IN THE COMMENTS: I wrote:
At first I thought Sullivan's sentence was missing a word, that he was referring to the past and meant to write "We have had..." So, we used to have a "temperamental WASP" in the WH, but now we don't and people need to understand that somehow. Then I decided what he meant was "temperamental" not in the sense of moody and unpredictable, but as the adjectival form of "temperament." So, Obama has the temperament of a WASP. I guess you're allowed to have a big old stereotype about white people. And he's applying that stereotype to Obama.John Stodder wrote:
For the record, I think Karl Rove was the first guy to compare Obama to the WASP stereotype of the sarcastic guy at the country club, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and making comments about everyone else at the party. I always thought that was the oddest perception, but it's turned out to be very apt.Correct! ("He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.")
Posts
94 comments:
Maureen has long wanted Obama to be what he isn't.
So has Althouse. Is that just a female thing?
"We have a temperamental WASP in the White House."
TRANSLATION (Andrew, to MoDo): "Leave my man ALONE, bee-yotch -- !!!"
But since he literally cannot win against a narrative determined by physics, it seems to me that columnists should be pointing out the reality of reality rather than the "reality" of "narrative."
Obama got elected on "narrative" Sully.
From the race speech to Hope and Change.. With Obama its all narrative.
Funny, where was this buffoon during the Katrina-as-Bush's-fault narrative? Wasn't he just another one of the media monkeys throwing poo at the white house back then? What's changed?
Also, does Sullidouche really not take comments on his postings? Loser.
wv: "floors" -- Dirty, sticky ones, at that.
For some reason, that line reminded me of when Claude Rains realizes the truth and confesses to his mother, "I am married to an American agent" in "Notorious."
For the record, I think Karl Rove was the first guy to compare Obama to the WASP stereotype of the sarcastic guy at the country club, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and making comments about everyone else at the party. I always thought that was the oddest perception, but it's turned out to be very apt.
WASP -- really?
I think I need to brush up on my acronyms.
(laugh). Yes, he's a WASP. Only he's black-ish.
At first I thought Sullivan's sentence was missing a word, that he was referring to the past and meant to write "We have had..." So, we used to have a "temperamental WASP" in the WH, but now we don't and people need to understand that somehow. Then I decided what he meant was "temperamental" not in the sense of moody and unpredictable, but as the adjectival form of "temperament." So, Obama has the temperament of a WASP. I guess you're allowed to have a big old stereotype about white people. And he's applying that stereotype to Obama.
Did I get that right? I'm really not sure.
"This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he [Chief political aide David Axelrod] warned in a political memo. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched," he said of Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate opponent.
Shorter Sullivan:
I see white people.
I think it so odd that people still compare the POTUS to his grandparents when it seems so obvious that he is his mother's child. And his mother was in serious WASP denial mode.
Yes, the sentence is constructed badly. I thought he was talking about Obama flying into rages or being mercurial.
"We have a person with the temperament of a WASP in the White House" was what I think we was trying to say. And even after you modify it to make some sense, it still isn't actually true. Obama a WASP? I don't think so. For all their faults WASPS usually had more regard for their country.
White As Sarah Palin?
From Sullivan's post:
"But since he literally cannot win against a narrative determined by physics..."
So, now, when it comes to Obama, he uses a reasonable standard to judge the President.
Ann: My interpretation is just like yours; 'Obama has the temperament of a W.A.S.P', not 'he's a W.A.SP and temperamental.'
For the record, I think Karl Rove was the first guy to compare Obama to the WASP stereotype of the sarcastic guy at the country club, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and making comments about everyone else at the party. I always thought that was the oddest perception, but it's turned out to be very apt.
I remember that comparison, too. I wonder if slightly jarring comparisons are more likely to be spot on? Country club and black man aren't the most natural pairing, but something about Obama drove Rove to make the connection.
"Did I get that right? I'm really not sure."
LOL -- I'm not sure either, but at least that's a better understanding that what I was getting.
Blofield: Word.
Wait a minute! Andrew Sullivan thinks that Barack Obama is really Roger Sterling?
Jeeez what will he come up with next?
Sullivan fully understands and accurately characterizes the WASPishness of the current WH occupant.
You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty.
Seems to me he does relish personal and nasty when he directs it against those who cannot defend.
First, Bill Clinton was the first white president who was black. Now, Obama is the first black president who is white?
I hope we can some day elect a black president who is black.
So with the recent flood of white Democratic pontificators saying, basically, they're disappointed that Obama's not acting "black enough" for them, does this mean
A. They they think black people are loud, angry, confrontational and possibly violent.
B. They view themselves as (as white) as timid, subservient, conciliatory and non-violent.
C. They view themselves as loud, angry, confrontational and possibly violent, and consider themselves honorarily(?) black.
D. All of the above.
Well he has one thing right, few folks understand physics,and even fewer folks can explain why there should be this underwater plume when they were taught oil is lighter than water.
But since he literally cannot win against a narrative determined by physics, it seems to me that columnists should be pointing out the reality of reality rather than the "reality" of "narrative."
No, Obama has chosen to interpret the job as being physically impossible, and thus beyond his responsibility.
With this open-ended a disaster, there are a million things you could be doing. You could be setting up barrier islands, the way Jindal wants to do. You could be airlifting fire booms into the area to burn off the slick. None of these things are physically impossible.
Insisting that the only solution is to plug the hole, that the only way to plug the hole is to wait for BP to do it, and the only role of the President is to pressure BP to plug the hole is just another way of wishing your problems away.
The One's pride must be hurting due to several weeks without praise and adulation. It will be at least August before some heroic relief tales can drilled about him again; provided that another Act Of God, like a Gulf hurricain, does not fall upon this country. In the meantime he can only keep blaming the Jews' God for the curse he has put himself under. Electing an anti-semitic president is having a disasterous blowback.
Not everyone has Sullivan's ability to transform politicians into whatever he wants merely by wishing it so.
On the other hand, watching Sullivan fight Dowd is kind of like watching Ba'athists fight al-Qaeda, only with fingernails in place of rifles, so perhaps we should keep quiet and not spoil the moment.
("He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
So basically, Obama is an arrogant asshole. Yeah, that describes him to a "T".
You can't change who you are. Obama was elected by the voters because a majority saw him as a non-aggressive, non-threatening African-American candidate. If that wasn't who he is, he never would have gotten past Hillary in the primaries, let alone beat McCain in the general. And there's no way he could have submerged a more aggressive personna over the two-year time period a modern presidential campaign involves -- if there was a fiery, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners Barack Obama in there, it would have come out well before the 2008 election.
Liberals thought there was. They thought Obama could turn on a dime and go from being someone who eases the concerns of swing voters to someone who intimidates Republicans and conservatives into bouts of bed-wetting through his force of personality. That's not who he is and not who he can be, and people like Andrew Sullivan are just figuring that out now (of course, what they thought when they elected him was just the presence of the first African-American president would cower Republicans, conservatives and everyone else into giving Obama everything he and they wanted. It's the failure of that to happen that has really pumped up the anger on the left that Obama just doesn't Hulk-out and deliver a big can of whupass on all his political opponents).
"He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
So does that make him Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack?
I've been saying this all along, The Zero is the whitest white guy anybody ever saw.
After all, how many black guys ask for Grey Poupon on their hot dog?
John Kerry has more soul.
So does Sarah Palin.
Ditto the Bushes, any or all of them.
Scott said...
First, Bill Clinton was the first white president who was black. Now, Obama is the first black president who is white?
I hope we can some day elect a black president who is black.
Hear, hear.
"Leaning against the wall . . . and making comments about everyone else at the party."
That description brought this thread back to mind.
Irene:
That pic has two "non-Wasp" Wasps in it. Heh.
BTW that pic could have served as the inspiration for Rove when he came up with his Obama is a "country club snob description".
AJ Lynch, I guess it proves that in America, anyone can become a WASP. (My other favorite non-WASP WASP is JFK.)
Is this a great country, or what??
El Pollo Real said...
Maureen has long wanted Obama to be what he isn't.
So has Althouse. Is that just a female thing?
All women think they can change a man. I suddenly feel bad for Meade.
Ann Althouse said...
So, Obama has the temperament of a WASP. I guess you're allowed to have a big old stereotype about white people. And he's applying that stereotype to Obama.
Did I get that right? I'm really not sure.
Well, President Barely is half white after all. You got it half right.
Irene- what a great country is correctomundo! Where else could I have lived so well and thrived sorta kinda.
If Michelle caught Barack in a country club with a beautiful date, she'd kick his scrawny ass.
@Paul Z.:
Not everyone has Sullivan's ability to transform politicians into whatever he wants merely by wishing it so.
LOL
Politicians, non-politicians, movements, whatever. Sullivan lives in the Bizarro World between his ears.
Andrew Sullivan says that obama is more or less acting white.
Bill Maher jokes that obama is not a real black president.
Chris Matthews says he liked obama's speech so much he forgot obama was black.
Keith Olbermann declares that all white men are racist, which is itself a racist statement.
For all the claims that the opposition to Obama is racist, there seems to be alot of racist supporters of the president, which is interesting.
Racist
And once again Sully is quoted. I can only refer to these lines from the movie "Big"
And they pay you for this!?.....SUCKERS!
So a WASP is needed for the Supreme Court but not the White House?
Obama is a mulatto, and apparently not quite what anyone wanted. He was supposed to have that amazing temperament for the job though.
That Rove description never made sense to me, particularly since everyone was trying to paint Obama as some outsider/other-than-American at the time.
That's why those dumb smear narratives never took hold during the campaign: people were desperately throwing any conflicting meme they could.
Does Obama match the stereotype of a WASP.
You know in a way yeah. He does.
It is still an insane comment by Sullivan.
LordSomber said...
"He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
So does that make him Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack?
6/2/10 2:32 PM
No. What you described might be Chevy Chase's character, Ty. The danger of that personality is it can morph into its darker older cynical and corrupted doppelganger, Judge Smails.
Irene said...
AJ Lynch, I guess it proves that in America, anyone can become a WASP. (My other favorite non-WASP WASP is JFK.)
In the 60s, such people (like the Kennedys and Edward Brooke), were called WASPirants.
WV "untaxes" What we need the next Congress to do.
Not everyone has Sullivan's ability to transform politicians into whatever he wants merely by wishing it so.
Well, I for one am glad that Sullivan has not transformed Obama into the secret father of Palin's child (or was it Palin's grandchild?). Although I'm sure he'll get the proof any day now... .
I bet Maureen and Sully and all of the other swells have great and enlightened repartee at all of their cocktail parties. I wish I was invited.
Reminds me of this
This and the Maher comments are the laying of the groundwork for the "Obama wasn't really a black president" defense, which will be required as Obama continues his descent into a worse-than-Carter disaster of a presidency. "He wasn't really black, he was just a stuck up rich white guy passing as a black man!"
It's similar to the situation playing out on the oil spill issue. When it looked like Top Kill was going to succeed and Obama could claim credit for it, he gave the impression at his press conference that his administration and BP were full partners, joined at the hip since day one. But after the Top Kill operation failed, Obama quickly changed his tune to I'm sending Holder and a team of lawyers to the coast to see how we can lock up those evil incompetent thieving liars at BP who have kept us in the dark since day one.
It's CYA in both cases.
I had the same "country club" impression of Obama. And I remember trying to explain why here and being told "but he's black" as if that made a difference to a perceived air of superiority. Of course, if you call a black man "uppity" you're a racist, which leaves very little room to point out that, yeah, the man's a snob.
In any case, I don't know that even people who like the guy can claim that his humor isn't snide. I think that snide is probably the most accurate word for the sort of "clever" put-downs that Obama tended toward. I mean... you're likable enough, Hillary? Slam! He even ended up apologizing a couple of times for offending people by being sharp that way, with the "humorous" put-downs, ha-ha it was just a joke, I didn't mean to offend... all of the things he said without saying them, the verbal barbs with the inbuilt deniability.
But what a lot of people *liked* was just that lofty attitude of his. The Harvard, yes, country-club, aura of his. The cutting cleverness. He was suave, he was sophisticated, intelligent and nuanced. What a person would call "well bred" if it could be said, which it couldn't.
The opposite of, oh, Palin, whom we're assured is "common."
But you say "country club" and there is outrage from the same mouths that chose references to lower-class as preferred insults. They want "country club" but don't want to admit it. It's a class issue, through and through.
Obama is an arrogant, childish prick.
You all are wrong: President Obama is the best President we have had since JFK. He and VP Biden will be at WH till Jan. 2016. Thank goodness for their leadership. Sadly, GOP has no leadership or vision or character or anything. GOP is not a party that is growing. Even people in LA or AL or FL are talking that this is not the fault of the Administration. They are grateful of his leadership. Please stop spreading rumors.
So I'm picturing that "New" looks like this: link
By WASP temperament, Andrew Sullivan meant emotionally distant, reserved, controlled (but in the negative sense). And he meant this in contrast to what Mauren Dowd seems to whiningly want him to be.
Karl Rove's slander was completely off the mark because i think we can probably all agree that Obama's a family man (I think on his own, but some suggest that its because Michelle would kick his a$$ otherwise ...and i dont doubt that's true, but I dont think he's a family man out of fear). Obama also seems to be fairly nerdy, so I cant really imagine him having much game with women ...
I think most of you l here have focused on another aspect of the President, and that is his cockiness. But I ask you to point to a President of the USA who has not been cocky. I think you've got to be cocky to decide that you want to be the leader of the free world.
"I think you've got to be cocky to decide that you want to be the leader of the free world."
Oh, certainly.
I don't quite see how what Rove said was a slander or how it is answered by "family man" though. I don't see it as an accusation of womanizing at all. It's what Rove called "snide" comments, and it seems to me that it's objectively true that Obama tends toward the clever cutting remark. If it's objectively true then it's not a slander.
Now maybe this doesn't bring to mind the stereotypical "Biff" from the country club, particularly if a person is inclined to like Obama, but "You're likable enough, Hillary?" Subtle and cutting. Do you deny it?
here's the rove comment:
"He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
the image i saw was that Obama was some kind of pimp like figure, very suave, esp with women; the snide comment bit I just saw as silly/snippy/Rove's insecurity, and that bit i never really saw in him because Obama isnt insecure .. he's cocky, which is different.
and that hillary comment, I know, it comes off badly; but it IS the case that Hillary isnt particularly likeable .... that's been true from early on; that's why the Republicans can raise so much money just mentioning her.
...and can Obama be subtle and cutting with some of his remarks -- yes. I agree with that, certainly. I was thinking of other off the cuff remarks he has made; and I'd say you're right.
The cool sauveness is what made people liken Obama to James Bond, no?
I don't equate "pimp" with a country club. I don't know why someone would.
But there is no doubt that I put more weight on the "snide remarks" part of what Rove said (if I ever heard what Rove said rather than someone else saying the same thing, or me saying it, or whatever) because it was something I'd already observed.
The comment Obama made about Hillary didn't just come off badly. He spoke it in a way that was particularly *not* friendly. And it wasn't the only thing where he said really mean stuff in a way that was indirect and deniable. Did he call Palin a pig? Oh, no, of course not. Did he humiliate some young reporter who'd asked him a question? Oh, not on purpose and he apologized but it sure got a nice laugh at the time. Ha-ha. Always the implications and his fans would snigger and let him deny it.
Sure, maybe I only noticed those things because I already didn't like Obama, but I didn't make them up. And when someone said, hey, it's like that snide guy at the country club I didn't for even a *second* think "black guy - pimp."
"The cool sauveness is what made people liken Obama to James Bond, no?"
Yes, I think so. I believe that a lot of people found it particularly appealing.
the image i saw was that Obama was some kind of pimp like figure
This says a lot more about you than it does about Rove, danielle.
Synova's right: normal people don't equate men in country clubs holding martinis with pimps.
well, let me take a step back and note that the image Rove tried to paint I couldn't completely see, and certainly what i did see was not what you saw. Some of that has been clear already.
you keep mentioning country club, but the image of a black man in a country club (and not as a waiter) isnt one that I can really see; and really, I have no idea what a country club is like. I was just thinking of some sort of exclusive club. what I did see was the guy with the pretty woman, with the cigarette, standing against the wall perhaps in a club like setting, i said pimp (but perhaps I should have said player, or whatever word you may use to mean a man that always pursues the prettiest women, not necessarily to keep them, but more for the pursuit ... i didnt mean that he had prostitutes working for him or anything ridiculous like that) ....
"Did he call Palin a pig? Oh, no, of course not. Did he humiliate some young reporter who'd asked him a question?"
seriously, synova ? you bought that ridiculous line from mccain ? really ? have you never heard the term 'putting lipstick on a pig' before ? he was not talking about Palin.
that's definitely in your head.
And if you think through the analogy, palin would have been the lipstick.
and what question and what reporter ? huh ?
Synova, I appreciate your observations about Obama and his snide comments.
Sarcasm is unmanly, because it enables the user to insult while giving him cover ("Did you take it that way? I didn't mean it that way.")
A real man is supposed to be straightforward and accountable for what he says.
Obama's not a "WASP" he's just a typical Ivy-League elitist who's had zero contact (and has zero empathy for America and the average American. That's why he's so detached and think small-town America is "clinging to their guns and religion".
Kagan, Pelosi and the "wise Latina" are no different.
when i heard the you're likable enough comment, he sounded like a guy who was really sick of Hillary and her campaign and her attacks on him; and from his expression, it didnt really seem like he meant it as an insult, and she didnt seem to take it as one. but in retrospect, it does sound like an insult.
here it is on youtube.
It's imprecise to say that the "lipstick on a pig" crack is something "that's definitely in your head."
He delivered the remark in a snide tone. The audience responded knowingly and nervously. The candidate recognized this mistake and chalked it up to "politics." He knew he erred enough so to respond to it. Unfortunately, his delivery of the explanation was as snarky as the original flourish.
There's nothing clever or witty about sarcasm. It's not temperamental; it's adolescent.
he responded to it because the perception of sexism is so inflamatory; not because there was any truth to McCain's ridiculous charge.
McCain's charge was not ridiculous. The audience read the comment exactly as Obama meant it.
He responded because the "politics" pushed him to back peddle.
OK, Irene. sure, whatever you say. If you already disliked Obama, then there is nothing he could say that you would not misconstrue as proof that he is whoever you want to believe he is. Your dislike for him could lead you to say, overlook the entire paragraph before the 'lip stick on the pig' analogy, and instead say, 'OMG, he's talking about Palin.'
ridiculous, and pathetic.
danielle wrote: And if you think through the analogy, palin would have been the lipstick.
No. Palin styled herself as a pitbull with lipstick-she being the pitbull. By analogy, POTUS likened her to a pig with lipstick. The analogy requires that she be the pig.
Danielle, you seem pretty adamant about denying any equivalence between Rove's remarks and Sullivan's remarks. I find that odd and defensive.
defensive ?
huh ?
of Rove or of Sullivan ?
"ridiculous, and pathetic."
Okay then. Imagine a race in which Hillary Clinton was running against John McCain. The punch line of Hillary's convention speech is a line about lipstick. It implies that she is tough and pragmatic.
Shortly thereafter, McCain draws on the lipstick analogy, referencing the innocent, colloquial "lipstick on a pig" remark.
In either situation, it's an adolescent, "ridiculous, and pathetic" turn.
i think both of them are a bit off in their analogies. I know that Sullivan was trying to say he's detached, but he's not detached in the way WASPs are. And Rove was trying to say Obama is an elitist, and I dont think that's true either.
Obama is not the sort of person that gets to exhuberant or too worried/depressed/low ...(Sullivan); and Obama is cocky, but in the hyper-confident sort of way that athletes are ...
defensive ?
Yes. At 8:44 you started off with insight into what Sullivan really meant and then immediately characterized what Rove said as slander.
I suppose that Althouse and to certain degree John Stodder made the comparison of Sullivan's and Rove's remarks but you rejected them out of hand.
Again, I found that defensive..and strange.
slander: refers to a malicious, false and defamatory spoken statement or report
Rove's intent was malicious and false. there were all sorts of innuendos in there that he didnt want to say in plain english.
I think it's no accident that the name "danielle" also contains the letters that spell "denial," as her comments seem to be casting about for reasons why Rove's comment won't fit Obama. First, she talks about Obama being "nerdy" (in what world?), then she says that the image of the guy at the country club conjures up that of a pimp (again, in what world?).
As far as Rove's comment, though, and what inspired him to make it, I think it's evident that Rove has encountered more than a few of these snooty guys in country clubs who act like they're smooth and clever and better than everyone else and judge you based on all sorts of superficial matters. After all, Rove grew up in Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, he was not a college graduate; despite his lack of formal education, he was quite nerdy, and he isn't most people's idea of good looking. Rove recognized Obama for what he is--a shallow and callow fellow with two Ivy-League degrees who likes to imagine he is much more sophisticated and intelligent than everyone else.
danielle, perhaps you don't pick up on his snideness because it isn't directed at you.
So now a critical observation of a political figure and his character is slander, malicious and false and so off limits?
Politicians outright lie about events that aren't even opinion. Rove expresses an opinion, Obama reminded him of the snooty guy leaning on a wall at a country club who thinks he's better than everyone else.
Lipstick on a pig?
"danielle, perhaps you don't pick up on his snideness because it isn't directed at you."
Yeah. It's reasonable that a person wouldn't. Like bitter-clingers. Either a person nods because it's true or they're pissed because they've just been insulted.
Like the pre-emptive accusations of future racist attacks Obama made that people took personally and then it's all denial... he hadn't *called* anyone racist, etc. So who would be upset by that?
@danielle you keep mentioning country club, but the image of a black man in a country club (and not as a waiter) isnt one that I can really see;
Call me weird, but I don't have a picture of a black man in a country club when I hear this ... I have a picture of a GUY in a country club, leaning against the wall, Mr. Coolness himself, making snide remarks about the lesser beings ... Like a 1930s or 40s movie ...
I guess I'm color blind. Or something.
(Why *do* the lefties see black all the time?)
Synova: exactly. Researching law on Wikipedia is an inexact science. A cursory search overlooks the "public figure" exception (not to mention the allowances for satire and irony).
Here's the logic: omg ! he's so sauve ! he's like James Bond ! . . . (oh wait) Karl Rove said it so omg it 's slander !
and as someone mentioned above, danielle, the "lipstick on a pig" remark was delivered shortly after palin used the "lipstick on a pitbull" = hockey mom line.
so jon favreau & co., those oh so clever 20 somethings who mock hillary (who is reasonably likeable, so says the soon to be leader of the free world and american feminists' idol), think "zowee!! we can run with that!! hoo ee! what a joke! aren't we the cat's meow! hahahahahahah!!!! stupid pig! you opened the door!"
coarsened discourse doesn't even begin to describe it. so much for the snide country club wall decoration.
"seriously, synova ? you bought that ridiculous line from mccain ? really ? have you never heard the term 'putting lipstick on a pig' before ? he was not talking about Palin."
I didn't buy anything from McCain. Most of Obama's own supporters thought it was a slam at Palin, listen to the crowd's reaction, they took it exactly that way and they liked it.
But it was deniable, since it relied on the audience having recently heard lipstick on a bit bull.
Well, technically it was lipstick NOT being on a pitbull.
He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date
So M'Chelle's at home with the kids, then?
Whatever Obama is, he is a Usurper. His father was never a citizen or a resident. Obama has admitted that he was born with a foreign allegiance (to Britain), thus he can never be Natural Born.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman ~ James F. Wilson March 1866
"We must depend on the general law relating to subjects & citizens RECOGNIZED BY ALL NATIONS FOR A DEFINITION and that must lead us to the conclusion that every person born in the United States is a natural-born citizen of such States, EXCEPT....children born on our soil t...o temporary sojourners or representatives of foreign Governments."
from March 1, 1866 House debate on rights of citizens beginning on page 1115. The specific quote is on page 1117, 1st column 1/2 way down.
http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampageSee More
" ... I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen..."
- John Bingham, writer of the 14th Amendment.
a pimp? a waiter?
wow danielle, it's a good thing you aren't racist.
Danielle is obviously a foreigner and English is not her first language. That's why she has such trouble understanding what we are talking about: she doesn't know what a country club is -- she seems to think it's a sort of discotheque -- seems not to understand what "snide" means, thinks that equating Obama to a snobby guy with a drink in one hand and a beautiful date on the other means he's being accused of stepping out on his wife and/or we think he's a pimp, thinks observing and remarking on the president's behavior is slander, doesn't recognize insults disguised as compliments (she thinks Obama really meant Hillary was "likeable"), and so on. All these indicate to me that she doesn't understand the way Americans talk and think.
More evidence: one of the main characteristics of danielle's comments is her continued shock that we talk about Obama casually, as if he was one of us, not above us in any way. In the "Old Country" it's traditional that you don't talk about your leaders like they are part of the hoi polloi if they have been anointed by the elite of the nation as the leader they prefer. (Bush was rejected by the elite, therefore it's okay to talk about him as if he's not just an ordinary Joe but a nobody you can trash with impunity.) Another thing is the way she lets slip evidence of the sort of antique racist notions towards blacks they hold in supposedly more "advanced" countries. For example, she immediately thinks of a pimp in a disco when she reads the thing about Obama likened to a country club member. Some of danielle's comments give me 70s flashbacks.
Anyway, I think danielle is French. Am I right?
Although the French don't have the same grasp of irony that Americans do, they do have some. Danielle claims to have 0 capacity for irony, which implies that she's Chinese, as Chinese humor relies very little on irony.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703416204575146040564757682.html
"When the 40-year-old Mr. Wong played the "Late Show With David Letterman" last year, people cracked up when he walked out and said, "Hi, everybody….So, I'm Irish." That appearance launched him on a tour of clubs around the U.S.
Yet in China, where Mr. Wong grew up, people were puzzled from the start. "How come the first sentence, 'I'm Irish,' can make Americans laugh?" one viewer asked in the comments on a subtitled video circulating in China. Because everybody in America is from Ireland, someone theorized. "It has nothing to do with that," said a third. It's because being "Irish itself is hilarious.""
She could be Chinese I guess. I based her being French on her name, as well as I could swear in some earlier comment she said she was French. I'm not sure though.
American humor doesn't translate well to a lot of places. I recall when David Letterman broadcast from England several years back his act sort of fell flat with the British audiences. They were expecting poop and boob jokes, maybe. I guess now they find him funnier.
Obama is culturally WASP, raised by WASPS, with WASP faith, he thinks like a WASP from a lifetime in WASP schools while being surrounded and raised by WASPs. The mans only connection to Africa was the sperm donated by his biological father. He is so disconnected from his African bloodline that his aunt was struggling on welfare in a Boston housing project and he had no idea. The man is all about the WASPs. HE is only able to pull off the black act due to American racism not being able to see past the skin color. The black "beard" that is his wife completes the ruse.
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