There's a problem with figures of speech: You might forget what they mean!
Here's Obama, looked to by the elite as a source of wisdom, and he's simply reading from a speech he had every opportunity to have edited by the most able wordsmiths, and he uses a cliché, and he doesn't notice that he's got it exactly wrong.
To tear back the curtain is to suddenly reveal what is really there! It was behind a curtain and you've torn — pulled —it back.
In Obama's botched figure of speech, the virus is tearing back the curtain — hard to picture that, but it's intended as a vivid image — and what is revealed — what had been hidden behind a curtain — is "the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing." So he's saying that it wasn't seen before, but now it's blatantly obvious: The folks in charge know what they’re doing!
I could say more about "folks," but I want to talk about "torn." The cliché is to pull back the curtain. Pull, not tear. But "torn back the curtain" is comprehensible, just as "ripped back the curtain" would be comprehensible. It's a more aggressive pulling. (You know how viruses are, so impetuous.)
But one reason "torn" might have suggested itself to the speechwriters is the Biblical phrase "tear the curtain." (That must be the source of the Hitchcock film title "Torn Curtain.") When I googled "tear back the curtain," I couldn't get to an answer because the page filled up with discussion of Matthew 27 — the death of Jesus:
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.I'm pretty sure Obama and his speechwriters had no intention of evoking that image. Anyway, I accept the use of the phrase "torn back the curtain." The problem is that when you pull or tear or rip back a curtain, you show what is really there. And it's just funny that he accidentally declared that we can all see clearly now that The folks in charge know what they’re doing.
IN THE COMMENTS: Ralph L finds the pop culture reference for pulling back the curtain. It's so apt for political discussions:
Do I presume to criticize the great Obama? So ungrateful! I should think myself lucky that I am permitted to hear his graduation oration!
Posts
134 comments:
Mr. Obamachev, tear back this curtain!
I have full confidence that Jared Kushner knows what he is doing. Only the best people.
Oops. Rather Bidenesque.
Obama completed the thought by saying, “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” which negates the idea of a certain at all.
And they're not in charge. The American people are in charge, as always.
I think you're straining on this critique. Most people would know what Obama meant and wouldn't think he had said it wrong without having it explained that technically he got it backwards.
Toto used his teeth, so tearing may have occurred.
BO really should shut up, since it's Dem govs that have done the most damage by under then over reacting.
I consider it far more likely that the folks who created that tortured phrase were unwittingly inspired by the Torn Curtain movie.
Why would “the people in charge don’t know what they’re going” specifically mean Trump?
Obama was in charge.
He couldn’t build a website.
Does Obama have anything to do with his speeches other than reading them?
I could have cared less about what Obama had to say to our graduating seniors. ;-)
Actually before I realized the point you we’re making I thought you were going to make a different one. The compliment to Trump is that he tore back the curtain and we see what the people in charge have been up to for a long time now.
"The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people."
I always suspected that some of those zombie movies were actually documentaries.
I couldn't get to an answer because the page filled up with discussion of Matthew 27
Embrace the power of negativity...
["tear back the curtain" -temple] = song lyrics
[tear back the curtain -temple] = probably what you wanted
The true definition of a gaffe, when a politician accidentally tells the truth!
"the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing."
It is a shame that the general public (as a whole) is so ignorant or willfully blind to the realities of our political and "professions" betters that they continue to not only follow this crowd like a pack of blind sheet but that a large percentage of them do it gleefully!
How many college graduates could pass that test that you posted earlier this year? How many politicians?
That phrase evoked “The Wizard of Oz” to me.
And, of course, despite all the bluster and fakery, the Wizard does know what he’s doing.
He confers credentials on Dorothy’s followers, and all their problems are solved.
Dorothy clicks her heels and she’s back in Kansas.
The bigger question is: Who is the Wizard?
The virus has snatched away the last fig leaf from the shriveled ball sack of credentialed expertise.
ANd yet half the country will still vote Democrat
Pull back the curtain is the correct phrase. It’s not random words, it’s a Wizard of Oz reference. Toto pulled back the curtain. But it does mean what Obama was using it to mean—the virus pulled back the curtain on the idea that our leaders know what they’re doing to revealed the truth beneath—that they don’t. Of course, that was every bit as true of Obama and all presidents before him as it is for Trump. None of them know what they’re doing. How could they? It’s too big, too complicated, moving too fast. The best any sensible person can hope for is that they are maintaining an atmosphere where we can bumble through without too much pain. For that, I trust Trump far more than some officious busybody like Obama.
In light of Obama’s and Hillary’s attempts to subvert the constitution, elections and our country, why is there a single person left who will defend or vote for a Democratic Party candidate?
The Dems here have a problem. They are the party of bureaucrats and experts. We should give control of our country to the experts because they have more expertise in these areas, as well as more credentials. And we should give control of our country to the Democrats because they are the party that believes most fervently in the rule of experts. And, not surprisingly, most of the experts who have been running our response to Covid-19 are either bureaucrats or academics. Everyone else has to earn a living.
But, as usual, the experts have screwed up. This time people died. A lot of people died. Collateral damage. Doesn’t really matter to the experts and the bureaucrats making these, sometimes fatal, decisions. They still get their 1% salaries, that come with nice pensions.
Their problem is in attacking Trump. How do they attack him in his handling of the pandemic? Not enough respirators or PPEs? The bureaucracies, filled mostly with Democrats, were concentrating on Muslim outreach and using preferred pronouns to replenishing these items that were exhausted under Obama, himself. Not enough testing early on? Blame that on a bureaucratic power grab by the CDC, which had centralized testing into itself, then didn’t have a fraction of the testing capabilities in place that they should have, and moreover their tests were fairly inaccurate. Prophylactics are taking too long? Bureaucrats again. Vaccines too are taking too long. Again the bureaucrats. How would the Democrats done better, or moved faster, if they had been in charge? Hired more experts and more bureaucrats? Bureaucrats just slow things down, because their ultimate loyalty is to the process, and the process is what is slowing things down so much. Their only other response is to use 20/20 hindsight and nip around the edges.
Responding to the pandemic required decisive actions. Imagine either Obama or Biden ever acting decisively. They couldn’t, in this sort of situation, if their lives depended on it. Besides, acting decisively requires being willing to step on a lot of toes. A lot of those toes this time belong to the experts and the bureaucrats, almost all of whom are Democrats.
"When I use a word," Barack Obama said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
The only thing Obama really handled well when it came a crisis was the press who loved him and heaped adoration upon him.
I'm trying to picture this coronavirus under Obama. I'm betting if he did everything exactly the way Trump did, he'd be getting nothing but praise. I'm betting if he did anything the opposite way that Trump did- Obama not shutting down travel, for instance- he'd be getting nothing but praise.
The Republicans would be holding hearings and reporters would be doing acrostic Twitter posts making fun of their concerns, like they did with Benghazi.
A rather unfortunate term to use while the investigation into his leading a coup is going on. The curtain is indeed being pulled back, the light turned on, and the cockroaches are scrambling on all the networks.
'Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.'.
Well, back in Obama’s day the people in charge couldn’t even stand up a simple website. But times change.
Judy Garland for FBI Director. No curtain will be too hard for her to pull back, starting with the 56 year old FBI Curtain still hiding the CIA’s JFK hit Arranged by the Bush family.
Obama trashed Clinton before he got into office, spent 8 years trashing Bush, and now is trashing Trump. It's obvious he thinks the only good American president we've had is Barack H Obama.
"Embrace the power of negativity...
["tear back the curtain" -temple] = song lyrics
[tear back the curtain -temple] = probably what you wanted"
Ah, yes. I know to do that. I just don't always remember.
I end up with info on how to repair a torn curtain and then... Obama's quote.
Bruce Hayden @ 7:05: what you said. The Wu Flu Tsunami of S*** is indeed proving the uselessness of experts. Correction: not merely uselessness, but lethality. The epidemiological models and modelers are destroying a lot of lives and livelihoods, and for what? Their inability even to hindcast after repeated massaging, their use of an "ensemble" approach, (newsflash, folks: the average of wrong is still wrong), their refusal to share the code and let others even try to replicate their work, are doing enormous damage to their trade. And I have to say, it's overdue.
https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-model-driven-decision-making
Obama couldn't even manage a metaphor, never mind a disaster like this.
"Dorothy clicks her heels and she’s back in Kansas."
Flyover country.
Literally.
What a tortured point about a phrase you didn't get the movie reference for.
Compare that to yesterday's trump retweet of Bill Pullman from Independence Day with his own head on it and tell me which one mattered to anyone.
Block that metaphor.
Vaccines too are taking too long. Again the bureaucrats. How would the Democrats done better, or moved faster, if they had been in charge?
There was a vaccine being developed for SARS, which is a corona virus related to this one, but it was dropped in 2003 when the SARS epidemic burned out. There is some cross reaction and that vaccine might have been effective. One problem with bureaucrats is that they see their task as a limited one and when it is done, they see no need to go beyond. This family of corona viruses will be around.
Obama had Valerie to run everything for him. He was just a smooth talking (as long as he was reading a speech or teleprompter) "articulate, clean" "light skinned and no negro dialect" figurehead.
"The folks in charge know what they’re doing."
When the panic took hold, they knew what they were doing--mitigate the panic, "if we only save one life," shut everything down to shut down the virus, CYA to protect against the MSM and the Karens of America. IOW, a political exercise to address a political problem. Prog governors also knew what they were doing: not a let a crisis go to waste.
Most folks in charge just had no clue about the likely results--and some of the "experts" in charge consciously avoided getting a clue about the trade-offs. Not my job, said Fauci.
I'm with Tim McGuire and those who say Obama and his folks probably had the Wizard of Oz in mind. The curtain hides how small and powerless the wizard is; he's just full of bluster, amplified electronically (almost by Twitter). But there's still a big gaffe. Very few people are going to respond to covid days by saying the whole credentialed elite was right, and Trump was wrong. That's a bigger, longer-lasting curtain, and Trump is the one doing the reveal on that.
It's also a nice touch that the wizard actually does help the deplorables from flyover country, whereas the other elites in the story do not.
The idea that we can't go back to life until everyone is tested all the time (and now some of the tests are reliable!) or until we have a vaccine is just evidence that some people want this shutdown to go on forever.
And now we are hearing all the time about the thing that might be affecting children. So that has to be front and center so nobody goes around thinking we can open schools.
I know I am a conspiracy theorist but I really think Democrats want an excuse not to have a national convention.
What about the people in charge of New York?
So I have two kids that graduated from college.
One from UW-Madison and one from NYU.
From the two commencements we heard from one of the head writers of The Onion and Hillary Clinton+Helen Thomas.
Guess which one we enjoyed tremendously?
Most commencement speakers are over rated blowhards.
(The setting for the NYU ceremony was the new Yankee Stadium before they opened to play ball so that was fun)
1. Bad contrast between Obama and Biden. Biden can’t read his speeches.
2. Lavish praise for Barack on Twitter.
3. Who selected him to be on this TV show?
4. Barack needs to go away.
5. Pretty fucking bold coming from the guy who ordered the government to spy on the Trump campaign.
I mean, the President of Florida and the President of Wyoming seem to be doing ok.
"bold coming from the guy who ordered the government to spy on the Trump campaign"
That's the point of the new media offensive: to smother criticism, to deflect blame, and to remind the MSM troops to fall in line.
I watched the graduation ceremony for the University of Minnesota yesterday. One guy went on about ancient Egyptian gods. A medical doctor who happens to be a so-called covid19 expert said he was proud to be an “alumni of the University of Minnesota.” The correct word is “alumnus.” Expert! Academic!
I had thought the title of the film referred to the Iron Curtain. Didn’t the plot involve transfer of science from one side to the other?
don't look hehind h the curtain,
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/mitigating_tyranny_lockdowns_and_flynn.html
I have a serious question to ask: is there anybody who really enjoys commencement speeches? ISTM they are something we discuss every year as if they are beloved, but in reality they are something to be gotten through.
Isn't the first Question to ask who put up the curtain? That needs to be torn?
Even the Wizard knew what he was doing.
Was Obama playing Dorothy?
MayBee
When Fr. Morrison was President of Creighton, there were NO commencement speeches. He thought it was a waste of time and money.
Colleges have to lay off staff for the lack of fund but Obama is paid huge bucks to deliver his virtual commencement speeches. When you have torn back the curtain, you realized socialist elites invariably enrich their own no matter what happens to the little supporters.
The big government liberal is afraid that the big government doesn't know what it's doing? It's HIS deep state running it.
I'm trying to picture this coronavirus under Obama. I'm betting if he did everything exactly the way Trump did, he'd be getting nothing but praise.
Daily report: Thanks to President Obama 331,934,000 Americans have NOT died of the Coronavirus
FWIW, I am originally from Kansas so I know the Wizard of Oz movies quite well. (It's a legal requirement to watch at least every other year.instant credentials won't stand against the next test they face.)
What people miss is the Lion is still a coward. The tin Man still has no heart and the Scarecrow is still STUUUUUPID. Those
Using "folks" instead of "people" is annoying to me. Too folksy. It doesn't fit with the scripted speech style. It is an affectation he has used for years and it's just cringey.
When Fr. Morrison was President of Creighton, there were NO commencement speeches. He thought it was a waste of time and money.
______________________________________________________________________
There's a man after my heart. I went to my HS graduation because I had to, skipped my junior college and university graduations because I could, and attended my law school graduation because my family wanted to go.
Just mail me the f-in diploma. I got better things to do.
and the Scarecrow is still STUUUUUPID.
But he got a PhD in Thinkology! The only thing foolish about the scarecrow was in thinking he needed a degree to prove he wasn't a fool. He came up with solutions to problems during their trip to the Emerald City - for example, he got the trees to throw apples at them so Dorothy had something to eat.
The lion was a coward, but he was willing to take risks for his friends. The tin man was caring, even without a physical heart. The wizard was right, they did already have the things they sought.
Steve Jobs gave a pretty good commencement speech that is worth reading.
It wasn't a commencement speech, but this lecture by Michael Crichton at CalTech is worth reading.
It curtains for Obama, that's for sure.
The phrase that seems fitting to me is "shit in your nest". That's what we have done, and it's never going to smell right again.
The veil was not a small curtain like you see in some movies. The veil was 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and was four inches thick. The veil was so massive and heavy that it took 300 priests to manipulate it.
Almost as thick as Obama.
It's curtains for Obama, that's for sure.
Correction.
Ann says,
"I could say more about "folks," but I want to talk about "torn." I'ld like to hear about "folks" someday. Whenever I hear it, I'm triggered. I immediately feel as though I'm being condescended to. Do people who are not politicians even use the word?
I think I get it, but it seems a little like a complicated dual negatives problem that leaves the head spinning. I suspect that the idea of the big reveal was what they were focused on and they weren't paying much attention to logic.
"Tear back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing" does remind me of New Left rhetoric about unmasking or ripping or tearing off the mask of the state to reveal its true nature. Acts of resistance or disobedience or criminality or terror would make the state behave in cruel and repressive ways that would reveal what political power was always all about. Masks and unmasking are both relevant lately, as is the idea of the Deep State, though I can't prove any connection.
It's an awkward sentence for me, because whether it leaves you with the idea that the people in charge now do know what they're doing or the idea that the people in charge have never known what they are doing, it can be read in ways that are very unflattering to President Obama.
"Folks" was Obama's way of appearing folksy, one of the people. It's hard to say if it worked, but he thought it did.
There's nothing unusual about Obama giving the commencement address. Where I went we always seemed to have Democrat politicians as commencement speakers. I realized just now that the university president was always itching to get to DC, and the Republicans sure weren't going to take him there. Some actor or writer couldn't do that either.
Best thing about the Chinese flu? Seeing so many of our leading lights morph into empty suits right before our eyes. Suddenly one or another teleprompter kid has to speak extemporaneously and disaster descends like a dark cloud.
ARM: "I have full confidence that Jared Kushner knows what he is doing. Only the best people."
People who have pushed transparent ChiCom propaganda and lies for 5 straight months which have all been debunked should probably sit this one out.
Red Diaper Barry went on to say, "My uncle Frank could have handled the pandemic better than Trump has. Of course, Uncle Frank learned from the best--Stalin. But you know . . . "
Of course they don't really know what they're doing. Any thinking person has always known this - its good for the average person to realize it. We've put too much faith in government.
The best commencement speech was Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978 ("A World Split Apart"). Brilliant, and still very timely in his critique of the West. But I bet most Harvard graduates at the time were thinking, "Geez, this is a downer!"
Mental Floss has a great list of weird or lousy commencement speeches here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50591/7-strange-commencement-speeches
My favorite from among them, the best "worst" commencement speech, is Richard T. Jones, a real life Michael Scott. Great if you like awkward comedy, but don't ever let this happen to you.
https://youtu.be/Sra3POv7pGk
The BIG ZERO... teh gift what keeps on giving...
Perhaps all our masks should be torn down the middle, as this country resurrects from the dead?
Meade sez: "Mr. Obamachev, tear back this curtaiin"
Funny!
Obama is an empty suit. The guy weaponized FISA to spy on his political enemies during the 2016 campaign. He knew the lackeys in the press wouldn't challenge him. And, they still lost to Trump!
Let me ask you Russian Truthers this:
Obama's DOJ & FBI was in charge the entire year of 2016, during the campaign. During this period, how many people did AG Loretta Lynch arrest or indict for meddling with the election?
Answer: None
That's what they ACTUALLY thought about the scope of Russian meddling.
Obama speeches were always nothing but cliches and fortune cookie platitudes. How anybody who saw wisdom in this can be thought of as "elite" is a mystery.
"Obama Says U.S. Lacks Leadership on Virus in Commencement Speeches/The virus has 'torn back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing,' the former president said...."
Obama meant to convey something more illusory about "the folks in charge" when he used the word "idea" instead of a word implicating misplaced trust, such as "belief" or "hope' because, well, who do you think of when you hear belief or especially hope?
People don't "trust" Trump, in large part because of the Obama media psy-ops cabal. Trump has had to show results each step of the way.
Yet who was the leader in whom people, beside the Nobel Committee, bestowed their "hope"?
Was James Comey the man behind the curtain or was he part of the curtain?
And, I thought the correct cultural reference was a certain Hitchcock movie.
When Fr. Morrison was President of Creighton, there were NO commencement speeches. He thought it was a waste of time and money.
We should have elected him president, David Begley.
Remember,"Cash for Clunkers",Arm?
Yeah. Reflect on that for awhile.
Ummm, Althouse, I believe you are grammatically incorrect in your conclusion. To "pull back the curtain" on something reveals the perverse "truth" about it: so "pulling back the curtain" on the idea that "the folks in charge know what they’re doing" actually serves to reveal the opposite. Since the phrase comes from The Wizard of Oz, the "idea" was that the Wizard was an all-powerful, all-knowing god-like entity; until when the curtain got literally pulled back by Toto and revealed merely a man, short and unimposing at that, controlling and amplifying the apparition. The "pulling back the curtain" revealed that the "idea" was false, that it's opposite was indeed true. And that is exactly what Obama was communicating: that those in power do not know what they are doing! So outside of Obama's stretch of language (wrongly, IMO) to use "torn" versus "pulled", you are grammatically wrong on the second argument. He absolutely meant to communicate exactly what the phrase means. Only, that brings with it an entirely more damning implication: he is/was one of the "folks in power"! Many of the people still in government are "folks" he put there, or allowed to remain in their positions, or are promoting to be back in power! It is a stunning revelation in plain sight of either a blindness to his own complicity (an astonishing yet completely fitting personal failing, befitting nothing short of a text-book "narcissist") or a maliciously deceitful attempt of misdirection for purely political gain, aka "naked propaganda". Further, assuming it was intended as propaganda (it was, obviously), it is even more stunning to think of how stupid he feels his target demographic would have to be (are) to look past the misdirection without thought. He believes, as Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs initially did, that his mere exhortations to "ignore the man behind the curtain" could cause his believers to do so.
I'm guessing the VA, the IRS, the CIA and the FBI ran exactly as Obama wanted them to run. Which says a lot.
Wilbur: some of my classmates (Georgetown Law 1960) skipped the celebration. Not I. After slogging all the way from Property I through ConLaw I figured I was worth a hat tip. Sixty years later I am glad I did.
Jim Brock
Unfortunately, the smartest President of all time could only come up with a reference to children's literature, the Wizard of Oz, rather than even a biblical or literary reference. Fight fiercely Harvard !!
The virus has “torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” the former president said. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
---------------================
Is Obama also claiming that his administration and legacy was "pretending to be in charge.”?
which would make the curtain (idea, impression, Plato's shadows on the cave wall etc.) to be maintained untorn is "the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing"
I am sick of the media and the Dems portraying it as chaos and botched. |As someone who has managed crises and doing global around the clock marshalling of resources and teams, I was very impressed with what the Trump administration did. Were there swings and misses? Of course - that is what happens in a crisis, and that is what happens when there is no roadmap to follow.
I am also glad to see our country still has the might to build out 40 military hospitals across the country- in a few weeks!! We still have the surge capacity, the materials, and the organizational know how to do this - it is a tremendous feat; something other countries were literally dying without. We have proven remarkably resilient in the face of depleted stocks of ventilators and PPE going in, and supply from China either non-existent or suspect, but have managed to scrounge and ramp up production from domestic supplies with so many suppliers retooling on a dime. We had a sclerotic CDC and FDA that caused the testing to start off so slow, but now we have dozens of different tests that can be done in minutes- mostly due to the ingenuity of US universities and labs (some of them from other countries and some are owned by companies in other countries, but did not seem to be able to do it until the US got involved). It has been a remarkable show.
It also has shown what a businessman who knows how to kick down barriers can do in a crisis. He may have been slow on the uptake - as 98% of us were given how complacent we have become to something like this for decades, but has been a very solid competent leader, and almost ever decision and things he said that were for some reason deemed horrible or stupid or whatever - have proven right. Not just the various travel bans - which he was loudly criticized for from the media/ left even in March when he did Europe. But also the whole chloroquine stuff - he was cautiously optimistic, did not say everyone should be taking it but that it looked like it might help and he hoped doctors would try it; he said the governors were going crazy with requests like 30-40,000 ventilators and that he did not believe they would need that many. Of course the press twisted it to say he told them they could not have them, and that he was calling them names. He has been talking about reopening the economy since before it even shut down and that the cure is worse than the cause; Roundly criticized but it is turning out that way. He has also exposed and cleared away so many unnecessary regulations that shows what a government run healthcare system becomes. Hopefully they will streamline these agencies for good.
Blogger Michael K said...
Does Obama have anything to do with his speeches other than reading them?
*****************************************************************************************
He's a better speechwriter than his speechwriters. At least according to the expert who said that.
Huh, I read that as more of a self-own on Obama's part. The phrase doesn't seem to be limited to the folks currently in charge, but all the folks who've been in charge in the past.
Mary Beth (the commenter) said...
and the Scarecrow is still STUUUUUPID.
But he got a PhD in Thinkology! The only thing foolish about the scarecrow was in thinking he needed a degree to prove he wasn't a fool. He came up with solutions to problems during their trip to the Emerald City - for example, he got the trees to throw apples at them so Dorothy had something to eat.
The lion was a coward, but he was willing to take risks for his friends. The tin man was caring, even without a physical heart. The wizard was right, they did already have the things they sought.
-----=================///////
Nice and many thanks for this insight. I will now head-canon the Wizard of Oz as anti-credentialism.
Three Trillion Dollar give away, run by Jared Kushner. Reflect on that for a while.
"Torn back the curtain" can mean "exposed"
If I say "I exposed Ivan", it's assumed that I mean I revealed something negative about Ivan.
So, I'll give Obama a pass on this one:
The virus has exposed the idea that the people in charge know what they are doing.
"Torn back the curtain" can mean "exposed"
If I say "I exposed Ivan", it's assumed that I mean I revealed something negative about Ivan.
So, I'll give Obama a pass on this one:
The virus has exposed the idea that the people in charge know what they are doing.
Most people understand that when you use the phrase “Tear back the curtain” you are implying what is behind the curtain is a sham, a fake, that what is being revealed is a fraud. I doubt the grand majority of people understood Obama to mean anything but that. It’s seems like a way of downgrading what Obama’s message was.
“I think you're straining on this critique. Most people would know what Obama meant and wouldn't think he had said it wrong without having it explained that technically he got it backwards.”
It sounds like nit picking to me.
I disagree with Althouse’s reading of this. I think of the Wizard of Oz - where you have this image of a grand wizard, but when the curtain is pulled back, there is just a little charlatan behind it all. In this case the Wizard is the Idea that those in charge know what they are doing, pulling back the curtain on the idea reveals that is not the case.
With that said, Obama just state that those in charge are clueless fools - and looking at his administration, I have to agree with that. He makes a strong case for small government with very limited powers.
I disagree with Althouse’s reading of this. I think of the Wizard of Oz - where you have this image of a grand wizard, but when the curtain is pulled back, there is just a little charlatan behind it all. In this case the Wizard is the Idea that those in charge know what they are doing, pulling back the curtain on the idea reveals that is not the case.
With that said, Obama just state that those in charge are clueless fools - and looking at his administration, I have to agree with that. He makes a strong case for small government with very limited powers.
Obama would need a $million annual subsidy to run a falafel cart.
Ankle biter ARM just can't help himself.
The bottom line is, if the Trump 'administration' is the best we can do as a country then we are completely fucked. I can't imagine the voters saying, 'give me more of this shit-show'.
When Trump first ran he was an unknown quantity. Now his limitations are known to everyone. Enough will respond appropriately.
Your take makes no sense... the *idea* was that people in charge knew what they were doing... the curtain was torn back and revealed it to be a *false idea*. A quick scan of the comments here and I didn't see a single person pushing back on this, which is surprising and I can only account for it being because Althouse is nearly never wrong... but *this* time she is.
I want to hear what you have to say about "folks."
Written by a Rabbi of 40 years:
Snip - There is a time to love and a time to hate. This is a time to hate.
https://spectator.org/a-time-to-hate/
Clear the twilight haze. Tear down darkness's wall. Obama speaks of reducing burdens at the tomb of the planned child (PC).
Barack Obama in retirement must be one very bored man. Reduced to reading someone else's speech, he can't even be engaged enough to see that the words he mouths apply as much to the black man he sees in the mirror as to the orange man he sees on TV.
Most people would know what Obama meant and wouldn't think he had said it wrong without having it explained that technically he got it backwards.
This is EXACTLY the problem. Some people are quick to say that (remember "corpse-man"?) and Obama is still the most intelligent president since Jefferson, but similar things said by Bush and Trump are incontrovertible proof that they're dumb/mentally ill.
And Obama's policies are treated in the same way: "We know what he meant".
(Increasingly, malapropisms abound. Some event "dampened" [not "damped"] people's enthusiasm. A movement/idea/group is "squashed", not "quashed". A tense situation is "diffused", not "defused".)
[aside - Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." (See full speech for context http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/ ) ]
In Hillary's book, What Happened?, she wrote this: "Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves."
What she's trying to say doesn't make a lot of sense. Does she mean that to "sow mistrust" of "leaders...press...experts" is the goal of the rulers of Oceania, or the USSR? And again, the answer is not someone else giving me the excuse that she "obviously" meant such-and-such. I want an explanation of why this intelligent and educated woman can't express herself clearly.
Michael K: "Ankle biter ARM just can't help himself."
Our Beijing Boy is simply fully aligned with the aggressive ChiCom strategy, now openly boasted about, of being willing to go all out to defeat Trump and return to US policies which favor ARM's Beloved and Heroic People's Republic Of China ChiComs.
Again, you would think someone like ARM who acted as Xi's cuckholster for months and months and months would have experienced some degree of shame for pushing so many commie lies at Althouse blog.
But you would be wrong about that.
Very.
the cdc was focused on obesity and gun control, they were not focusing in testing regimes, they took their cues from the who which was utterly compromised by china, and probably the gates foundation,
Trump has pulled back the curtain. He is the render of veils.
It looks like Obama is the next one to have his mask removed.
Take away, um, the TelePrompTer annnd the man is, uhhh, a babbling idiot.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
The bottom line is,
when PDT wins re-election, how will you respond?
David Begley said...
The correct word is “alumnus.” Expert! Academic!
------------============
don't real smart people just do "Alum"
well then
https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/17/chinese-official-laboratories-ordered-destroy-coronavirus-samples/
It's just possible the speechwriter was thinking about Carol on Let's Make a Deal.
Obama using somebody else's moment in the sun to take cheap political shots.
How charming.
Meade got the other reference in one, but I don't think Obama realized he was invoking Reagan vs Russia.
Toto for prez.
And he can build a big, beautiful curtain on the southern border.
He used "torn back the curtain" in his speech to HBCU grads.
In a second speech to High School grads he said "It's also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once out childhood comes to an end. You know all those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing, turns out they don't have all the answers. A lot of them aren't even asking the right questions."
Less Trump specific and more of a "don't trust anyone over thirty, Fight the Power" vibe.
Not what I'd be looking for in a President or a High School commencement speaker.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1262051421144432640?s=20
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1262051421144432640?s=20
Compare Obama's HS speech with dementofan's Hillary quote on authoritarianism:
"The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves."
If the shoe fits, Barack.
crimethink will not be tolerated,
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-global-media-nominee-under-investigation
whole blocks of inquiry are sealed off, justice never comes about,
https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1262116943982723072?s=20
I know this is very doubleunplusgood,
https://summit.news/2020/05/15/bizarre-eu-funded-comic-book-predicted-pandemic-with-globalists-as-saviours/
The Quest of Laurene Powell Jobs
She inherited his fortune, now worth something like $20 billion, and became the sixth-richest woman on the planet. By 2014, Emerson Collective was up to 10 employees. “For the first few years I worked here, there would be people who would say, ‘Who?’ ” says the eighth hire, Anne Marie Burgoyne, director of grants. “ ‘Is there someone in the Valley who’s famous whose last name is Emerson?’ That seemed like a fair question. The Valley is a place of reputation, so it’s logical to ask whose last name is Emerson. Nobody knew who we were.”
<
All the while, she tended to Emerson Collective, quietly assembling a kind of Justice League of practical progressives: Arne Duncan, education secretary in the Obama administration, came on board to tackle gun violence in Chicago. Russlynn Ali, assistant education secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration, co-founded Emerson’s affiliate for education reform, the XQ Institute, where none other than storied urban fashion entrepreneur Marc Ecko has landed as chief creative and strategy officer. (“I feel like everything I’ve done up until this moment was for this reason,” the former T-shirt designer for Spike Lee and Chuck D told me.) Andy Karsner, assistant energy secretary for renewable energy in the George W. Bush administration, runs environmental programs. Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, consults on communications strategy. Dan Tangherlini, head of the General Services Administration under Obama (and D.C. city administrator under Fenty) is the chief financial officer. Peter Lattman, former deputy business editor of the New York Times, oversees media investments and grants. Marshall Fitz, former vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, runs immigration reform efforts.
Then, last year, Powell Jobs unleashed a series of dramatic moves across a three-dimensional chessboard of American culture. In July, Emerson Collective purchased a majority stake in the Atlantic, a 161-year-old pillar of the journalistic establishment. In September, an arm of the collective and Hollywood’s Entertainment Industry Foundation co-opted the four major networks in prime time to simultaneously present an hour of live television, featuring dozens of celebrities inviting the nation to reconceive high school. Over the following weeks, the collective partnered with the French artist JR to create two monumental pieces of guerrilla art on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border that went viral on social media as satirical critiques of the border wall. In October, she bought the second-largest stake — about 20 percent — in the estimated $2.5 billion holding company that owns the NBA’s Wizards, the NHL’s Capitals, Capital One Arena and several other sports ventures.
The pace continued this year. In February, Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant announced he was committing $10 million to help create a Washington-area branch of a program that Powell Jobs had co-founded, which supports students to and through college in nine cities. In March, Emerson Collective helped bring director Alejandro Iñárritu’s shattering virtual-reality installation “Carne y Arena” — an immersive experience that simulates what it’s like for an immigrant to cross the border — to an abandoned church in Northeast Washington.
She had our attention now — but what was she doing? Emerson Collective did not appear to conform to traditional models of philanthropy. Its worldview seemed more or less clear — center-left politics with a dash of techie libertarianism — but its grand plan was unstated while its methods of spurring social change implied that simply funding good works is no longer enough. The engine Powell Jobs had designed was equal parts think tank, foundation, venture capital fund, media baron, arts patron and activist hive.
<
Immigration is perhaps the most partisan fight into which she is pushing a stack of her billions of chips, on behalf of those who see the issue the way she does. On the other side is a countervailing apparatus of funders, thinkers and advocates pushing for tighter borders, fewer legal immigrants and more deportations. Since she entered the fray in 2001, her opponents have won nearly every battle in Washington, so she is turning her tactics away from the capital. “We’re looking for ways to activate people around the country, so that they can understand what’s at stake,” she says. “So that they can start building a chorus that Congress can’t ignore.”
so why are we doing this again?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/17/risk-coronavirus-spreading-schools-extremely-low-study-finds/
I guess it's ambiguous. The ambiguity could have been resolved by saying, "torn [or pulled] back the curtain to reveal" that the folks in charge don't know what they’re doing. Otherwise, one might wonder just what the curtain of falsity is and what the reality is.
"Folks" is likewise ambiguous. Obama or his writers may have chosen to say "the folks in charge" to make his criticism of Trump more indirect, but they seem to have forgotten that not so long ago they were "the folks in charge" themselves. It might be comforting to think that the country could go from hypercompetent to incompetent leaders in a few years, but the reality is that our dysfunctionality is systemic and deeply rooted, affecting both parties and more than one administration.
Obama just can’t believe its curtains for his glorious reign, Gates.
Whatever happened to Garage Mahal? He was the only one better than ARM at sounding erudite, a la AOC, while shooting himself in the foot.
FTR I never read Althouse. Just the comments.
https://nationalfile.com/contact-tracing-group-funded-by-soros-and-gates-has-chelsea-clinton-on-board/
Has anyone seen a comment by ARM that was not a nasty TDS delusion ? Does he comment on anything else ?
A delusion, by definition, is a belief that most people do not share. Most people do not share the belief that Trump has done an acceptable job dealing with this plague.
This is because he is a dumbass. Has always been a dumbass, and will forever be a dumbass. Willfully stupid.
All this analysis of "torn" & "curtains", is silly. I thought Obama sounded like a spoiled 3rd grader mad at someone and just lashes out by sticking his tongue out while spitting out"na, na,na your dumb"! Frankly, I think he is scared for his so-called "legacy". He has never been up against someone like Trump.
Yeah..Trump should have been battling xenophobia with Pelosi in Chinatown and better helping Cuomo fill nursing homes with European Virus + patients.
Whatever we do, let's be careful not to call Obama's bluff!
Xi cuckholster: "Idiots like MK and Drago are in self-defeating denial at this point."
I believe our Beijing Boy cut and pasted this comment from 2016.
Abd its every bit as "accurate" now as it was then.
Beijing Boy ARM is clearly struggling with the complete collapse of 5 full years of his lies in the russia hoax, dossier hoax, Kavanaugh hoax, ukraine hoax and Generous and Wonderful ChiCom virus response hoax.
Bidens clear dementia and losing poll numbers against Trump are further pushing Xi cuckholster ARM to the brink.
And I have to say, its fun to watch.
If you ever want to know what narratives ARM will be pushing at Althouse blog tomorrow, all you have to do is read Xinhua "press" releases today.
It is not enjoyable for me to have continually point out what should be blindingly obvious to even the most retarded commenter.
I certainly hope you are here November 4 and do not run away like Garage Mahal.
I see that ARM has still not commented on anything that is not defined by TDS.
You old fool, you won't remember anything by then. And, garage didn't 'run away' he just got sick of senile old idiots like yourself.
Post a Comment