| Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden shows why some "professional" writers really should save their ravings for their own personal blogs. I know, I know -- it's the Times, what do I expect? Something better than this gobsmackingly ugly paragraph, part of a column bemoaning Obama's bow when greeting the Japanese emperor: But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" [link added] is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.
"Blood impulse"? There's something different about the blood of people who were "sired" by American citizens? A mother "attracted to men of the Third World"? We wouldn't be talking about (whisper) black (/whisper) men, would we? And reared by grandparents in the state of Hawaii, which for some reason Mr. Pruden sees as unacceptably different from the monolith that is the other 49 states. Yeah, Maine is exactly like southern California. Pruden gets in a dig at Bill Clinton too, claiming that "like any draft dodger", he had trouble learning how to salute. I wonder how five-deferments Dick Cheney did with that whole saluting thing. Bet Mr. Pruden didn't expend any column inches on that subject. Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about.
Really? Had Pruden bothered to do any research before spewing, he might have found this. Apparently, Republican President and retired General Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't have any problem bowing to show respect when he greeted foreign leaders. I doubt Mr. Pruden would interpret President Eisenhower's courtesy as "a sign of a really deep sense of inferiority". Looks to me like President Eisenhower, much like President Obama today, didn't believe he had to be rude or ignore the traditions of other cultures to prove his machismo -- or his patriotism. This foul spew tells us a lot more about the low content of Mr. Pruden's character than it does about President Obama. It reads like an anonymous comment at Free Republic. I'd think even the Times would be ashamed to print it. Perhaps the paper's internal struggles allowed it to slip through the cracks. I'd like to think so, but I doubt it. h/t Media Matters, via Liss at Shakesville |
