We seem to be on a delayed loop here in Europe when it comes to political speeches, so I just now caught King George's speech about the VATech massacre. The very first thing I noticed was pretty inane as I caught it somewhere in the middle. He totally butchered the Romanian name of the professor [Liviu Librescu...LIV-YOO LEEB-RESS-COO, the "r" is rolled but that can be forgiven] that saved his class of students. The President's staff completely dropped the ball on that, knowing full well his grasp of the English language was tenuous at best, and therefore his Romanian, by extension, would be not less than blasphemous when spoken. Somebody should have at least ran it by him and said it out loud before handing him the cue cards. But I digress.
The real kicker though came when they replayed the Whitehouse press conference a half hour later. The administrations first response wasn't words of condolences, or conveying sympathy, or even commonality in the tragedy. Nothing of the sort. Perino made it very clear what the talking points would be:
Instead, they reacted to the tragedy like "Oh shit, someone's gonna talk about gun control now...we can't look weak for our far-right base, lets cut off those libruls before they get started...then we can say something like 'oh we're soooo sorry', blah blah blah." Gimme a break Mr. Prez.
The real kicker though came when they replayed the Whitehouse press conference a half hour later. The administrations first response wasn't words of condolences, or conveying sympathy, or even commonality in the tragedy. Nothing of the sort. Perino made it very clear what the talking points would be:
WTF?!?! This is their FIRST FREAKING RESPONSE?!? Pandering to their right-wing base on gun rights? Look, I'm all for gun rights as your average Constitution-loving progressive liberal, its NOT THE FREAKING ISSUE. Big tragedy, America needs leadership, show some! For fuck's sake, it isn't that hard...you don't even need to mean it. Just come out and say "The President and his staff, first of all, would like to express their deepest condolences to the people effected by this tragedy." Would that have been so freaking hard?Chimpy McFlightsuit's Spokesman wrote:
The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed.
Instead, they reacted to the tragedy like "Oh shit, someone's gonna talk about gun control now...we can't look weak for our far-right base, lets cut off those libruls before they get started...then we can say something like 'oh we're soooo sorry', blah blah blah." Gimme a break Mr. Prez.