see staged outraged and sympathetic NY press shoving microphones in the piehole of fat imams. Yes, I see a scuffle, a hot dog (ham) vendor vs. the falafel vendor on Madison Ave. I see a fatwah against the New Yorker, and eventually a shameful retraction issued in hiding by a publisher and cartoonist crouched in a barn somewhere in upstate NY.
Nahh! Just kidding, it’s not a crystal ball, it’s just a script leaked by the CAIR/Saudi Arabian Joseph Goebbels Office for Cultural Affairs.
Western_Civ on July 14, 2008 at 10:33 AM
Osama Obama is simply a Pet Rock. Clever packaging on the outside, a pointless, useless stone on the inside.
MrScribbler on July 14, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Obama and the Left were supposed to laugh at the biting New Yorker satire.
What went wrong?
profitsbeard on July 14, 2008 at 10:40 AM
And supposedly, it’s McCain who has the temper problem.
MarkTheGreat on July 14, 2008 at 11:05 AM
When the democrats made sure a labor union (NEA) was in control of public eduaction that the dumbing of America would take some time. Now with over 50% of minority kids not graduating from high school in our major cities and the threat of giving amnesty to illegals just a democratic president away, we can be sure the dumbing of America will be complete before conservatives wake up and try to preserve the values our nation were founded on. Obama is proof this is happening.
volsense on July 14, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Then attack her statements, not her looks.
Leave the hate speech to the Left.
jgapinoy on July 14, 2008 at 11:57 AM
If the Obama’s Kool Aid is anything like his forged birth certificate, it was than spiked/doctored!!!
byteshredder on July 14, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Come on now - are we really surprised about his comments to be sympathetic or empathetic to the 9/11 hijackers?
Since he’s a deeply closeted Muslim…why is this such a shocka?
KrisinNE on July 14, 2008 at 12:18 PM
The renaissance of Islamic expansionist activity is as much a “radical Islamist philosophy” as it is caused by “ignorance and poverty”.
Where do the followers of the marginalized “radical Islamist philosophy” come from? They are not made like Orcs, they come from any Muslim enclave from any point on this planet. This policy of pretending that Jihadists are Moop loser freaks listening to crazy mad mullahs who lie about the burden that Allah has placed on his slaves, has to stop.
BL@KBIRD on July 14, 2008 at 12:31 PM
A picture is worth a
thousandbillion words.Symbols missing: halo, hammer, sickel and a serape
“Hon, did you know that I had a sidekick job at the New Yorker?” ~ ~ Bill Clinton
Entelechy on July 14, 2008 at 12:37 PM
Well, that’s in the mix somewhere, for sure. But can you think of one other black politician who would have overcome Hillary and come this far? I can’t, although all of them, excepting as always the Republicans, would have had the same force of white guilt working for them.
I think what we face is something more sinister, in that it could be regarded as a loophole in the process: what if someone came along who had poor to nonexistent managing abilities, and views utterly out of touch with the country, as shown by his record, but who was extraordinarily blessed with the talent of forming a cult of personality around him? Could he become President?
The hope lies in the fact that there is a limit to such talent, and we have already seen some of those limits. I think the more people see of Obama, the less they will like him. Much like the President he most closely resembles (not physically, of course): Jimmy Carter.
Splunge on July 14, 2008 at 1:05 PM
I addressed the Obama/Hendon disagreement here in May.
But there is an important difference in how The New Yorker describes the disagreement and how it actually happened.
The New Yorker said that “a third person had to phyiscally intervene to separate them.”
But in the biography of Obama, called “Obama: From Promise To Power” David Mendell describes it this way:
Soon, the two men were shouting at each other on the senate floor. They took their disagreement into a nearby room, and a witness said that Obama had to be physically restrained.
Maybe this is why Obama has never criticized McCain’s temper?
Rightwingsparkle on July 14, 2008 at 1:06 PM
The preferred liberal chestnut for excusing uncivilized behavior by ideology-driven fanatics.
whitetop on July 14, 2008 at 1:25 PM
Hey Ed, I’m glad to see you’re getting great mileage out of this mag cover…even the NY’r only used it once. Since you’re turning H/A into a slime pit of All Things Anti-Obama, I thought I’d let you know that The Daily KOs has an opening for a seasoned hate-monger. I understand they keep their kitchen well-stocked with snacks…the really high calorie, fatty ones too. Sounds like a good career move for you when The Boss finally comes to her senses about bringing you on.
p.s….we miss you Brian!
DanKenton on July 14, 2008 at 2:14 PM
I listened to a reporter on Fox state that Obama did not grow up as Muslim. I would like to know where this information came from, the Obama campaign?
DanKeaton: So now, not only are we not allowed to mention his:
White mother, grandmother and grandfather,
Growing up in Indonesia (memorizing parts of the Koran, in that Catholic school),
His support of a cousin in Africa (You know, the one whose party burn’t down a church with some of the parishoners inside),Oh, I almost missed:
Anything in his first book that shows his current stances to be pure bullshit.
We now must not discuss a satirical front cover of a liberal magazine. A cover which contains more than an element of truth to it.
The cover almost reminds me of the cartoons in the Punch magazine.
Dan. Take a powder (not that kind, something for the indigestion).
davod on July 14, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Y’know, the internet is a big place. Something for everyone or so I’m told.
Why don’t you go ahead and visit other sites instead of coming here just to feebly attempt to trash-talk Ed Morrissey? What’s the matter, you jealous of Ed or sumthin’?
Gilda on July 14, 2008 at 3:32 PM