I can’t help but wonder why President Obama has received so much more heat from certain members of the media and from certain factions of the country than any public figure I can remember. The recent attempted bombing by a Nigerian terrorist has prompted those members of the media to come out from the woodwork to –- yet again –- criticize Obama. This time it is because he took 72 hours to publicly respond to the situation, after consulting with security teams from Christmas until Dec. 28.
Jon Stewart made a good point on the Jan. 6 episode of his show — that those certain members of the media didn’t say anything when a similar situation happened in 2001. Former President George W. Bush took not 72 hours but six days to publicly respond to the infamous shoe bombing attempt by Richard Reid. Even then, he didn’t call a press conference to talk about the issue as Obama did. So why is Obama being criticized and almost blamed for the security issues on the flight that led to the attempted attack?
Let’s review some of the conspiracies about President Obama and try to find a trend. First, there was the “birther” conspiracy, perpetrated by the thankfully-retired-from-CNN-and-definitely-not-a-racist Lou Dobbs, who stated that the multiple birth announcements and birth certificates provided to the public were, indeed, fake. I would love to meet the man who, in 1961, came up with the wonderful plot to destroy America from the inside 47 years later using a black child, conceived out of wedlock by an interracial couple (one member of which was from Kenya). And this is 1961, when “separate but equal” was considered OK in some places.
Moving on through the history of Barack Obama, you find such scandals as Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at a part of a speech on health care that Obama most certainly wasn’t lying about. I can understand a Republican congressman disagreeing with what the president was saying, but never before had I ever seen or heard someone shout out during a presidential address to Congress. You find the Rush Limbaugh story about how Obama’s college thesis was that the Constitution was “inherently flawed,” which Limbaugh found on a Web site that labeled the story as a satire. You find comparisons to Hitler in that the two were great speakers, only to later find criticisms of his speeches as president – all from the same channel. You find references to Bill Ayers, to communism and socialism, to Hugo Chavez, to Obama’s role as either a Muslim or the apparent Antichrist.
What you don’t find, at least on Fox News’ Web site, is a detailed story about the effigy of President Obama that was hanged in Plains, Ga. The only story I could find is a blurb saying that the Secret Service is investigating the incident. “Bush effigy burned,” returned numerous results, the first of which at least three times longer than the Obama story.
Plains, Ga., prides itself on being the hometown of former President Carter. This, at least somewhat, shows that the town doesn’t hate Democrats in general. They simply hate Barack Obama, and that leads racism. Racism could explain a number of the conspiracies listed above. Birthers don’t want to believe that a black man could be legitimately elected their president, so he must not have been born here. Limbaugh and his right-wing friends, including my old buddy from Connecticut, shock-jock radio Glenn Beck (whogot in trouble in his Connecticut days for making fun of an Asian caller on his morning show), have said racist things about Obama on multiple occasions. I have seen criticism of a president and have taken part in criticism of President Bush. I’ve also lived with my mom, who can’t admit that Bill Clinton did anything good for the country because she dislikes Democrats so much (yet still loves me). But I have never seen outright hatred for a president like I have seen with Obama.
Paul Murty is an English sophomore.
